New OECD Report (and me): Preparing Students for an AI World Is Not About Using an Enchanting Chatbot to Write a Lesson Plan, It's About Instructional Redesign

What are you doing to prepare your students for a world that is "heavily shaped" by AI?

The hard questions are not about teaching educators how to use ultra-generic chatbots, but how to reorient schools to prepare their students for the world of hyperintelligent machines.

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I don’t care if a teacher ever uses an AI to write a lesson plan, generate a quiz, or grade a paper. If they want to, great. If they don’t, that’s also great. Teachers should have the autonomy to decide how they want to prepare for their classes, and beyond perhaps building some basic literacy with AI tools, I fail to see how a teacher using an AI tool to “whip-up” some standard quiz or lesson is going to do anything to help students prepare for a world of AI. Do you really think that a teacher using a magical chatbot is going to prepare students for a world where machines that are smarter than us and will be able to produce most products that today still require at least some human intelligence?

Student: How will learning this prepare me for a world where machines can produce commercials on their own?
Teacher: Well, I made this lesson with a chatbot.

The hard questions are not about teaching educators how to use ultra-generic chatbots, but how to reorient schools to prepare their students for the world of hyperintelligent machines. These are the hard questions that involve reorienting the role of teachers and prioritizing problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking in the classroom; fostering community and collaboration; building interdisciplinary knowledge and expanding experiential and entrepreneurial learning that is tied to the community. It’s about redesigning teaching and learning to emphasize these essential skills. Without them, our students will fail in an AI world regardless of how many lessons are written by chatbots.

In fact, the chatbots could end up producing lesson plans that make their education even less relevant to an AI world, as absent significant fine-tuning, they are relying on the training they received for how we taught people in the 20th century.

Last week, the OECD released a new report that could not have said it more clearly.

Here are some key quotes.

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Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General, April 26, 2024 Reimagining Education, Realising Potential | OECD iLibrary (oecd-ilibrary.org)

While using AI for learning poses significant challenges, establishing the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that should be learned and taught in a world heavily shaped by AI is even more difficult.

For now, countries can get away with low teacher quality if teaching is mainly about imparting prefabricated knowledge. When teacher quality is low, governments tend to tell their teachers exactly what to do and exactly how they want it done, using an industrial organisation of work to get the results they want. *Today the challenge is to make teaching a profession of advanced knowledge workers, who work with a high level of professional autonomy and within a collaborative culture. But such people will not work as exchangeable widgets in schools organised like rigid Taylorist factories, which rely mainly on administrative forms of accountability, and bureaucratic command-and-control systems to direct their work.* To attract the best people, modern education systems need to transform the way schools are organised, to one in which professional norms of control replace bureaucratic and administrative forms of control.

While capable of some degree of personalisation, AI also lacks the intuition and human touch of teachers. Unlike algorithms and automated systems, teachers possess empathy and emotional intelligence necessary to recognise when a student is struggling, both academically and emotionally. They can offer personalised support, encouragement and reassurance, tailoring their approach to meet the individual needs of each student. Teachers also play a crucial role in fostering a sense of community and belonging within the classroom. They create a supportive learning environment where students feel safe to take risks, ask questions and express themselves freely. This human connection is irreplaceable and can significantly impact a student ’s overall well-being and academic success.

What’s more, as digitalisation and artificial intelligence advance, the premium on creativity and critical thinking increases compared to routine skills, which are more susceptible to automation. In the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2023 report, companies considered *creative thinking the second most important skill for workers, ranked only behind analytical thinking.*

The jobs of the future will require individuals who can create value through their creativity, critical thinking and collaborative spirit. The demand for innovative thinking will be greater than ever before. 

And in a world in which the kinds of things that are easy to teach and test have also become easy to digitise and automate, we need to develop learning environments that nurture the skills of the future.

