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Should Robots Replace Teachers?
Neil Selwyn Publisher: Polity ISBN: 78-1509528967 Published: Sep 2019 |
Review date: 20th October 2019
by David Longman, TPEA
The automation of professional expertise is at a tipping point and education may be the next to succumb. Machine learning (often loosely referred to as AI) lies at the heart of this transformation. It makes possible the automation of judgements that usually rely on teachers’ accumulated wisdom in both knowledge and relationships. Through teachers, students acquire an understanding of subjects and disciplines and they do so with the essential social and personal support that teachers can provide.
Neil Selwyn’s new book is a measured and accessible discussion about how new computational tools might change or diminish a teacher’s professional expertise in both knowledge and relationships. He argues that a wider critical debate about the impact of automation in crucial areas such as assessment, pastoral support, and content teaching is overdue for “ it is worrying that … [it] is not already provoking great consternation and debate throughout education”.
While the traditional boundaries of the management and organisation of higher education have been opened to the influence and investment of many external agencies and entrepreneurs, the pace of change may still be regarded by many as too slow. Change is needed but it can leave the education profession vulnerable to bad ideas as well as good. Unless we pay attention, the automation of teaching could lead to the diminishment of teachers and student learning everywhere.
For example, in higher education ‘intelligent agents’ (aka chatbots) are already making their mark in responding conversationally to student enquiries. Purportedly, chatbots improve student engagement and motivation (including offers of counselling support) while freeing tutors or administrators from supposedly burdensome FAQs about course content and related issues. Time saving is often a key marketing pitch but the effectiveness of these software machines is less well understood and time-saving may be illusory.
The use of Turnitin, a widely used system for detecting plagiarism in student assignments, may seem on the face of it a boon to assessment quality. However, Turnitin also illustrates the potential risks associated with such automation. First, all student writing is treated as a potential fraud and this undermines the crucial bond of trust between teacher and student. Second, Turnitin’s ongoing development is bringing us to a tipping point where, by applying machine learning to the recognition of a student’s writing style, the value of an educator’s expertise in evaluating this critical aspect of learning is diminished. Such a tool may (or may not) lead to improvements in plagiarism detection but it also represents a first step in the automation of academic judgement that can subvert a key element of academic expertise.
Selwyn has little to say about how these technologies find their way into our classrooms, workshops and lecture halls. What kind of policy-making processes drive their implementation? The usual forms seem to have given way to influential organisational and corporate networks such as Apple, Microsoft or Google, all capable of working at scale. These ‘fast policy’ networks are able to influence practice directly with tempting technologies and considerable investment.
Selwyn’s book is timely. The extraordinarily rapid emergence of influential AI-based technologies in higher education should generate significant debate and help us to keep ahead of the machines:
“… debates about AI and education need to move on from concerns over getting AI to work like a human teacher. The question, instead, should be about distinctly non-human forms of AI-driven technologies that could be imagined planned and created for educational purposes.” (127-8)
While it is not clear what such “distinctly non-human forms” might look like or be capable of it is an important idea. Teachers need to work together with machines “…on their own terms…” to improve the quality of education. This is not a replacement but a partnership that preserves and amplifies the important qualities of human teachers. Above all, for this partnership to work, educators must ensure that they have a clear and articulate voice that guides the changing landscape of professional practice with technology.