The rapid rise in generative artificial intelligence expose a blatant disconnection in the preparation of teachers. While avant-garde superintendents coat their sleeves to build the literacy of AI among teachers, Collegial programs Responsible for preparing the next generation of educators are largely absent from the conversation. It is not only a missed opportunity; This is an existential crisis for teacher preparation programs.
Hundreds of surveys and in dozens of interviews with school heads conducted in the past year, researchers from the reinvention of public education have heard a coherent message: teachers have urgent to move their state of mind on AI, going from reflexive fear and resistance to curiosity and practical engagement with technology. Many still see AI mainly as a cheating tool rather than a transformative force in education. However, AI does not disappear and teachers must understand both its potential and its risks. Reflected educators are already struggling with questions of plagiarism, bias and privacy, but they also find the priceless AI to reduce documents, adapt the teaching for different levels of students' competence and create accessible documents for learners in English and their families.
Beyond the class, teachers must also prepare students for a future workforce shaped by AI, helping them to sail in a world of hallucinated chatbots and decision-making focused on algorithm. The literacy of AI quickly becomes as fundamental as reading and mathematics, but higher education is far from being ready to take up this challenge.
The latest CRPE searches Paint a Pamine Sangerne: few education schools take serious movements to integrate training on AI in the preparation of teachers. Resistance to the faculty, the inability to modify long -standing institutional policies and the lack of expertise on teaching with a genetive AI are major obstacles. When AI is mentioned, it is generally in the context of students' plagiarism rather than a tool that could reshape education and learning. The result is that future teachers from kindergarten to 12th year come in class without preparation for AI realities that they will inevitably be confronted.
Perhaps the most revealing sign that education colleges are not relevant to the work of preparing teachers at AI is the silence of district chiefs. When we interviewed 15 district administrators on the role of higher education in AI training, none of them even thought of mentioning the teacher preparation programs. Some districts maintain long -standing partnerships with education schools, but not a superintendent with whom we have spoken considered as higher education as a resource for professional learning linked to AI. It is an overwhelming act. If teacher preparation programs want to remain relevant, they should start listening to what schools really need.
The superintendents do not wait for the support or management of the institutions of the upper UD to tackle the AI. Many adopt a practical approach, carrying out AI workshops themselves, offering opt-in training for teachers and prioritizing practical and immediate applications on abstract concerns. This is the type of leadership teachers' preparation programs, but we see the opposite: inertia, skepticism and a frustrating rate of change.
Education schools could start by reflecting what the innovative districts are already doing (and some education colleges):
- Meet the teachers where they are. The districts do not force training on AI. Instead, they organize optional information sessions and provide teachers with multiple possibilities to learn and experiment with designed AI tools, for example, to help perform administrative tasks or generate individualized missions for students. Education schools should do the same, starting with faculty workshops on the use of AI for research, notation and planning of lessons before going to pedagogy.
- Build AI management teams. Just as some districts identify “AI champions” among teachers, education schools should train internal working groups to experiment with tools, train colleagues and develop programs.
- Forge real partnerships with K-12. Teacher preparation programs should work directly with the districts to co-develop AI lessons that align with what schools really need rather than hypotheses from the ivory tower.
Higher education has the choice: adapt or may not relevance. If colleges and universities cannot intensify future teachers from the skills, tools and mentalities necessary for an educational landscape infused with AI, the districts will find other ways to fill the void. Once this happens, teacher preparation programs can be permanently sidelined.
States legislators should consider political action, in particular the evaluation and updating of accreditation requirements for education schools. During a discussion group with Ed de l'ED teachers gathered to discuss the preparation of teachers at AI in class, a dean said to us: “In the end, we do what the state tells us.” States could also consider more daring measures, such as allowing the main districts to offer AI lessons to students of the ED school and other budding teachers as a potential income flow.
Philanthropy, non -profit organizations and teacher preparation programs should also take note. They have the opportunity, and undoubtedly a responsibility, to intervene where higher education is broken. Google Professional Certification Programs could be extended to training teachers, for example.
The generative AI is the canary of the coal mine for the preparation of teachers. It is revealing, in real time, the ways in which the slow changes in higher education in programs and policies fail to follow the world that their graduates enter. Colleges that recognize this moment for what it is – a chance to direct, innovate and evolve – will shape the future of education. Those who cannot soon find themselves obsolete.
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