The conventional approach in school is often to break problems down into manageable bits and pieces and then to teach students how to solve the different parts. But modern societies create value by synthesising different fields of knowledge, making connections between ideas that previously seemed unrelated. 

In today’s schools, students typically learn individually and at the end of the school year, we certify their individual achievements. But the more interdependent the world becomes, the more we need great collaborators and orchestrators. Innovation is now rarely the product of individuals working in isolation, but rather an outcome of how we mobilise, share and integrate knowledge.

The well-being of societies depends increasingly on people’s capacity to take collective action. Schools therefore need to become better at helping students learn to develop an awareness of the pluralism of modern life. That means teaching and rewarding collaboration as well as individual academic achievement, enabling students both to think for themselves, and to act for and with others.

More generally, changing skill demands have elevated the role of social and emotional skills. They include character qualities such as perseverance, empathy or perspective taking, mindfulness, ethics, courage and leadership. These skills, in turn, intersect with diversity in important ways. They can help students live and work in a world in which people increasingly need to appreciate a range of ideas, perspectives and values, and collaborate with people of different cultural origins, often bridging space and time through technology.

That’s why the future needs to be integrated – with an emphasis on the inter-relation of subjects, the integration of students and fostering connections with other schools, businesses and the wider community. Instruction in the future needs to be more project-based; building experiences that help students think across the boundaries of subject-matter disciplines. This will make learning more closely related to real-world contexts and contemporary issues and helps create innovative partnerships.

Educational leaders need to identify key agents of change, champion them, and find more effective approaches to scaling and disseminating innovations. 

Now schools need to use the potential of technologies to liberate learning from past conventions and connect learners in new and powerful ways.

So how should educators navigate this digital landscape? The effective integration of digital technology into education demands a skilled and adaptable workforce. Teachers must possess the digital competencies necessary to harness technology effectively, from integrating AI into teaching to navigating complex digital ecosystems. To this end, countries are investing in professional development opportunities and other initiatives to enhance teachers’ digital skills.

Governments and teacher organisations must therefore prioritise lifelong learning initiatives that empower individuals of all ages to pursue their educational goals. This includes expanding access to adult education programmes, promoting vocational training and apprenticeships, and incentivising continuous professional development for educators. 

OECD, April 26, 2024, Reimagining Education, Realising Potential | OECD iLibrary (oecd-ilibrary.org)

The way children are taught also needs to change. Currently, different students are often taught in similar ways. Now school systems need to embrace diversity with differentiated approaches to learning. The goals of the past were standardisation and compliance, with students educated in age cohorts, following the same standard curriculum, all assessed at the same time. The future is about building instruction from students’ passions and capacities, helping students personalise their learning and assessments in ways that foster engagement and talent. It’s about encouraging students to be ingenious.

By integrating approaches that prioritize hands-on activities, real-world problem solving, and individualized learning paths, educators can foster environments that promote autonomy, creativity, and critical thinking. Such a shift requires a re-evaluation of curricular designs, teaching methods, and assessment practices to ensure they are flexible and responsive to students' diverse learning styles and paces. Professional development programmes can play a crucial role in equipping teachers with the skills and mindset needed to implement these changes effectively.

Teachers are key enablers of this endeavour, and it is imperative that governments and teacher organisations collaborate to support teachers in exploring and enacting pedagogies, and designing learning environments that support student attainment of future-ready competencies, through policies, processes and teacher professional development.

Future ready learners need strong socio-emotional skills. To build those skills, teachers need to act as much more than only traditional conduits of knowledge: they must serve as role models, guides and facilitators of a supportive learning environment

The rapid pace of development of AI-enabled technologies raises new challenges for all professionals, and this is also true for teachers and other education practitioners. The effective use of AI in education depends on a trained and qualified workforce. While most initial teacher education programmes include some introduction to digital tools for learning, the use of and critical engagement with digital resources in teaching should be mainstreamed in all subjects in initial teacher education programmes, so that teachers feel at ease with the use of digital tools in the learning scenarios they offer their future students. Teachers’ AI literacy should be cultivated, so they understand AI techniques, can critically assess AI productions and recommendations, and creatively use AI in their teaching.

