AI can also enable meaningful teacher interactions with students by automating routine tasks such as grading and administrative work. AI-driven tools can assess assignments, track student progress, and even identify patterns that signal the need for intervention. Teachers are freed up to concentrate on creative lesson planning and fostering deeper connections with students. In my own work in fostering a translanguaging learning environment for refugee students, AI has been incredibly helpful in this regard, allowing me to create resources in multiple languages easily and efficiently which meet the learner where they are at academically and linguistically.

Yet the quest for individualised learning isn’t particularly new, is it? Teachers have long strived to meet each students’ needs through differentiated instruction. I would hazard that as educators, our roles have always centred on ultimately helping students navigate the world, cultivate critical thinking, and understand the very nature of knowledge. In this light, technology serves as a supplement—an instrument that might streamline processes but ultimately cannot (read: should not) replace the human touch required to foster genuine intellectual growth.

Following this, then, the emergence of AI in education has highlighted the deeply relational nature of learning. If we as educators are looking to meet our students where they are at in their learning, and from that point help them engage in the world around them, a perspective develops where students are partners in the learning dialogue. Their point of view matters. And so, when it comes to AI in education. understanding the what the students’ perspectives on AI are and what they mean for the implementation of AI into the classroom are equally crucial considerations. Recently, the Barker Journey study found that students want to use AI in their learning but want to know how to do so responsibly, ensuring they maintain independent thinking and uphold academic integrity, and using it in a way that is aligned to values of critical thinking, creativity, and integrity.

The conversation about AI in education cannot be one of unalloyed optimism or uncritical acceptance. It is, rather, a call to balance technological progress with a deep commitment to the enduring values of education. (see: Mifsud & Stewart 2024 for a suggested framework). While AI may refine and repackage traditional methods, the essence of teaching—nurturing independent thought, fostering creativity, and engaging in the dialectical process of learning—remains constant.

In the end, while AI offers novel approaches to personalised instruction and operational efficiency, it does not—and should not—replace the human element that lies at the heart of education. The challenge is to harness AI’s potential without losing sight of the timeless goal of education: to empower learners to think critically, question deeply, and understand the world in all its complexity. Everything may change in form, but the fundamental mission of education endures. AI will continue to shape the future of education perhaps not so much in the direction of reimagining it to be completely different but to be closer to what educators want it to be, and in the process prepare students for a future where technology complements, rather than replaces what it means to be human.