The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Teaching Practices

As generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)  tools become increasingly prevalent in the world, schools, teachers, and students are tasked with thinking about how they navigate education, teaching, and learning in this time of shift in the technology landscape. How is the AFS community adapting, responding, navigating, and discerning– in a way that leans on our values as a Quaker school- the implications AI has for education? What do faculty teaching practices in the classroom look like and what are students’ prescriptions of teaching practices in the age of AI?          

In thinking about these questions, I surveyed Upper School students in each grade and faculty across all three divisions to get a better understanding of the impact of AI on teaching practices and student experiences. 

Collectively, out of a sample of 12 faculty members, multiple different AI platforms were used in teaching, though four faculty members reported not using any AI platforms in their teaching practice. Although faculty and staff have “full [Google] Gemini access through school accounts” , faculty have been innovating with other options, exploring ways to leverage AI to enhance student experiences as they see fit. 

ChatGPT is the platform the majority of  teachers use, with six teachers reporting using it, though Google Gemini is not far behind with five teachers reporting using it. Flint (an AI platform designed for teachers and education) and Claude are used by the least number of teachers with only two teachers reporting using each of them.

There is a clear discrepancy in the number of days students think teachers are using AI for their work as a teacher at AFS and how much teachers are actually using AI. On average students believed that faculty use AI three days per week while faculty reported only using AI an average of one day per week. 

The sharp disconnect in how much teachers are using AI and how much students think they are using it is evidenced by only just over five percent of students saying they think teachers use AI zero times per week when 50% teachers report they use AI zero times per week. At the other extreme, 15.79% of students think teachers use AI daily, while zero percent of teachers actually reported using AI seven days per week. 

Among faculty respondents  there was a general mutual understanding that heavily using AI may decrease the quality of instruction and classes, which would certainly explain why faculty tend to use it much less than students might think. 

As math and science teacher John Garnevicus said in reference to using AI in teaching, “Right now it feels like I can do something better than what it [AI] does and I think my students deserve that.”

Table displaying raw data of the number of faculty that report using AI a certain number of days a week on average and how many days per week students think faculty use AI

Table displaying how much faculty report using AI and how much students think teachers use AI

Quality of assignments and other curricular materials developed by or with AI seem to be delivering significantly worse instruction to students. The decreased quality of circular materials developed using AI is something faculty respondents came to unity on. Of the 11 faculty to respond to the question, “Do you feel like AI does a good job with creating class activities, homework, and lesson plans” only one teacher said “yes” with six saying “sometimes/witih variability,” and four saying “no.”

Students have a different view of what teachers are using AI for than what teachers have reported using it for. Zero percent of the total number of selections made by faculty in selecting all the things they use AI to do was represented by Grading, while grading made up 5.97% of student selections. Students also thought with much higher frequency that teachers were using AI to write emails to students (11.94% of student selections were represented in this category with 0 faculty selections for this category).     

Many of the other categories of things teachers may use AI for boasted similar differences in percentages as the grading category.

As with many shifts and changes in the educational landscape students may show some level of curiosity about what’s going on because these shifts can directly impact them. At AFS students show they are guided by the Upper School norm of “curiosity about learning and development” in how they are thinking about their teachers’ use of AI. Ultimately eight students said they were curious about their teachers’ use of AI while five students said they did not care and six students said it was frustrating.    

Ultimately students do not think teachers should be allowed to use AI for creating assignments, grading, generating lesson plans, writing emails, and providing students with narrative feedback with six students saying teachers should be allowed to use AI and 13 saying they should not be allowed to use AI. While a large majority of students think that teachers should not be allowed to use AI, there are still definitely students who think teachers should be allowed to use AI.      ​​ 

Sam Calandra-Jayne ‘26  shared his perspective on teachers being allowed to use AI. 

Calandra-Jayne said, “I think it is fine if they use AI to make HW assignments in something like math or history. I think if they do that they should just have to read through it to make sure it’s all questions we should be expected to know, nothing we are not expected to know. I don’t think they [teachers] should use it [AI] for grading or writing feedback.”