For the most innovation-driven jobs – from AI to the creative arts to renewable technologies – employers are looking for employees that create value. Workers that are able to thrive in this environment are the ones that have the skills and mindset to ask questions, collaborate with others and thi

nk creatively.

The knowledge, skills, attitudes and values; insights, ideas, techniques, strategies and solutions that today’s students develop will be key to solving many of the world’s most pressing challenges—from climate change to poverty. These require the ability to put creative thinking into practice, working effectively with others to explore, analyse and implement new ideas. They also call on students to consider the interests of others. After all, to solve existential issues like climate change, we must develop the values and capabilities in today’s generation to ensure that the interests of future generations are given full weight in our decisions

Teachers have a critical role to play in nurturing these skills and behaviours among students. They can unlock student creativity by using teaching practices that encourage students to explore, generate and reflect upon ideas. They can build empathy by linking learning content to real-world scenarios and the lived experiences of students. They can help students develop the capacity to identify positive future outcomes and develop the judgment to arrive at those outcomes by promoting horizontal thinking across diverse areas of knowledge (OECD, 2023[4]). In other words, teachers can help organise experiences, relationships and content in order to foster expanded ambitions for young people. This movement, which has been called “deeper learning, or “4-Dimensional Education”, is centered around authentic, challenging learning tasks that are relevant to and engaging for the learne

Similarly, Singapore's educational framework, under its "Desired Outcomes of Education," places a significant focus on developing critical and inventive thinking alongside social and emotional competencies. By the conclusion of secondary education, Singaporean students are expected to emerge as resilient, innovative, and enterprising individuals. They are also trained to think critically and communicate their ideas effectively and persuasively, preparing them to tackle challenges and thrive in an ever-evolving global landscape.

A key initiative is the Greenhouse Academy, a 60 000-square-foot student-run learning space where students gain practical experience managing a greenhouse business. They tackle real-world problems, from choosing plants and designing layouts to budgeting and collaborating with local industries for resources like irrigation. Under teacher and staff mentorship, students learn to navigate business challenges, enhancing their independence and teamwork skills, and contributing value to their community and the business itself.

Climate change isn’t the only unprecedented territory that young people find themselves in today: artificial intelligence, the fracturing of the global political order and economic insecurity all require agency both as a goal and as a process to help learners navigate an ever-changing landscape (Stenalt and Lassesen, 2021[11])

When students actively participate in shaping their education by selecting what and how they learn, they can exhibit increased motivation and are more inclined to set specific learning objectives (OECD, 2019[12]). This can not only enhance their enthusiasm for learning but also equip them with the essential ability to self-educate—a skill of lifelong value. This agency is applicable across various domains, including ethical decision-making, social interactions, economic understanding, and creative work. For instance, exercising moral agency is critical for students to make decisions that acknowledge the rights and needs of others.

These skills matter in the workplace, too. Google’s Project Oxygen programme, running since 2008, seeks to determine which skills are key to the performance of its best managers. It has consistently found that collaboration, self-management, communication and encouragement are in top place. In fact, only one of the top 10 skills is technical.

School is where we can learn and sharpen these skills. In many ways, schools are like giant petri dishes of social emotional learning, where students interact with their peers in formative ways. But teaching is as important. The effective teaching of social and emotional skills can positively affect students' success in school. Skills such as problem-solving, self-regulation, impulse control and empathy can help improve academic outcomes and reduce negative social behaviours such as bullying. 

Enhancing adult learning is crucial, particularly due to digitalisation and automation within the workforce. It's essential for adults to adapt by acquiring new digital skills and, in certain cases, undergo reskilling due to job displacement resulting from technological advancements. Adult education and training should not only enhance employability but also foster innovation, promote social equity and bridge the digital skills divide.