Promoting and protecting teacher agency in the age of artificial intelligence, a new position paper produced by the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (TTF), aims to shed light on the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in reshaping the education landscape while maintaining teachers’ agency, dignity, and professional autonomy.
To ensure the position paper reflected the multiple and diverse perspectives of the TTF membership, it underwent several rounds of consultation with actors from different backgrounds. Feedback was collected through written surveys and direct comments on the draft, in-person exchanges at the Global Teacher Campus workshop during the Global Education Coalition Annual Meeting, and an online consultation led by the TTF’s Digital and AI Thematic Group, co-led by MESHGuides and Digital Promise. This inclusive process and the combined guidance of the thematic group co-leads and the TTF Secretariat played an instrumental role in providing concrete insights for the development of the paper.
What are the key findings regarding AI in the teaching profession?
AI offers both significant opportunities and complex challenges for education systems worldwide, and as its development is rapidly accelerating, it is important to move the discourse beyond polarizing narratives of dystopian fears and utopian promises. AI can support teachers in planning, assessment, and inclusive education, but without proper training, ethical safeguards, and systemic support, its benefits might become risks. Ultimately, AI should enhance the teaching profession and not replace it, as teaching remains a deeply human act rooted in empathy, judgement, and relationship that AI cannot replicate.
What are AI’s implications for teachers?
The relationship between AI and teachers can be reduced to three categories: teaching with AI, teaching about AI, and adapting teaching to a world where AI is ubiquitous. Teaching with AI has shown to be beneficial for teachers, allowing them to provide personalized learning experiences and improve students’ learning outcomes, as well as reducing workloads and supporting creative processes; however, the evidence base is still weak. As AI permeates society, it is crucial to emphasize the irreplaceability of teachers and that AI is not a substitute for teachers but a powerful augmentative tool. Teachers need to be equipped with the skills, ethical awareness and agency to shape how and when AI is integrated into the classroom.
How are teachers using AI?
AI is capable of counteracting resource shortages, allowing overburdened teachers in underserved areas to continue providing instructional support. This includes using tools that support special education needs, as well as translation and content generation in local languages. At the same time, teachers also use AI as a functional aid for generating personalized feedback and automating routine tasks, such as grading, planning, and content delivery. However, these applications remain largely functional and focused on automating tasks, rather than driving deeper pedagogical transformation.
What are the benefits of AI for teachers?
When integrated thoughtfully, AI can:
- Free up time from routine tasks, allowing teachers to focus more on pedagogy, student engagement, and wellbeing.
- Provide real-time insights into student progress and familiarize teachers with their needs.
- Generate high-quality resources and adaptive learning materials.
- Support inclusive education for learners with disabilities or language barriers through multimodal formats.
- Strengthen subject-specific teaching (e.g. STEM) through simulations, virtual labs, and adaptive tools.
What risks does AI pose for teachers?
While AI offers opportunities, it also brings important risks. The most pressing ones include:
- Contribute to the de-professionalization of teaching, as teachers risk losing essential skills if tasks such as lesson planning or providing feedback are increasingly outsourced to AI.
- Undermine teachers’ professional autonomy when standardized AI protocols are prioritized over their creativity, judgment, and contextual knowledge.
- Enable increased surveillance and misuse of data, with performance monitoring applied in punitive rather than supportive ways.
- Weaken the human dimension of education, as overreliance on AI risks devaluing teacher–student relationships and the development of social and emotional skills.
- Drive harmful standardization, sidelining diversity, local knowledge, and cultural responsiveness in teaching and learning.
- Deepen digital divides, leaving behind teachers who lack the infrastructure, training, or equitable access needed to benefit from AI.
What are the key recommendations for using AI in classrooms?
Implementing AI in classrooms requires strategic navigation. Recommendations include:
- Reaffirm the irreplaceable role of teachers in education: Governments and education stakeholders must commit unequivocally to the irreplaceability of teachers, emphasizing that AI systems must support, not substitute, core teacher responsibilities.
- Promote and protect teachers’ professional competencies: Policies must encourage models of AI implementation that promote and protect teachers’ professional competencies while supporting teacher collaboration and innovation through professional networks and communities of practice.
- Evaluate AI’s impact and promote human-centred pedagogies: AI should not automate poor practices of education, but encourage innovative pedagogies, emphasising human-centred approaches.
- Safeguard diversity and prevent AI from standardising education: Education standards must require AI tools to be culturally responsive and adaptable while supporting diverse education needs.
- Promote transparent, sustainable, and ethical AI governance: Education policymakers should enforce clear ethical standards and transparency in AI technologies deployed in schools, ensuring that teachers fully understand AI decision-making processes and implications.
- Ensure equitable access and prevent AI-driven educational inequality: To avoid exacerbating existing disparities, policies must aim to bridge the digital divide by investing in technological infrastructure, tailored digital literacy programmes, and equitable resource distribution across the globe.
- Promote international cooperation and solidarity: Leveraging AI in education and filling the digital divide requires cooperation from global networks, including the Education 2030 SDG4 High-Level Steering Committee, TTF, the Global Education Coalition, and Borad Band Commission.
Policymakers, education leaders, teacher unions, and other stakeholders are urged to reaffirm the invaluable role of teachers in education when engaging with the development of AI. Continuing to promote teachers’ professional competencies is of the upmost importance, which can be achieved through implementing comprehensive AI competency frameworks, supporting teacher collaboration via professional network, and promoting human-centred pedagogies. Above all, AI usage must be transparent, sustainable, ethical, and equitable.
Read more:
- Promoting and protecting teacher agency in the age of artificial intelligence - Teacher Task Force position paper
- Teacher Task Force thematic groups