AI That Works In Real Classrooms With Stephanie Holt

We talk with Stephanie Holt about using AI in schools in ways that genuinely improve learning, from early years self-regulation to GCSE revision and teacher planning. We argue for purposeful screen use, better homework design, fairer assessment, and a school culture where curiosity and research are safe. 
• introducing AI early with supervised, age-appropriate routines 
• using tools like Alexa to support self-regulation and emotional language 
• balancing school device use with unregulated screen time at home 
• challenging the idea of screen-free schools as a blanket solution 
• improving lesson planning and teacher development with AI-supported platforms 
• practical AI study workflows for older students, including rapid feedback 
• supporting creativity and student agency through multiple modes of production 
• redesigning homework around metacognition, choice, and reflection on prompts 
• questioning whether high-stakes exams measure what matters and who they disadvantage 
• moving beyond AI detection tools with drafts, dialogue, and targeted vivas 
• prioritising process skills, communication, and pivotability for the world of work 
• leadership creating time, resources, and psychological safety for research and change 
Visit our website, teachmiddleeast.com, and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes. 

Get Stephanie's book at this link: Ebook: https://www.belgraviaeducation.co.uk/ai-for-learning-101-assessments

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Learning-Assessments-Unlocking-Mastery/dp/B0F3DH6KTP

Transcript

Welcome And A Real-World Guest

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast, connecting, developing, and empowering educators.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hey everyone, Lisa Grace here, welcoming you back, or welcoming you to the Teach Middle East podcast. I don't want to assume that you've all been here before. Maybe you haven't, you know. Where have you been? Kind of vibe. But it's good to have you all here with us listening to this episode of the podcast. I've got Stephanie Holt on the podcast. Stephanie and I met last year at the AI and education summit in Dubai. She even gave away like her own resources, her own book and stuff. And afterwards, the feedback was just great. People were like, yeah, we like her. And I'm like, yeah, I like her too. Stephanie and I are gonna chat it up on the podcast today, all about AI, but not in the superficial way. So don't click off, guys, because we're not gonna be talking around the topic. Stephanie is in school and she's gonna do an intro and tell you about where she works and what she's doing. But she's not one of those tech bros. You know the ones who go around each conference with the same PowerPoints, saying the same things, charging a bag of money for talking the talk and never walking the walk. No, Stephanie's in school, she's with students, she's with teachers, she's making sure that whatever she's talking about is tested and tried. Stephanie, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Thank you. And I can't say how gutted that I am um not being able to come. I it was such a fantastic conference. And everybody, if you can get there, please do. It was my best conference of the year, bar none. So useful. The talk was fantastic, and the talk between the talks was even better. So highly, highly if you can go get yourself for there. There's fantastic people there, and it's all focused on school and it's all focused on actual real stuff, not if buts and maybes, and if this works and that works, and with this platform and with that platform, no, no, no. It's all real stuff with real kids and real teachers, and that's what makes the difference. So, yeah, I work at DSB International School in Mumbai and the director of teaching and learning there. And I spend half my time in the classroom and half my time not in the classroom doing fun stuff, um, like research. Um I'm also doing my PhD, and my PhD is focused on AI assessment and metacognition. And again, this is all focused on what kids actually do and how kids react. We've had AI in our school now for three years. We were very early adopters, and if there's a problem, we've had it and we've we've tried to find solutions. Sometimes there aren't solutions, but you know, we've had a really enthusiastic parent body as well, who have who, you know, I'm in India, I'm in the home of technology. So that's been great, very supportive. And, you know, basically what we've found is like everything, like all tools, it can be used for evil and it can be used for good. And what we try and do is signpost the kids towards the good, because that's all we can do is teach them how to use it well and give them the right choices.

Introducing AI From The Start

SPEAKER_01 3:12

That is so true. Here's my jump all question. How early should we be introducing AI in the curriculum?

