Like it or not, artificial intelligence is becoming a major tool in education.

Just last week the Department for Education launched guidance for schools and colleges in England on how teachers can use generative AI safely.

The guidance suggests that AI can help to cut down the time spent on administrative tasks - such as writing letters and reports - to give teachers more time to work face-to-face with pupils.

Championing AI as a workload saviour is very much in line with how businesses are using this technology. Their goal is efficiency: the idea is that if you phrase your input perfectly, AI can generate a polished, fully formed response in a single attempt, without any need for back-and-forth interaction.

That’s great for workplace productivity - and might be great for teacher admin, too.

But in education, I think we can do better.

A new mindset for AI

The suggestion that we only use AI to draft letters to parents about head lice outbreaks misses the true educational potential of generative AI.

We need to move beyond thinking in terms of one-way communication - you tell AI what to do and it spits out the response - and work towards two-way dialogue, training students to do the same.

Research around how we learn supports this idea. In 1984 educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom described how one-to-one tutoring is far more effective than group instruction. Bloom’s research highlights multiple reasons for this, but a key factor is the power of two-way communication. Effective learning isn’t just about receiving information, he proposed: it’s a loop. A message is sent, received, clarified and refined until it is fully understood.

Bloom called this discovery a “problem” because the majority of learning happens through one-way communication. From physical books to Google searches and YouTube videos, most of the tools we use to gain information still share the same issue: they provide answers, but don’t check for understanding.

Even in classrooms, it can be difficult to provide the kind of individualised dialogue that Bloom suggested helps pupils to learn best.

AI has the power to change this, but only if we change how we use it.

We need to unlearn the technological habits we’ve grown up with. Communicating with an AI chatbot is not like using Google Search; it’s not even like talking to Alexa or Siri.

We have been taught to ask AI a question and then to either accept the answer or perhaps ridicule it when it doesn’t live up to our expectations. But in 2025 AI chatbots don’t give bad answers; they just give unfinished ones. Poor output is usually the result of leaving the conversation before it’s complete.

I don’t prompt engineer AI to give me neatly packaged answers. Instead, I try to do exactly what the name tells us to do: chat.

That means embracing that AI can understand and analyse my responses and saying things like:

• “Here’s what I understand. Am I right?”
• “Ask me five questions that will test my understanding. Then tell me where I went wrong.”
• “Listen to my argument and tell me where I might be biased.”

When we take this approach, AI stops being a static answer generator and becomes part of a feedback loop.

I don’t just want AI to make me more efficient, I want it to make me more effective. For that, I need it to behave not like a search engine or productivity tool but like a personal tutor.

Does this approach make AI perfect and error-free? Of course not. But for school-level work, it’s very good and improving at an astonishing rate.

AI’s imperfections make it all the more crucial that teachers are engaging with it in this way. If generative AI’s use is shaped only by business leaders and policymakers, it may not serve learners as well as it could.

Teachers, as the experts in learning, are best placed to spot bias, correct errors and guide students on when and how to use AI effectively. This isn’t just about protecting academic integrity. It’s about ensuring that AI genuinely enhances learning, rather than simply making education more efficient.

The way we use AI in education is still taking shape. If we let others define its purpose, it risks becoming just another tool for convenience.

But in the hands of teachers, AI can become something far more powerful. It can be a bridge to personalised, interactive learning for every student.

Education has always been shaped by the people who understand learning best: teachers. AI in education should be no different.

Jack Dougall is a humanities and business teacher at The British School of Gran Canaria

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