The Future of Teachers: The AI Takeover?
Not sure what people are thinking, but K-12 teachers are here to stay. AI will revolutionize many industries (including education) and take over some jobs (but not teaching).
AI (artificial intelligence) is permeating the headlines from questions about regulation to what’s new in the space. It is touching all areas of human life. And education is not left behind. Driven by several factors, there is also a growing question of whether a college education is really worth it. One stat I recently came across was 85% of today’s colleges students will have jobs in just 11 years that don’t currently exist.
According to some research by Goldman Sachs, 27% of the current workforce in “Educational Instruction and Library” could be automated by AI in the US and Europe. I don’t think this is true. I’m not sure who paid or how much for this, but I will charge 75% of that price to give what will actually happen: K-12 teachers (and administrators) are definitely here to stay.
From that same research by Goldman Sachs, they predict 100% of the educational instruction and library industry will experience some AI complement to the work. Which this, can very well be true. There is great potential (especially positive) for teachers and students, alike, to incorporate and embrace artificial intelligence in the classroom. What that will look and how quickly it will be incorporated, has yet to be determined.
Education can very well be ready for major change. (I believe college/university instruction will change first before we see significant changes to the K-12 system.) However, among all of this, the one thing that I know that isn’t changing is how people learn. Research in pedagogy - the science of learning - continues to grow but we already know some things that have been implement for the past several decades. It is not something that it foreign to our understanding. Several solid pedagogical practices in the classroom just take time. That is not usually something that classroom teachers have. AI has the potential to allow teachers to take the small amounts of time they may have and optimize it.
(In a future post I plan to suggest some concrete examples on how teachers can use AI to operationalize and enhance their teaching practices.)
Education is still very much about collective dynamics. Have you been in a classroom or school lately? It can be chaotic. The blend between classroom management and instructing, testing, etc is what a teacher does. You cannot separate these things either from each other. (Well, theoretically you can, but we would go backwards to my earlier point on understanding how people learn.)
Teachers are often seen as role models and mentors. This component to their job is core to facilitating learning, in most people, and central to what research tells us on how to foster intrinsic motivation in others. There is something that is very human about teaching. AI won’t be replacing teachers. As for lawyers, perhaps the Goldman Sachs research is onto something.