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/

There are significant issues in education, getting rid of teachers isn’t the answer.

Unfortunately we haven't got teachers so it's a problem looking for a solution rather than an answer looking for a question.

Great post. Completely agree and said it far better than I could.

Teaching is a relationship based job. Teaching is all about observing, reacting to and supporting behaviour, small steps in learning and individual needs. It's about humour, adapting pace and human contact.

I do however think robots could be used to cut the workload of teachers by doing lesson prep such as trimming, sticking in work, putting up displays and data entry.

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.

Thinking about that, in a lesson you would never expect a class to crack on with a worksheet for 30 minutes, that sort of focused engagement is limited.

So perhaps it is unrealistic to expect computer-based lessons to last as long as a normal lesson and things should be switched up after a short period.

Where AI can be helpful is in paperwork.

Shortly before I left my school revamped the curriculum and as part of that they wanted a lesson plan for every lesson including resources.

Each lesson plan had to be about 4 pages long and include differentiation, assessment, etc.

I set up essentially an AI system to generate them so it took the topics in with additional input of type of activities and generated a 4 page lesson plan for each lesson. 60 pages for each year group for each half term,

Apparently the inspectors did look at it which was good because I spent a lot of time automating the process.

1080 pages of paperwork in total and that was just for maths.

Each lesson plan had to be about 4 pages long and include differentiation, assessment, etc

Absolutely insane. But, the lack of teachers has led to the de-professionalisation of teachers to the point where some schools script everything they have to do, and they might as well be replaced by robots...

I teach English and one of hardest bits of my job is helping students to see and understand nuances in texts. I don't think a robot can do that yet.

Can it fill in pointless sets of meaningless data in multiple places that no one ever looks at? Yes.

If you think teaching is about telling people the information from your head you're probably an awful teacher! (Not aimed at OP, just in general)

As many have already said, teaching us about the relationship with the kids.

Do you think that the AI can't understand the nuances itself or that it cannot communicate them to children?

I think an AI could probably teach a kid to do maths, but getting the kid to do the maths would be the biggest problem. A teacher has to bring so much energy to a classroom.

I think that at the moment it can't "think" the nuance, but also that communicating it is hard.

I spend a lot of time explaining things in a context which the specific students in front of me will understand - so there's nuance in that too.

And yes, getting them to do it too. There are days when I leap about like a fool to get them engaged and willing to have a go.

Will just say no, I don’t think they could replace teachers but could potentially do say 1 lesson in 4 freeing up teachers to have enough non contact time to manage their workload. Trouble is that time would undoubtedly just be filled with yet more to do and more pointless meetings and crap cpd taking us back to square one rapidly.

AI would be much better used to free teachers to teach rather than freeing them from teaching to do other things!

Possibly, in a motivated older child with a computer that worked brilliantly (with excellent WiFi!) and speedy support was on hand for when the tech played up.

For younger children, it wouldn’t be much good if they’d wet themselves, needed you to change their nappy, had an itchy rash that needed to be looked at, were crying because they missed their mum etc etc. We also have crappy old laptops that don’t work, shit WiFi and no good headphones.

I’m not sure how well a robot would cope if the child told them to fuck off, upended a table, kicked them and left the room, either!

@MrsHamlet Text analysis is so complex - involving intertextuality, historical/social/political context, style, grammar, punctuation, metaphor, etymology, irony - lots more too. AI seems brilliant at broad strokes, but seems to struggle with complex literary analysis and making these broader connections which are necessary. It seems great for Maths and Science, which must be about the way it works. Good with patterns, perhaps. So, I could imagine it could do an efficient job of analysing a student's strengths and weaknesses in Maths and any gaps in knowledge, coming up with specific learning plans for individuals. That might save teachers time and they could then implement the plan.

@stormy4319trevor certainly - the essays I get that ChatGPT has written rather than students are always notably bad at those things.

@MrsHamlet Haha! Do students try that? It's so bad at writing I wonder they think you won't notice.

Chatbots are crap at maths.

There are other programs that are better at it.

Yes. I don't even need turnitin, although we have it, to spot the dross.

Teachers and HCAs and dinner staff and admin staff all have very important roles, though, beyond teaching which is to model being successful adults. If you have no role models, then you don't know what you are aiming for. Children, especially teens, need lots of positive and motivational input from people who are not their parents, so coaches, trainers, teachers, you need someone to believe in you and encourage you at some point in your life. My children have all had a teacher, or another parent, or a therapist who has liked them and encouraged them and it makes a huge difference.

It will be very hard to teach people good social skills and to be part of society in a pro-social way if they don't see it modelled, it's bad enough as it is. Teens in particular need more adults around, not fewer. The issue isn't can we cram stuff into their heads, but can we help them develop into stable, productive, happy people during their education, and taking adults out of the equation won't help with that whatsoever.

YouTube replaced teachers years ago imo. Also now with ChatGPT, there's virtually nothing that kids can't learn without a teacher present. I bet a lot of teachers use ChatGPT for planning lessons, in fact.

I am also noticing that the Covid cohort are not doing amazingly well, the last year and this year's classes, their attainment is lower. They got out of the habit of coming to lectures/speaking in seminars, and their work reflects a lack of complex and nuanced thinking and the wide understanding of other cohorts. It's a small difference, but I bet it would magnify over time, if they didn't interact with staff.

It's a bit like the WFH debate, if you are older, worked for years in a job and have good social networks and skills developed earlier in your career, you can manage just fine at home. Putting new recruits into that isn't giving them exposure to this. Plus over time, life just becomes less fun the more you are isolated (I know lots of people on Mumsnet would swear this is not the case but over time, I think it doesn't suit most people to live very limited and anti-social lives; all my friends who swore blind they were fine WFH and just happy with staying in are all starting to go out and dress properly for work and finding it is much better for their MH!)

Yuk Bruner in Westworld would be great. Imagine him striding towards you asking if you'd done your homework?

A well designed robot, based on a film character, would probably be really popular. But it would also be weird if young children started to feel attachment to a robot. Probably not healthy. Not sure UK schools have the budget for that kind of robot anyway.

No we are not treating teachers well enough fir them to want to stay in the profession.
Just like doctors. You can try to replace them with PA.

The results will be the same. Children won’t learn. And that’s assuming you’re talking about secondary age above, not primary school.

You’re missing the point.

The issue is not age has never been the fact information and knowledge is widely available now.

A teacher job isn’t just to give information.
its about giving it in the right format fir the pupil. It’s about encouraging pupils, noticing where they struggle when you thought it wouldn’t be an issue (and the other way around). It’s about trying to keep the motivation going etc…

If it was that easy to learn through YouTube, why aren’t more people learning like this? Why don’t we have a population all overqualified nowadays?
Its not as simple as that.