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Oh, for me, as soon as you can. You know, even the littles, that the type, you know, we only use it, we don't use it as like a classroom tool or uh within the kids, you know, within the classroom itself. What we use it for with our zero to two-year-olds is we use, yeah, our zero to two year olds, we use Alexa. So we use it for self-regulation. So we use the kids to talk about, you know, how they're feeling so that they can express their emotions. This is the metacognition stuff coming all up there. We give them words and then we get them to ask Alexa to find them some music to help them regulate. So if they're feeling sad, we ask them to go and they can go and talk to Alexa and get some happy music and so that they're seeing, and then we talk about how Alexa's AI, not in depth because they're, you know, they're tiny, tiny people, but you know, that's so that they know that you know Alexa's not real, Alexa's, you know, Alexa's AI. So we start right from the very beginning, and then we make sure it's age appropriate and age-appropriate use, supervised use, it can be used right from the get-go. You know, I'm a mum, I'm sure there's many mums who are listening right now. We've all been in that situation where our annoying child at four and five is asking the why is the sky blue? Why, why, why, why, why, why, why? We've all been there. And now, when I'm with my niece who's five, I give her my my my chat GTP and listen to her, and chat GTP answers to her instead. So it it answers all her mad questions about why the sky is blue, why the clouds are fluffy, why the sea is cold. It's great. And she can ask as many times, many things as she wants and explore it. And then we discuss how this is from the internet, and it's it's the discussion afterwards that's the important bit. Yeah, it's the important bit.

Screen Time At School Versus Home

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah, because I definitely don't want people to be handing off Chat GPT to babies and leaving them unsupervised to be asked all sorts of mad questions and getting all sorts of answers. I want them to definitely be there as the adult in the room to give them the guidance of how to use this. And so when you're talking about the use of it as you go up in school, we know that now a lot of countries are turning their backs on devices and tech. How are we how are we going to balance that then?

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Well, some of the research that we've got parents doing in our school at the moment is actual real research about the use of devices in school versus the use of devices at home. And I think, you know, when we're in school, we use them with purpose. And it's like AI. When I'm using AI, I don't use AI willy-nilly. I use AI with intention and for a particular purpose that I want to use it for. If I can find something that is equal on pen and paper, then I use that. It's another tool, it's not the be all and end all. And I think that's the key to this is like, yes, I can see screens are problematic. And if a child has six hours of screen time at home and then comes into school and has another six hours of screen time, that's a huge problem. But what we're saying at school is in actuality, particularly in the younger years, they don't really have that much screen time if you add it up all together. It might be used for something very particular and for a particular purpose. At school, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

So the issue I have is that a lot of times there's unregulated use of screen time at home. And when you, like you rightly said, when you put all of that together, the child might be on there for all their waking hours and only maybe going off it when they're going to sleep. Now, I know there, I know there's a big talk now though, of making schools screen-free zones. Seriously. Like it's a thing. What are you thinking about that? I think that's utter not.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

I think that's utter insanity. Look, as there were two things there were two things going on here. There is parenting styles and there is school. And at the end of the day, as a parent, my most useful word, and my children will attest to this, both of them, is the word no. It's a very simple word. So when my children used to say, can't Mum, can I have the iPad, I'd say, no, go and play. Go and play in the garden. So that's from the parental point of view. But then we're expected that schools are held to a different accountability regime. Why is that fair? When we're using it properly and we're using it to guide. And also our children, by the time they go to university, if they're if they've been disadvantaged by not being able to use AI properly, not being able to use computing properly, not being able to use, you know, Word properly, not being able to use all the things that we use in our daily life properly with purpose and knowing how to use them, we're putting our kids at a huge disadvantage again towards those who can use them. Why would we do that? That's just surely if we come together as communities and talk about this sensibly and do the work together, we can help support parents, you know, with parenting styles, and parents can give us their feedback as to, you know, to our screen use in schools as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah, I think one of the biggest problems I see as a mom is that the parenting styles of some parents is causing the parenting of other people to be harder.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

I completely agree with you. And you know, and as a parent, as parents, we try to do our best within what we're given. And if we're given structures where other parents aren't don't aren't taking responsibility for their own children in some cases, or uh having them off on you know, making them iPad babies, then we're punishing the children who are doing well on behalf of the children who aren't.

