Why Aussie teachers worry about AI in schools

Bringing AI into Australian classrooms hasn’t reduced the burnout-inducing workload teachers are facing as promised - just shifted it.

Australian Education Union federal secretary Nicole Calnan addressed the Joint Senate Committee on Artificial Intelligence this week, outlining the key fears teachers have around the introduction of the technology into schools.

“Governments have promoted AI as a way to reduce teacher workload yet our members experience and their available research is that it shifts their time into checking and reworking outputs,” she said.

It comes as an exclusive nine.com.au survey* reveals more than one in four Australians (28 per cent) want AI bots such as ChatGPT kept out of schools entirely.

And a whopping 85 per cent of the 1209 respondents polled don’t want them near primary schools.

Of that majority, 40 per cent said it was suitable to start including chatbots in class from high school, while 17 per cent said they belonged in higher education only.

Calnan said technology could “supplement” but not replace in-person teaching.

Read more

Major government websites in Australia impacted by AI-detected flaw

“The relationship between teacher and learner must remain the basis for teaching and learning,” she said.

“Meta-analytic evidence finds these relationships have medium to large associations with student engagement and achievement, with the strongest effects for students at risk.”

She said the teacher-student relationship “carries greater weight as children form relationships with AI systems designed to maximise their engagement”.

The poll revealed an Australia broadly distrustful of AI in terms of education, with just 4 per cent of respondents saying the use of AI assistants for study and homework should be “fully encouraged”.

Forty-five per cent said it shouldn’t be used at all, compared to 37 per cent who said it was appropriate only for specific, teacher-assigned tasks, and 14 per cent who said they would approve of its use under parental supervision.

Two major problems teachers faced, Calnan said, were the division of resources between urban and rural or remote areas, and a lack of consultation.

Digital disconnection is far higher in regional areas, public housing, and among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, meaning that without extra resources, these could be left behind as AI is further inducted into the curriculum.

And meanwhile, teachers are not consulted by governments or education authorities until after the decision to procure an AI system is made, leaving the actual classroom leaders with no choice but to implement tech that may be unsuitable.

“Leaving AI skills to training run by the companies that sell AI products risks access following existing patterns of disadvantage,” Calnan said.

Asked what their chief concern was about student use of AI, just 2 per cent of people said they had no concerns about students using AI, deeming it a “necessary skill for the future”.

A heavy majority of 60 per cent worried it would lead to plagiarism and degrade critical thinking, while 29 per cent cited exposure to inaccurate information.

And 9 per cent were most worried about data safety and privacy risks.

Calnan said the most immediate harm the tech was currently causing in schools involved the creation of sexualised deepfake images targeting students and teachers both.

She said reports to the eSafety Commission of such incidents had doubled in 18 months.

“These are acts of misogyny directed at girls and young women,” she said.

The AEU is calling on the government to extend the digital duty of care laws to include teachers and other adults.

The nine.com.au poll, which runs once a fortnight, canvases the views of the Nine audience on Idea Xchange, which is an online community of our readers and viewers. Learn more and sign up here.