Date
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Learning, Media and Technology
Teachers are now encouraged to use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools to complete various school-related administrative tasks, with the promise of saving considerable amounts of time and effort. Drawing on interviews from 57 teachers across eight schools in Sweden and Australia, this paper explores teachers experiences when working with GenAI. In particular, it focuses on the large amounts of work that teachers put into reviewing, repairing and sometimes completely reworking AI-produced outputs that they perceive to be deficient. Rather than reflecting teachers lack of skill in prompting GenAI effectively, the paper shows how this work foregrounds the educational limitations and frailties of AI and other automated technologies with teachers having to act on a wide range of complex professional judgements around pedagogical appropriateness, social relations and overall educational value to bear on AI-generated content. The paper concludes by considering the need to challenge ongoing industry and policy claims around the labour-saving benefits of artificial intelligence in education, and instead focus on the ways in which these technologies are dependent on the hidden labour of humans to co-produce the illusion of automation.
Study at a glance
- Question: What work do teachers do to review and fix flawed generative AI outputs?
- Setting and data: 57 teachers across eight schools in Sweden and Australia
- Method: Interviews with 57 teachers
Why it matters
Teachers are encouraged to use generative AI tools to complete administrative tasks with the promise of saving time and effort. However, questions remain about the work teachers face in reviewing, repairing, and reworking deficient AI-produced outputs.
Key findings
- In eight schools across Sweden and Australia, 57 teachers reported doing extensive work to review, repair, and rework deficient generative AI outputs.
- Teachers applied complex professional judgment regarding pedagogical appropriateness, social relations, and overall educational value to correct AI-generated content.
- The need to rework outputs stemmed from educational limitations of AI tools rather than teachers lacking skill in prompting them effectively.
Summary drafted with AI from the paper’s abstract and may contain errors. See the full paper for details.
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