Pedagogy First, Not Panic

SPEAKER_01 9:11

And again, this is not fair. It isn't. Gosh, it's such a hard one. I was reading something the other day and it was talking about the fact that if the pedagogy behind the use of the device is solid, then the benefit is really, really worth it. The problem is that we don't always have solid pedagogy behind the use of the technology. So we blame, it's a blame culture. So where there is solid pedagogy, there are benefits. And where there isn't, and the child is just given an iPad to read something without any sensible purpose or to just watch something, and then we're trying to throw it all away altogether. So I'm not sure how. Maybe you can tell me how we find that balance.

unknown 10:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

I think it's it's a difficult one because we've all got to remember that when calculators first came on the scene, everybody thought maths was going to die. You know, people weren't going to be able to think because the maths is doing their mental maths for them. In actuality, maths has gone through several transitions, you know, because the calculators have freed people from log books and freed people to be able to do much more complex calculations. And now computational site mathematics, which we also have in our school, um, computational mathematics is again looking at big data and big maths and coming up with big ideas. And I think it's we're looking at deficit models versus difference models. And I th, you know, so why are we looking at as yes, if AI is used improperly, it causes a deficit. You know, there's research coming out about that. But there's other research which is coming out which says if we use AI as a different model in a different way, then actually it really supports children. And I think that's where I always come from. I think it's maybe as a I studied sociolinguistics at university, you know, when we look at the different world Englishes and different accents and dialects, and I've never seen one as better than the other. I just see everything as different, unique, and fun. And that's that's to me is that curiosity around AI and pedagogy. But I think coming back to pedagogy, one thing we found, we brought in a very well-known platform into support our teachers, which has AI built into it, which is an IB platform. Um, great platform, really, really helpful. But what it did do was for some of our less less experienced teachers, was that by using this platform to plan online, the the standard of teaching and learning came up by 30% um across the board. So we went from being broadly okay to being broadly pretty good. Now, they need to have the understanding to raise that to being amazing, because at the moment they're not quite understanding what they're doing. But as we know, as teachers, as teachers, our NQT years was full of us not knowing what would what we were doing. That's what we were there to practice. And I think by raising the standards, very, very simply by having planned lessons through this, I can then, as the director of teacher and learning, start to talk to them about why it's working better, because they want to know. And I'm then I'm coming at conversations from a point of good and working rather than as from a point of you need to do this, you need to do that. And those conversations are very different, and the openness is very different as well.

Revision, Feedback And Creative Pathways

SPEAKER_01 12:42

I love that. I actually brought me to the point I was coming to to say, so AI is another technology and it's not doom and gloom. What are some of the benefits you're noticing? So you just talked about lifting the standard of lessons. Yeah. What else are you noticing that is a benefit?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

For the older students in particular, so we're talking um GCSE and post-GCSE kids. Um, when they're doing, we're just about to hit exam season. They can do all sorts now with AI. Notebook LM, they can make revision videos, they can make revision podcasts, which they can download and listen to on the you know what kids are like, they're plugged in all the time. Then they can make their own podcasts, which they can interact with, they can make their own revision notes, they can make their own infographics, they can make their own tests. When they're doing past papers, they can mark themselves using the mark scheme. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing straight away. So they can get feedback straight away. And the feedback that AI gives is phenomenal, focused, and really on point. So that's the oldest, you know, that's the older students. With the younger students, it can help their creativity. If they've got an idea, sometimes when they're small, they find it difficult to get their idea down on paper or in music or whatever they're doing. And it gives them another pathway for them to be creative and create music, create pictures, create videos, just a different way. These guys are the natives, they're good, they're coming up with all sorts already, you know, and it's really fun. We children don't stop being creative because of the technology. Children stop being creative because we we stop them. We, and I mean we as adults, which is really sad. So yeah. I mean, and you can see some of my kids do a lot of vibe coding, they can make their own. Some so some of my younger ones, my 11 and 12-year-olds, are vibe coding and making their own apps to learn German words, for instance, for the homework. It's very cool what they can do.

