Leveraging GenAI as teammate: A case study from EMT508 Teacher as Planner, Assessor & Reporter

Authors and presenter*

• Nadia Ollington, School of Education, CALE*

• Anuradha Khara, Digital Futures, Academic Division

Abstract

In the evolving landscape of teacher education, integrating Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) as a collaborative tool offers transformative potentials: including professional growth via the enhancement of activities such as planning for learning and teaching. It also presents challenges including the need for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students to develop the skills necessary to be “teachers of the future” (Akilu et al., 2024, p.34) who engage in meaningful, responsible, and ethical use of GenAI (LX Team, 2024).

Planning for learning and teaching is a professional activity that from the ecological-situated perspective involves collaborations that lead to shared knowledge construction and professional learning (Munthe & Conway, 2017). In an assessment task of the Masters unit EMT508 Teacher as Planner, Assessor, & Reporter, ITE students build skills around planning for learning and teaching using GenAI as a virtual peer. The assessment task uses an adapted version of the PAIR (Problem, AI, Interaction, Reflection) framework (Acar, 2023) to support students to consider the learning outcomes of the unit alongside Yinger’s (1980) initial stages of planning: problem finding (curriculum content, goals, knowledge), problem formulation and solution (prompting, evaluating, and adapting the design of activities).

This presentation provides teacher reflection on the pedagogical benefits and challenges of utilising GenAI in this context. Insight is shared from experience, from students’ use of the PAIR template, and their creatively crafted lesson plans. Benefits included immediate feedback, and students making risk-free evaluative judgments. Challenges to be considered for the future include trust, and the complexities surrounding scaffolding learning for the task.

References

Acar O., A. (2023). Are your students ready for AI? A four-step framework to prepare learners for a Chat GPT world. Harvard Business Publishing Education.

Akilu, I., Abdulrahaman, A., Mansur, I., & Abubakar, S. (2024). Preparing teachers of the future in the era of artificial intelligence. Journal of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Neural Network 4(4), 31-41. 

LX Team. (2024). Five principles for the effective ethical use of generative AI. UTS. https://lx.uts.edu.au/collections/artificial-intelligence-in-learning-and-teaching/resources/five-principles-for-effective-ethical-use-generative-ai/

Munthe, E., & Conway, P.F. (2017). Evolution of Research on Teachers’ Planning: Implications for Teacher Education. In by D. J Clandinin, & J Husu (Eds). The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education.

Yinger, R. J. (1980). A study of teacher planning, Elementary School Journal, 80(3), 107–127.