AI in Education: A Curriculum Question

Today I want to focus on teacher education. Specifically, I want to focus on the idea of AI as a curriculum question — moving it from its external position as a tool in service to the curriculum, a classic edtech stance, to something that not only shapes how curriculum is developed but what curriculum fundamentally is.

I was talking with a colleague about the breadth and depth of research and thinking regarding the adoption of AI in education. We jokingly concluded that it feels like every new article, keynote, framework, and policy document is a dart being thrown at a giant wall — and every time one lands we look there and say "Oh ya, that's a good point", and then the next dart lands and we look somewhere new.

The conclusion of this conversation was twofold: first, as much as we focus on the individual darts we also have to look for connections between them, and the emerging larger patterns across all darts. Second, AI is forcing a reconceptualization of the nature and purpose of teaching and education.

The nature and purpose of teaching are themselves curriculum questions. These questions shape how we think about curriculum — what it's for, what it asks of the teacher, how it is delivered. Any fundamental shift in how an educator understands teaching — what it means, what it demands, who it requires you to be — is also a curriculum question.

AI is that kind of shift.

So the dart I want to throw at the board today is this: what does it mean to view AI in education as a curriculum question?