Redesigning Homework For The AI Age

SPEAKER_01 14:39

I love that. I love that. Do you know the other time I was talking to my son and we were talking about AI and stuff, and it's gonna lead me nicely into something. And he said to me, Oh, mom, don't make me because I was asking him about his homework, and he goes, Don't make me have to do that homework. I mean, I could easily just put it in Chat GPT and get the answers. And then it clicked in my head, I'm like, teachers haven't yet clocked, that they're they're setting the same kinds of homework that they used to set pre-AI and expect the students to continue to do it like that. They the students themselves have moved on and they want something different. What can we do? Because we're gonna talk about assessments later, but let's start with homework. What can we do in regards to homework now in the age of AI with access to AI so readily available to make sure we keep that challenge and that stimulation going for kids?

SPEAKER_02 15:45

I've made, I've I've I have completely redesigned my homework. Completely redesigned it. Because if we give the same old stuff, they'll find the same old ways to do it. So before they they had websites if they could be bothered with it, you know. Now they've got AI which can do it in seconds. So if they can do it in seconds, then it's not very good homework. So let's, you know, what I tend to do is I tend to give them more metacognitive homework and I ask them how they feel about things. So that's stuff that they can't get AI, or if they use AI, they're still co-creating with AI rather than using AI to for you know to just give them the answers. And I set them little tasks and I always give them a choice of what they should, you know. I'll say to them something like, I want you to learn this particular content. I'm an English teacher, so I want you to learn, I want you to read chapter four of holes for whatever. But what I want you to do with it is you can either produce a diary, uh, you can either produce a poster, give them things that they're interested in so they can choose. I'm like, you can choose to use AI or not. So I could make it very open straight away. You can choose to use AI or not. However, when you've used AI, I want you to answer what you used AI for, what you inputted, and what you felt the outcome of AI was like and what you would do differently. And that's the bit which is the key. And the the product is the product. That's fine. If chat, if you know, or Jerem and I actually use did it, that's fine. But I'm more interested in what have they learned about their own usage of AI within this particular task.

Exams, Equity And Process Skills

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah. And I think with that, we can even get them to go ahead and improve on things and iterate on things. So homework doesn't have to be a one-time hand it in and it's done. You can hand it back to them and go, go and prompt AI a bit further to go this way or that way. I think we just I think what I'm hitting at, and when when my son spoke, I go, yeah, we have to, we have to fix this. This is a problem. Giving them, I think he was giving them Matt's problems to solve in a particular platform. I don't want to call the platform's names. Yes, and there's several of them. We all know what they are, they're all very good in their own way. And I was like, we have to move from that now, just because they can just copy it, paste it in Gemini because that their school is at Google School, and that's the end of that. They took two minutes and they're done. But then there's a bigger problem, Stephanie. We are then preparing them to sit and exam. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

