The professional world of teacher certification and Educator Preparation Programs (EPP) has changed since the pervasive technological advances that have permeated nearly every aspect of life. The expectations of prospective teachers and aspiring school administrators have a new focus that includes teacher retention and artificial intelligence (AI). Teacher retention is a relevant concern because many inexperienced teachers leave the profession within the first three years and new administrators have a hard time staying in a profession that does not support all teachers and students. Therefore, retention and AI may not seem like a good fit, but as school districts across the country struggle with a weakened teacher workforce due to shortages and lack of retention, AI could be the key to helping teachers stay in the education profession longer.
Technology and artificial intelligence
Technology isn’t new, but new technology apps and programs are constantly being developed to take the burden off educators and make their jobs easier and their tasks more efficient. Through the Educator Certification Program courses within an EPP, AI is the perfect place to learn what works, what’s most useful, and what can ensure student and educator success. AI can become the tool that helps novice educators feel more confident and gain credibility faster than their experienced counterparts, which can mean they feel better about staying in education longer. For example, students in our EPP learn to write more academically through AI, which helps them communicate more effectively with their professors, the EC-12 students they work with, and other educators. AI tools like ChatGPT and AI Tone Rewriter have helped them learn diplomatic writing, get their words across in a professional manner, and write persuasively.
Additionally, our EPP students have learned how to better design lessons, which helps them feel more successful. For example, our prospective teachers are learning how to use AI programs like Mizou and Reading Coach to create lesson plans, how to reach out to their English learners, and how to create hands-on activities where students can apply what they’ve learned. Additionally, they’re developing skills to create video and audio lesson materials for students with disabilities using the AI tools Pika and Mid Journey. For prospective school administrators, they’ve learned how to use Microsoft Copilot and GoReact to write honest and encouraging teacher evaluations and ensure that prospective teachers have a growth mindset to improve their practice by using AI programs that current teachers use.
Understanding AI
For some teachers, understanding and using AI was easy, for others, difficult. Many of us stayed in pre-K and secondary education for much longer and seemed to enjoy teaching and leading in a school environment, but those were different times. Our more experienced teachers who have been using AI for longer, such as Quillbot and Flipgrid, find AI tools exciting and more than an appropriate and complementary resource to enhance and influence learning. Others, who are more skeptical, find AI mysterious and inspiring, with the potential to help them learn what their students already know, but are hesitant to continue using AI apps and programs because they don’t know everything yet; for some, AI is a mystery and how it works is not yet fully understood.
So what have we learned? We’ve learned that using AI might be exactly what’s needed to help our future teachers and administrators stay in the education profession longer.
- AI is here to stay, and it will only become more sophisticated the longer it is used. Our students in our EPP must be well-versed and prepared to navigate the world of AI in order to be successful educators.
- There are so many types of AI tools that can be used for different purposes. Learning about them should be fun, especially when we invite our future educators to learn with us. Using AI tools in course activities is the perfect way to decide which AI tools are best.
- Ensuring educators find the right AI tools and feel comfortable using them overall is paramount. This will help us better train and prepare our future teachers and school administrators.
- Our students are learning AI without us, so keeping up with their learning progress gives us credibility and helps us understand the tools our students are using. It can help us design our assignments to better conceptualize the skills we want our students to demonstrate, which in turn gives them a model for how to help their future students and teachers.
- AI is constantly changing. What scares us today may be helpful tomorrow.
The most commonly used AI programs by our students and teachers are ChatGPT, Quillbot, and Grammarly. Using ChatGPT, our prospective teachers have learned how to create a lesson plan that addresses all of the aspects expected from our EPP and can be delivered in a classroom full of eager students. They simply ask questions like “Create differentiated WWII activities?” They may need to refine their question to get information that fits their needs, but they have found that ChatGPT helps them better reach their students with more targeted learning activities and options for differentiation according to the various learning needs in the classroom.
Our faculty has used Quillbot to ensure there is no plagiarism. Some faculty automatically submit students’ papers to Quillbot by uploading a paper to the website and waiting for the text to be analyzed. Then there is Grammarly, which both our students and faculty use to present written papers in a scholarly manner. Grammarly has been used as an editor for many student and faculty papers and has proven to be the easiest AI program to use. Claude, another AI with a large language model, is also gaining more attention and is increasingly being used by students and faculty for tasks such as researching class topics and creating class materials.
Retaining teachers through the use of AI could be the answer, and using AI to help our prospective teachers and prospective administrators stay in education longer is a good plan of action. Retaining teachers and administrators through the use of AI is a good plan of action because when our prospective teachers and prospective administrators see the longevity of teachers, they feel better about choosing education as a career. Prospective teachers and prospective administrators are in the profession because they believe they can make a difference, so helping them find tools that will help them successfully influence teaching and learning can help them stay in education longer.
Laura Trujillo-Jenks, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Texas Woman’s University, where she teaches courses for school principals and school board members in the Educational Leadership program.
Amanda Hurlbut, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Texas Woman’s University, where she teaches core courses in the Educational Leadership program.
Minkowan Goo, Ph.D., is an associate professor of teacher education at Texas Woman’s University, where he teaches in the special education program.
