AI Skills for Teachers – A competency framework from UNESCO

There are significant implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for education, teaching and learning, and for teachers’ roles and competencies. Indeed, AI can process vast amounts of information and text far beyond any human capacity and can produce new content across the range of symbolic representations of human thinking, identify patterns in data presented in various formats, and can facilitate human decision-making by predictive analyses. Emerging practices in the use of AI in education clearly demonstrate the potential of AI to enable new forms of teaching, learning and education management and enhance learning experiences and support teacher tasks. However, AI can pose significant risks to students, the teaching community, education systems and society at large.

This AI competency framework for teachers (AI CFT) is intended to support the development of AI competencies among teachers to empower them to use these technological tools in their teaching practices in a safe, effective and ethical manner. The framework is based on a human-centred approach to the knowledge, understandings, and skills required to do so. It maintains that while AI offers opportunities to support teachers in both teaching as well as in the management of learning processes, meaningful interactions between teachers and students and human flourishing should remain at the center of the educational experience. Teachers should not and cannot be replaced by technology – it is crucial to safeguard teachers’ rights of and ensure adequate working conditions for them in the context of the growing use of AI in the education system, in the workplace and in society at large.

Why ?

There are significant implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for education, teaching and learning, and for teachers’ roles and competencies. Indeed, AI can process vast amounts of information and text far beyond any human capacity and can produce new content across the range of symbolic representations of human thinking, identify patterns in data presented in various formats, and can facilitate human decision-making by predictive analyses. Emerging practices in the use of AI in education clearly demonstrate the potential of AI to enable new forms of teaching, learning and education management and enhance learning experiences and support teacher tasks. However, AI can pose significant risks to students, the teaching community, education systems and society at large. AI may threaten human agency, intensify climate change, violate data privacy, deepen long-standing systemic inequalities and exclusion, and lead to new forms of discrimination. In education, AI can reduce teaching and learning processes to calculations and automated tasks in ways that devalue the role and influence of teachers and weaken their relationships with learners. It can narrow education to only that which AI can process, model and deliver. Finally, it can also exacerbate the worldwide shortage of qualified teachers through disproportionate spending on technology at the expense of investment in human capacity development.The use of AI in education therefore requires careful consideration, including an examination of the evolving roles teachers need to play and the competencies required of teachers to make ethical and effective use of AI. Teachers are the primary users of AI in education, and they are expected to be the designers and facilitators of students’ learning with AI, the guardians of safe and ethical practice across AI-rich educational environments, and to act as role models for lifelong learning about AI. To assume these responsibilities, teachers need to be supported to develop their capabilities to leverage the potential benefits of AI while mitigating its risks in education settings and wider society. National educational authorities need to dynamically review and redefine teachers’ roles and required competencies, strengthen teacher-training institutions, and establish appropriate capacity-building programmes to prepare teachers to work with AI in an effective and ethical manner. Yet, according to a recent survey (UNESCO, 2023a), only seven countries had developed frameworks or programmes on AI for teachers in 2022. This can be largely explained by the lack of knowledge on how to define teachers’ roles and competencies in the context of growing human–AI interactions in educational and pedagogical practices. This AI competency framework for teachers (AI CFT) is intended to support the development of AI competencies among teachers to empower them to use these technological tools in their teaching practices in a safe, effective and ethical manner. The framework is based on a human-centred approach to the knowledge, understandings, and skills required to do so. It maintains that while AI offers opportunities to support teachers in both teaching as well as in the management of learning processes, meaningful interactions between teachers and students and human flourishing should remain at the center of the educational experience. Teachers should not and cannot be replaced by technology – it is crucial to safeguard teachers’ rights of and ensure adequate working conditions for them in the context of the growing use of AI in the education system, in the workplace and in society at large.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story @  AI competency framework for teachers – UNESCO Bibliothèque Numérique