And that's the main thing. Should we? And that's the thing now. It's like when we look at the world of work now, since 23, between 23 and 26, the world of work has changed vastly and quickly. We as parents and we as teachers do not know the world that we are preparing our kids for. We have no clue. We can guess, and we know that we know things like empathy is important. We know um teamworking is important. We know being able to um express ourselves and conflict and resolve conflict is those are probably more important skills about than whether they can remember dates from history, you know, and those are going to take them forward. But we never, ever, ever, ever measure those. They're not seen as important because they're process skills. The thing at the moment is look, you know, I can see while we have this, we have this system in place, the end product is always going to be important. But what I'm saying is, and what I'm doing in my research is looking at process with the fact that you can still teach children, if you teach the process correctly, the examinations will come anyway. Um and that's what I've found anecdotally, and through, you know, and through my research as well, is that if you focus on the process and stop focusing on the product, it happens because they know how to do it, particularly if they're really metacognitive and they thought about it and they thought about their strategies and they've taught other people. You know, it just comes. But at the moment, we are disadvantaging so many of our students, particularly our girls. And our girls have one week a month where they're really rubbish at exams. Really rubbish. Not all of them, but a vast majority of girls, you know, have issues one week a month. That doesn't seem very fair. So again, you'll hear me talk about fair a lot because I'm a I'm massively into equity for all of our students and supporting them to be equitable. So, you know, these high-stake exams that everybody puts pressure on these kids to get, do they really show what our children can do? Because I'm not convinced they do. And yet, portfolio work and coursework were we have to be careful, we've always had to be careful of. It's not just AI. Wherever the type of child the children who are under so much pressure that they feel they need to cheat will cheat regardless of whether there's AI or not. They had tutors before, they now have cheaper versions. So, you know, I'm I'm thinking from that point of view, or our kids who were who've got ADHD, who whose brains work in the most amazing of ways, but an examination doesn't show that. Yet, if you look at our entrepreneurs, the amount of kids, the amount of entrepreneurs who have either ADHD, dyslexia, who are on the who are on the um autism scale, there's a lot. So, you know, and it's that sort of different thinking that we actually, I think, as a world need. We don't need convergence of thinking. So I think the examination boards have to get have to come up with the plan. And some of them are. They're trying to bring on, you know, the IB is try is trying to bring on ethical use of AI within their within their work, and that's great. I think the examination the other examination boards are not there yet and are not thinking about it. But there's there's two there's another school of thought which says, well, yes, put the In an exam and make it exam results and make it quiet and make them just do it. But that disadvantages those kids who just don't work well under those circumstances. That that advantages one type of kid. Whereas I've seen kids with really severe ADHD use AI to organize themselves, get themselves sorted, and then co-create work, which they which then takes them forward and then prepares them better for an exam for an examination. Surely we want that. Surely we want AI to remove the roadblocks, not to create more roadblocks and you know, privilege those kids who are greater exams.

Universities, Exam Boards And Incentives

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah, the problem that you're going to have, and that I've been arguing, I've written about it, is that the exam boards, especially the ones who are like I don't even I don't even want to call names, but let's call them historically entrenched. They have no incentive, Stephanie. None whatsoever to change it. But what also is the problem is universities and tertiary institutions, they are holding the system hostage. I say it with no apologies, because until and when they start accepting alternative qualifications for entry before a child becomes a mature student. Because that's the only time you can get some alternative entry into university. You've got to produce those DPs and those A levels. But until they start going, no, we accept this portfolio of work, we accept this experience, we accept this, we accept that, and all are equal. And then students will go, oh, so I don't need to do that A level to get into that university. I can produce this body of work, I can show evidence of my progress over time. I can show how I have made things different and better, and I can still get into that program, then I'm not doing A levels. You know when that happens? Guess what will happen? Tell me, tell me what you think will happen. Oh, I wonder what will happen. Oh, I think there'll be a bit of change.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

