TEACHING in the MACHINE AGE: How Innovation Can Make Bad Teachers Good and Good Teachers Better
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
TEACHING IN THE MACHINE AGE: How innovation can make bad teachers good and good teachers better BY THOMAS ARNETT DECEMBER 2016 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As scientific understanding and artificial intelligence leap forward, many professions—such as law, accounting, animation, and medicine—are changing in dramatic ways. Increasingly, these advances allow non-experts and machines to perform tasks that were previously in the sole domain of experts, thus turning expert-quality work into a commodity. With new technologies displacing workers across many fields, what will be the likely impact on the teaching profession? Will machines replace teachers? Despite the hype and fear, machines are unlikely to replace teachers anytime • When expert teachers need to teach more than academic content. soon. Rather, they are poised to help overcome several structural barriers A growing body of research shows that deeper learning and that make it difficult to ensure that an effective teacher reaches every student. noncognitive skills play a significant role, alongside content mastery, in determining students’ academic and life outcomes. Innovations School systems face a number of challenges, including teacher shortages, that commoditize teacher expertise give teachers greater capacity to a lack of clear methods for developing high-quality teachers, and teacher focus on helping students develop these important skills. burnout and attrition, to name a few. And even the best teachers struggle to address the diverse learning needs of their students or find time to focus Rather than seeing technological progress as a threat, teachers and on developing students’ deeper learning and noncognitive skills amidst education leaders should take advantage of the many ways technology pressures to cover core instruction. can enhance their work. Computers, non-experts, and expert teachers each have comparative advantages that complement one another. Innovations that commoditize teacher expertise by simplifying and Computers are ideal for targeting students’ basic content and skill gaps automating basic teaching tasks provide school leaders with new options and providing teachers with real-time assessment data. Non-experts, such for addressing three challenging circumstances: as paraprofessionals and novice teachers, provide the human touch needed • When schools lack expert teachers. Innovations that commoditize for supervising and motivating students and troubleshooting nonacademic teacher expertise can go a long way in amplifying the effectiveness learning difficulties. Expert teachers carry out sophisticated teaching of the existing teacher workforce. Research shows that putting high- tasks, including developing new instructional approaches, diagnosing and quality curriculum and online-learning resources in the hands of addressing students’ nonacademic learning difficulties, providing feedback less-effective teachers can boost students’ educational outcomes. on oral and written communication, fostering an achievement-oriented classroom culture, and talking with parents about their students’ individual • When expert teachers must tackle an array of student needs. education plans. Even high-quality teachers struggle, at times, to address the varied learning needs of their students. A common response is Great teachers are the most valuable resource in our education system. And for schools to train teachers how to differentiate instruction. But expert teachers’ work is unlikely to be reduced to standardized procedures implementing differentiated instruction with fidelity on a day- or automated algorithms anytime soon. Yet, ensuring that every student has today basis can be difficult. Fortunately, computers can provide access to excellent teaching is not a trivial task. Fortunately, as innovations many aspects of basic content and skills instruction, empower simplify and automate distinct aspects of teaching, both effective and less- teachers with better assessment data, provide learning resource effective teachers will see their capabilities enhanced by computers. This recommendations, and give teachers more time and energy to pattern provides a key insight for practitioners and policymakers who are work one-on-one and in small groups with students. working to guarantee that all students have access to high-quality teaching. CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN INSTITUTE: TEACHING IN THE MACHINE AGE 2 INTRODUCTION During the last half-century, science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gene Roddenberry imagined both the comforts and horrors of a future in which machines take on human-like faculties. Then, in the last two decades, the field of artificial intelligence leapt forward, bringing machines knocking at our doors. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer made headlines when it defeated the world’s reigning chess champion Garry Kasparov.1 Then, just 14 years later, a new IBM supercomputer named Watson beat champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on the TV game show Jeopardy!. This second victory for IBM proved just how much ground machines had covered between formulating logic-based strategies and using sophisticated pattern recognition to understand human language.2 Winning trivial games with clearly defined rules and parameters is one simulations, and games that rival teachers’ abilities to make learning thing, but today machines also contend with humans in more practical and engaging, fun, and memorable. New learning platforms, such as Khan complicated functions. Since 2011, the year Watson won Jeopardy!, Google Academy, make it easier for students to find educational resources that has been testing its autonomous car technology on public streets. Now, match what they are trying to learn. And at the cutting edge of edtech, nearly every major automaker produces models with self-driving functions cognitive tutors and adaptive learning technologies can measure students’ for braking, executing lane changes, and parallel parking. Computer individual learning needs and then deliver targeted instruction similar to software can now write sports articles, financial reports, and poetry that individual tutoring. Software has even started to grade students’ essays the average person finds indistinguishable from human prose.3 And IBM with teacher-like accuracy.8 currently has its sights set on training Watson to become the world’s best These advances beg the question: In the new era of edtech, will teachers medical diagnostician4 as well as an intelligent advisor to elementary school be batched with assembly line workers, personal accountants, taxi drivers, teachers.5 These advances could offer immense benefits to humanity as they sports journalists, and family-practice doctors in the latest wave of workers increase access to quality products and services, present new solutions to whose jobs fall prey to machines? society’s most pressing problems, and boost overall economic productivity. But they also have serious implications for the professions they penetrate.6 According to a 2013 Oxford University study, about 47 percent of total U.S. employment is at risk of computer automation.7 Professionals must ask the hard question: As machines master increasingly complex tasks, will they enhance or replace their human counterparts? The teaching profession is not The teaching profession is not immune to the effects of scientific and immune to the effects of scientific technological progress. Today’s students often find that it is much quicker and more convenient to throw their questions at Google than to make and technological progress. time for dialogue with a teacher. The resources available online include not just a list of hyperlinks to text-based websites, but also videos, interactive CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN INSTITUTE: TEACHING IN THE MACHINE AGE 3 Probably not. Despite speculative claims that technology will eliminate the need for face-to-face teachers,9 teachers’ jobs are not as threatened as some might suggest. As artificial intelligence increasingly takes on human work, the most valued and secure human jobs will be those that require complex social skills—such as teaching.10 Good teachers do much more than just dispense information and assess students’ knowledge of rote facts and skills: they coach and mentor students, identify and address social and emotional factors affecting students’ learning, and provide students with expert feedback on complicated human skills such as critical thinking, creative problem solving, communication, and project management. Given the need for skillsets that only humans can perform, computers are not likely to replace teachers anytime soon. But ensuring that every student has a good teacher is a wholly separate challenge. The U.S. education system faces a number of structural challenges that limit our ability to provide every student with high-quality teachers. First, chronic teacher shortages—especially in STEM and special education11—make it challenging for urban and rural schools, in particular, to recruit enough teachers. Steady declines in teacher pay, relative to other college graduates,12 and in teacher preparation program enrollments13—combined with the pervasive perception that teaching is a low-status profession14—suggest that these shortages are not likely to go away anytime soon. Second, schools lack reliable methods for selecting and developing high-quality prospective teachers. Researchers can pinpoint high-quality teachers ex post facto based on teacher observations, student survey responses, and student test scores,15but they