Helping Educators Reimagine AI’s Role in Transformational Learning

From customer service chatbots to personalized shopping recommendations, artificial intelligence has become integral to our daily lives. Mainstream generative AI tools, which can create original content, have risen dramatically in popularity. Many educators have begun exploring these tools to streamline administrative tasks — from composing parent emails to analyzing assessment data and differentiating instruction.

Yet, some educators still see AI only as a tool for efficiency and view student use as cheating. At ISTE+ASCD, we believe this narrow view misses the opportunity to use generative AI as a catalyst for true educational transformation. This moment demands more than efficiency gains and academic integrity policies; it requires rethinking our educational model. Our Transformational Learning Principles provide evidence-based guidelines that support how AI can enhance and deepen the learning experience.

These principles form the basis of the GenerationAI work we are leading to prepare more than 200,000 educators to use generative AI for transformational learning. At a recent convening for GenerationAI, Dr. Joseph South, Chief Innovation Officer at ISTE+ASCD, shared five critical frames to guide this transformation thoughtfully. Many of the guiding questions below are taken directly from Dr. South and his descriptions of these five frames. I believe these should shape any conversation about AI in education. Each frame presents both challenges and opportunities that educators must carefully consider.

Equity/Fairness

How can we ensure that those who are furthest from opportunity benefit as much as those with more access, power and privilege?

A focus on equity and fairness must thoughtfully address the circumstances and backgrounds of all the students in our schools. But we must also address teacher readiness to succeed. Students with teachers learning about new technologies and teaching methods are at an advantage over those who have teachers who continue to teach with traditional methods.

Students must be allowed to contemplate the impact of technology on their daily lives and develop the skills needed for their future careers. Educational experiences limited to outdated approaches prevent students from accessing the valuable opportunities that AI-enhanced instruction can provide.

Values

While addressing equity ensures appropriate access to AI opportunities, we must also consider how our fundamental educational values align with these new tools. How can we ensure that our values lead the work rather than the “default” values of the technology itself, which may or may not reflect our own?

Early in my career as a teacher, I was asked to write my teaching philosophy. While I initially struggled to articulate my beliefs about teaching and learning, one principle remained clear: Students must be at the center of every decision I made in my classroom. The same is true when considering which technology tools to use with students. Are your values and philosophy of teaching represented in the tools you are selecting? For me, I had to ensure that any tool I select is going to help my students be more creative, unlock new learning pathways or meaningfully enhance the student experience. This careful alignment between our values and our tools becomes especially critical as we integrate AI into our classroom practices.

Quality Over Efficiency

The efficiencies that AI can bring to the classroom for both educators and students are game-changers. But doing things faster — things that we probably should have abandoned long ago — doesn’t serve us or our students well. We must focus on meaningful change, not just making ineffective methods more efficient. How can we ensure that we prioritize efficacy over speed?

As busy educators, sometimes we would rather go on autopilot with what we already know and do than think hard about what we should be doing. If AI can spit out an unlimited number of True-False questions, then we really need to consider that a student has a 50/50 chance of guessing the correct answer. This is more about probability than demonstration of learning. Does this drive us to create a more meaningful assessment item instead, with or without an AI-enhanced tool? We have to push ourselves to do better, not just work faster. AI tools can enable us to improve our craft but aren’t going to require it. That’s on us.

Professional Learning

Deploying technology is straightforward. Preparing educators to use it effectively is not. How can we ensure our staff is prepared and confident to lead and learn alongside our students as the technology changes weekly (sometimes daily)?

Current AI professional development often narrows on specific tools and platforms, missing the broader opportunity to build lasting digital competencies. These tools change rapidly, sometimes daily, making tool-specific training quickly obsolete.

Instead, we must focus on building the skills our teachers and students need to be prepared for whatever comes next in their lives by fostering authentic learning and student agency. In the GenerationAI Community of Practice, we didn’t spend time on one specific tool. Rather, participants engaged in conversations about jobs of the future, the difference between learning about and with AI, the implications of using AI with tutoring, considerations around academic integrity and the risk of misinformation. The tools will come later, after this essential foundation has been laid.

Transformational Learning

Ultimately, using transformational technology for incremental improvements is like driving a rocketship down a freeway. You can do it, but should you be doing it? This is why we centered our exploration of the power of AI in education around the Transformational Learning Principles. We have to keep the conversation centered on the student experience.

Participants expressed their appreciation for not being bombarded by AI tools when discussing AI in education. Antonelli Mejia, a principal in Boston, said it was “exciting to learn more about both the opportunities and the risk… and also to really leverage the network of national leaders to see what’s out there and how we can improve our practices.”

As we continue this 15-month journey with our diverse group of educators, we’re building more than just another professional development program. We’re creating an AI-powered educational model focused on meaningful transformation. Educators aren’t just learning AI — they’re reimagining American classrooms.

Celine Perea, a teacher from Colorado, shared her excitement with us. “I cannot begin to express what an amazing opportunity and experience this was. I learned so much and made some amazing connections with educators from across the country. I am looking forward to diving deep into this work. Let’s go!”

Powered by Google.org, ISTE+ASCD and six coalition partners are bringing together a diverse group of educators to examine the impact of generative AI on education and to give educators time and space to consider its use in a safe and responsible way. Join the Movement at https://generationai.org to participate in our ongoing exploration of how we can harness AI’s potential to create more engaging, equitable and transformative learning experiences for all students. Sign up here.