These guys, I was talking, I was uh um I've been at two conferences of the historical exam boards, and I was saying to them, you know, things as simple as when are you going to introduce AI marking? And they're like, no, no one's doing it. No. And I'm like, yeah, AI marking has its proposed, it has its upsides and downsides, just as people marking does. People marking, you mark, I've marked for several examination boards in several subjects, and I know that when I'm at the beginning of a marking session, I am fresher and better than when I'm at the end of a marking session. Well, AI doesn't get tired. So, you know, it can be it can go through. Also, standardization, particularly in subjective subjects. If you know what the standardization or the model of AI is that is marking, that means as a teacher, you can you can teach towards it. At the moment, we're at the vagaries of whoever gets the examinations, particularly in the subjective subjects, you know, and I know that there's quite a lot of difference between regions in marking. I know that because I've seen I've worked in three different regions and I can see the marking differences between the three different regions. So for me, I don't want to put examiners out of work because I still think there's a need for over human oversight always, but I do want there to be some standardization so that we're not throwing our children into a lottery of who they get for the for an examiner for an examiner. And I also think the universities, I've seen a huge when I started my PhD a couple of years ago, my university and most of the universities were no AI, AI of a boat, not like that anymore. So they are starting to triangulate within the courses themselves. The there's a lot of research going on as well with with usage of metacognitive techniques and progress over time. They're going much more towards my daughter's just started at her university and she's only had to do two essays so far. Most of it has been um project work and um or project work as part of it. So the universities are looking at alternative methods, and I think once they get comfortable themselves, it's like we're people, we all like to be comfortable, change is bad. And I think once the tutors get comfortable using it in their lessons, I think that's when we'll start to see the change. But it's so slow, it's so slow, and AI is so fast and change is so slow, and that's what that's the thing which worries me is the disconnect between the pace of change in one area and the pace of change in another area.

Detection Tools And The Case For Vivas

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Yeah. And now what worries me is that we still hear the same silly conversations about cheating, in you know, and and I'm thinking, when are you going to get it that you are not going to 100% be able to detect cheating with AI? What when are you going to get it?

SPEAKER_02 27:12

No, and we use we use these programs, which again will remain English, but we use these programs as oracles of truth. They have said it's 100% AI, therefore it is AI, not true. They are fallible and also it really, really just um it really has problem problems with children who speak world Englishes. It really, you know, there's a lot of problems with that. Not everybody speaks using standard English, and that is a problem. If it is trained on that, yeah. And it's like everything, what what the training material dictates what the output is going to be. And, you know, and the things like saying we can all recognise the the long um M dashes. None of us are stupid. But as teachers as well, we can recognise when our child has gone from not being able to spell today to be able to write a university level thesis. It doesn't take a genius. And what I tend to find is having the conversations with children and with students is much better. I never, never, never accuse. If I even if I'm 99% certain, because you know, what if that's the one percent that is wrong? Well, why on earth would I accuse a child falsely and then turn them against school, already put them in a stressful situation and make it worse? Generally, with with kids, if you say to them, Oh, this program is showing it as 100% AI, can we have a chat about that? The ones who go, I'll take it away and redo it, you're like, Yeah, yeah, cheated. Whereas the ones who who like know and then produce their drafts and things like that, it's not going to turn it from being 100% AI on that particular platform, but you can just tell that they haven't. So we're using a lot of viva, a lot of viva to test them orally on rather than go down the cheating route, because cheating is such a derogatory term and it's so emotive. And it's horrible, horrible, horrible to put a child through for no reason. So I always come at it from the point of view of innocent until proven guilty. I'm l I'm listening to you, I'm having a conversation with you. You'll tell me if you know, or you'll indicate if this is not kosher, or you'll fail the viva because you won't be able to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Exactly. And would it hurt to just ask the student to show you their drafts?

unknown 29:43

No.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

No, and they usually can. If they've done it properly, they usually can. They're like, oh yeah, I started on oh, you know, I'll say between draft one and draft two, okay, what have you changed? Show me how you've improved it. Talk to me about your processing here. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Yeah, and that viva is so important. Is it's a real good prep for life. It is.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

We effectively, as teachers, do a viva every day in front of the kids. You know, like every day, every lesson, where the kids are questioning us and doing that. That's what we do as our jobs, and most jobs do. The sales process is exactly that. It's you giving your spiel and then somebody vivaing you to check that you if your spiel is correct or not. There are so many things that it's that where it is applicable. Now the time on this is brutal. You know, if you've got if you've got a class of 24 children and you have to viva them all, that's a problem. So that's why that pre-conversation needs to happen where you go, oh yeah, they understand that. You know, not everybody needs the proof or needs the viva or needs that level. And that's where the human touch comes into it. That's because that's my judgment as a teacher and my relationship with those students, that we see this as a positive process, not as a punitive process.

