Could teachers be replaced with robots?

[noblegiraffe]

This is increasingly being suggested as a solution to the critical lack of teachers, particularly at secondary school.

My general position is that we saw how pupils are not motivated to learn when left to their own devices at home over lockdown. As a teacher, a lot of my day is spent getting kids to do the work, in various ways.

This blog by Becky Allen "Will students feel motivated to work for the AI-masters?' is an interesting discussion of the issue. It refers to Animal Crossing making you feel guilty for neglecting your characters, the Duolingo owl encouraging you to keep a streak and so on. Personally, I find closing the rings on my Apple Watch the only thing that has motivated me to do regular exercise.

But what these things all have in common is that they are things that the student has opted into in the first place. Presumably there was some initial motivation on their part that just needs a nudge to keep going.

An important part of teaching is building relationships with the pupils on a human level. Can a student build a relationship with an AI? Well, definitely. But on a widespread enough scale for it to be more effective than humans interaction? Not sure.

However, would it be better than no teacher? Most likely.

https://rebeccaallen.co.uk/2024/01/13/artificial-incentives-will-students-feel-motivated-to-work-for-their-ai-masters/

Look what happened when teaching went online during Covid (with or without live zoom lessons) 🤷

I know. But we are running out of teachers.

I think ultimately yes but we are a while from that. It is the way the world is moving and there are many things the next generation of children will see as normal that seem unthinkable at the moment.

It misses out so many factors - dealing with bullying - teachers observing friendship issues , different ways of working with children with SEN’s looking for triggers , building interpersonal skills. I could list limitless things they do .

teacher do so much more than teach the curriculum.

Why isn't it being investigated why there is such a shortage? Measures need to be taken to sort this out. Throwing money at people who train in the form of bursaries is not the answer. This does not help with retention. It's the workload and conditions

It could be said that that is why we are running out of them...

There do seem to have been some successes with using AI bots for counselling and therapy. Some of the school pastoral stuff could make use of this.

I think it could be useful as a support to human teachers. I think AI will have infinite ability to calibrate to individual learning styles and adapt to different levels, as well as being endlessly patient and capable of multi tasking. I can see the advantages, but not that a robot would replace human teachers altogether.

I think yea hers over the decades have been used to fill shiortages everywhere.

Parenting gaps
Social worker gapa
mebtal health gaps
policing gaps
behavioural management gaps
Parental support
Medical gaps/support

Tjey don’t just teach. They parent a lot of children.

There were teachers who were hugely influential in my childhood, who were supportive and inspired me to study because of their passion for their subject. There were also teachers who probably shouldn’t have been in teaching who taught me how to deal with difficult people in the workplace etc. I don’t think you can take the human, relational elements out of teaching. AI might help reduce the admin elements of teaching, but it will never replace the social learning.

It’s an interesting thought and something being considered in social work (which is my profession) ie how to use AI effectively. I don’t think you can take the human element out of either of those professions.

There do seem to have been some successes with using AI bots for counselling and therapy. Some of the school pastoral stuff could make use of this.

It depends on the type of counselling, there’s a huge difference administering a programme of CBT and offering a relational therapy. We can’t remove the impact of human relationships in supporting change, learning and human development. I’d be deeply unimpressed if I asked for therapy and was offered a robot.

I was ground down by the behaviour - over my 20 yr teaching career it just got worse and worse and parents became more and more belligerent. I could no longer teach and the kids who did behave were losing out on so much of my time 😢

I'm trying to think about how teachers get kids to do the work and how a robot could replace this:

Routines (the regular consistency of the school day and the expectations)
Rewards (house points, praise, reward trips)
Competition (wanting to do well compared to others)
Sanctions (behavioural nudges, telling off, demerits, detentions)

I suppose that success on an AI system could trigger real life rewards and sanctions which would still need some sort of school system to implement these. A lot of behavioural nudges require the pupil to be there in the first place, so how to get the kids to log on?

Obviously that's a big problem facing schools at the moment in that there is a massive attendance crisis and kids are staying away from school for various reasons (just had a recent thread about this), so school isn't necessarily winning in this aspect.

But if the alternative was nothing?

I think what may happen is large class sizes being taught remotely by one teacher, maybe at home or in halls.

Here was something I read recently about young people and therapy-bots https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/young-people-turning-to-ai-therapist-bots/ar-AA1mtM9i

@noblegiraffe In terms of getting kids to do the work, wouldn't you include making the work interesting? I've happy memories of teachers who brought subjects to life by anecdote, humour, whole class debate and projects, asking about our interests, hopes and dreams. My school was considered nice though, quote!, so maybe we were not so hard to motivate.

As a therapist, I’d rather have nothing than computer administered CBT. I’ve said before and I’ll keep saying, parents should be rioting in the streets about the state of schools and teaching not sleep walking towards their kids being taught by robots.

I teach maths so tbh the best way of getting kids to do the work is to let them experience success and build on that. It's a very rare kid who doesn't like to see a page full of ticks.

It's not really a subject that lends itself to whole class debate and projects really. Other teachers may be able to comment more in that direction!

I think that AI could probably be used to get rid of traditional 'teachers', performing a lot of data input, planning, marking, curriculum creation, assessment creation etc. I think that a physical person would still be needed there, though, if not a professional teacher. An HLTA type role, where someone does delivery and limited planning, while AI does the less visible parts could well exist in the future though. Whether that's a good thing, is a whole different issue.

In my school, they can't even replace teachers with supply, due to massive behavioural issues, though. A robot would be smashed up by morning break.

@noblegiraffe Yes, I think building on success sounds sensible. I had a friend at school who loved Maths so much she did the lunchtime club and seemed to have exciting, to her, projects on the go. I was more arts/languages/humanities though, so different area, as you say.

Judging by the hatred of teachers on some threads I think some parents would be happy with robots teaching theory DC. I would not be!
DD told me last night about a great MFL lesson they had whereby the teacher went off on a complete tangent and they ended up discussing the Norman conquest and it's impact on the English language then compared language pre and post NC and ended up looking at modern day influences on English.
A computer/robot couldn't do that.

I think some aspects of it can be automated quite easily.

Maths and MFL already have websites where students can do questions and know whether they are right or wrong and watch videos/see explanations. I'm learning Spanish on Duolingo and really enjoying it.

Equally, at university level, automatic marking of maths, physics and programming assessments is already part of my DD's degree while other assessments are human marked.

I suspect the younger the student the more need for human teachers.

I think that a physical person would still be needed there, though, if not a professional teacher.

I think in the midst of debates about education the professionalism of teachers has been undermined and diluted - it’s the same for a number of professions where people see the task but not the underlying knowledge, experience and value base that professional training affords.

Teachers have training in pedagogy, engaging students, in child development that is important - probably folk won’t realise just how important that is until teaching as a profession is gone. There are significant issues in education, getting rid of teachers isn’t the answer.

I'm in secondary maths.

When we are short of teachers we timetable classes in the computer room for one of their eight lessons a week and just set questions on mathswatch or similar.

That way they do practice and revision on the existing skills.

They get bored pretty rapidly and it's hard for whoever is in there with them to keep them on task after 20-30 mins or so.

Stops it being just one class that feels the impact of lack of teachers though.