Italian Journal of Educational Technology (Aug 2024)
Editorial of the IJET special issue on “Artificial Intelligence and the paradigm shift of teachers’ role”
Abstract
Technological ‘evolution’ has always influenced the world of education by providing new opportunities and challenges for teachers, school leaders, students, and families. Among the various technologies today, artificial intelligence (AI) is the one that attracts most of the interest. In fact, for the last two decades, the intertwining of AI and education has been the subject of intense study, so much so that research in this field has already contributed to providing the first evidence, in particular by demonstrating the ability of AI-based systems to meet the individual needs of students (Brusilovsky, 1996; Azevedo, 2002; Nye, 2015; Hemmler & Ifenthaler, 2022; Azevedo et al., 2022). However, the ‘new renaissance’ that AI is experiencing, generated by innovations coming mainly from research in deep learning and generative AI, seems to outline scenarios that go far beyond the effect that new technologies typically have in the educational sector (Gentile et al., 2023a). In fact, recent advances in AI seem to have the power to reshape traditional educational paradigms (Ifenthaler et al., 2024), so much so that there is a discussion on how AI may influence the academic sector and future educational policies. In this context, which forms a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1970), teachers are certainly one of the key players involved and called upon to be actively involved in the change processes. After all, teachers have always been called upon to update their teaching practices by seeking to integrate new technologies rather than reject them. However, even in relation to the teacher's role, the changes introduced by AI signal a radical change. The special issue, “Artificial Intelligence and the paradigm shift of teachers’ role”, aims to assess this dimension that recent AI advancements in education have produced. Through a meticulous peer-review process, we selected five papers that contribute different points of view concerning the dimensions of change in the teacher's role (Gentile et al., 2023b).
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