Metacognition And Better Communication

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Yeah, I love that. And then when you think about students' skills that they because we we we talked a lot about assessment, but we know now, we I mean, seriously, unless you haven't watched one episode of a podcast or listened to any news, we know now the world is completely different. What skills do you think, as someone at the chalk phase, what skills are we supposed to be prioritizing, Stephanie?

SPEAKER_02 31:32

I think it's those process skills, right? Black and Willem wrote the seminal text about formative assessment when before I was a student teacher and I've been a teacher a really long time. And the thing is, is the bare bones of good assessment practice and what we need to teach them hasn't changed. It hasn't changed. They still need to know what makes you know what they need to do to get a better grade, they still need to know why they're at that particular grade, they still need to know, they still need to know how to read and write, they still need to know how to do mental mathematics and processes. Nothing has changed at all. All that's happened, that's that has changed is the mode of production. So and that has changed rapidly and vastly because it can be so much more sophisticated. So, from my point of view, metacognitive skills are the key to it all. Because um jobs are all about pivotability right now. People who went into be a job to be even a doctor, you know, which you would think is safe, they are now using AI to um to pick up very, very small cancers much more better much better than using the human eye can do so because there's so much data, more data that they can process. That isn't a bad thing, that's a good thing. Bricking up cancer early is a good thing. So, but we still need the doctor there to tell us to put the treatment schedule together and to be able to take us forward. So their job hasn't changed, it's just pivoted a little bit. It's less on the diagnos uh, you know, less so much on the diagnostics with that particular piece of equipment and more on the human empathy side and be and maybe having the time to explain to us as their patients what's going to go on and what's gonna go on with us. And I think it's the same for us as teachers. Yes, I can do marking now online very, very rapidly indeed, but that actually gives me more time to work with the children and that's and work with them with their social andotional needs, which post um COVID are still very, very messed up. And I think that's where my time is best used, working with the kids.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yeah. And I was thinking the other day, like if I had to choose one skill, I would say to people, focus on communication.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we're I I read the other day that there's now an entire social media thing where AI talks to different AI and it can only be AI conversations, and people are watching this happen. I I'm just like, why? Why would that happen? But I think that just goes to show us is that even AI is communicating with each other. And when I'm communicating, I do a lot of co-thinking with my AI. We're, I wouldn't say we're friends, but we, you know, we're good research buddies. And I do know it's not real, it's okay. Part of me communicating with my AI and when I'm using it to formulate um theories or test different things out is my communication to the AI. So if I don't tell it precisely what I want, it goes off, makes up stuff, and pulls things from all over the place. Whereas if I'm precise, clear, um, and tell it what I need and in what output, then I get a much better result. Sometimes I do need it to be quite woolly because I want to tell, you know, I want to I want to think through things. And I think, you know, as as people, it's not necessarily more communication, it's better communication that we need to focus off.

Leadership Culture And Psychological Safety

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Yeah. I agree with you completely on that. I want to segue into not the very last thing, but last ish. You know how um we always talk about who is responsible for driving this change? Because we say, oh, change is needed in schools, but in many schools, there is somebody like you. Who are an enthusiast. You're not the principal, you're an enthusiast, you are doing research, you are driving innovation, you are working on the things that you believe matter, and you're pulling your staff with you because you are that kind of person. But think of schools in general. What role does the school leadership? And I'm talking the principal, the vice principal, the assistant head, etc., what role do they play? How involved should they be in this? Culture comes from the top, always.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

And a school's culture is cultivated by the school leadership. And if you, as a school leadership, cultivate an open and prioritized time for staff to be able to do their own research and make it a priority, then it will happen. And it but it doesn't happen overnight. And this is the thing, it's taken me three years to take a school who which had no research into it, to a school which now has about three-quarters of people doing research in it. It doesn't happen. And it only happens because my principal believes in research very heavily and made the time, made the space, and provided the resources that we need. Uh and he got a me. And I think you you can do it without, you know, it doesn't matter what the role is. Plenty of people have it within teaching and learning or deputies, or it doesn't really matter. But there needs to be somebody who who is part who has responsibility and accountability for driving that change, regardless of what that change might be. But without the right culture to do it in, it falls on deaf ears. And that means psychological safety for everyone. So teachers and students. When I'm using AI with the kids, we get as much wrong as we get right. And we think it's funny and laugh together. And that's because we have psychological safety. The kids can bring me stuff and say, Have you tried this, Miss Stephanie? I'm like, no. We try it together, then we go, Oh, oh, that didn't quite work. And but we're safe doing that. And if you are in a situ if you're in a school culture where you are not safe to fail, then this will never happen. Because so much of so much of research is also negative research as well, saying, No, this doesn't work. While we're still all focused on we must have the best results, that's all we're focusing on. You know, we must push everybody within their, you know, so that they are constantly focused on results, results, results. That's what that's the culture of the school. That's what will come out, so that's what the kids will come out as. Whereas in actuality, to make that progress and to be able to try and to be able to be curious and to have empathy, you need to, you need to model it, you need to provide space for it, and it needs to be part of the inbuilt school culture.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Yeah. And do you think the like a principal like yours or similar people need to be as knowledgeable on this topic as maybe as someone like you?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Not necessarily, because you know, my my principal, for instance, has no clue about AI and has no, he he he comes to me and asks me and says, Can you do a thing for me? And then I'll show him, and then he's like, That's amazing. I'm like, Yes, it's magic. But he doesn't need to know it. What a really, really good leader, what they do well is pick the right people and put square pegs in square holes and round pegs in round holes, you know. And I think that's a talent in itself. I don't need to be, you know, I don't need to know everything about foundation stage teaching, because I certainly don't. But what I do is I know quite a lot about research and quite a lot about kids, and let them talk to me and talk, my researchers talk to me through it, and then I can help them with tech with perhaps methodology and ways to collect it. That's where I can help. Yeah. But yeah, I think, but it is good if they have an interest at least, you know, and they're not, you know, they're not anti-AI. If they're anti, if your principal's anti-AI, the school's going to be.

New Resources And Where To Get Them

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Yeah, and that's the thing when you talked about culture starts on the top. If if if the principal doesn't even have all the requisite knowledge, but they are open. Open. Yeah. Then that is that is a good thing. That is a good thing. What are you working on now, Stephanie? That's my last question. What are you working on? What are you excited about? What's going on?

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Oh, what I'm excited about at the moment is um because I've wrote the we well, myself and Alexandra wrote the book AI for learning. And what I'm currently doing with that is I'm taking a lot of the stuff, the lessons in there, and I've now taught it again through. So I'm now looking at uh looking at producing metacognitive plenaries that use AI. So I'm producing, I'm in the middle of producing a booklet which will be able to be used from key stage two up to key stage five, with which focuses on the metacognition itself with you know with use of AI. So yeah, um I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

And the book you wrote previously, where can people get their hands on it?

SPEAKER_02 41:03

They can get um a hard copy from Amazon. So that so it's just on Amazon and it's AI for learning. Um 101 assessments, because we start with assessments and go backwards, and then they can get an electronic copy from the from our website. So if they just google AI for learning, it comes up with our website page as well. Brilliant. Thanks for being on the pod, Stephanie. Always a pleasure, and hope to see you again soon. Thank you.

unknown 41:33

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website, teachmiddle east.com, and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.