What would be the point of Education if computers replace teachers?

Turing’s work on developing early versions of computers led to the imitation game as a way of investigating whether computers can think? The imitation game (Turing test) involves a participant in one room, a human confederate (someone whose behavior is under the direction of the experimenter) in another room and a computer terminal containing a program that simulates intelligence also in another room. The task for the participant is to decide which is human. In 1951 Turing predicted that by 2000 the average person, naïve to the fact that an interaction partner was a computer program, would assume humanness 70% of the time. Undoubtedly these ideas inspired the foundation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Its subsequent evolution is brilliantly summarized on the BBC’s iWonder website http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zq376fr.  In July 2015 an article on research that uses an echoborg (a human who acts as the mouthpiece for an artificial intelligence system) for the Turing test was featured on the BBC Futures website http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150717-the-people-possessed-by-computers and for one week in September 2015  AI was a featured topic on the BBC reflecting a contemporary fascination with sharing our personal and working spaces with intelligent agents

However, the penetration of AI into Education (AIED) was not covered. AI techniques mean that artificial agents could replace teachers. An Intelligent tutor (IT), based on adaptive AI systems, means that learning contexts can be personalized for a student. The system (IT) uses a teacher-pupil model to adjust the learning task to an appropriate level and a task model to provide appropriate feedback to the student. Pedagogically sound opportunities to learn can be extended in both reach and frequency. A teacherbot has been used to answer student questions on a massive open online course (a MOOC). Teaching presence on MOOCs is sparse so that students who enroll on a MOOC need not incur a financial cost. Therefore, researchers are investigating ways in which the teacher can be assisted, or replaced by, a bot. https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/ask-teacherbot-are-robots-the-answer/2020326.article. Other examples of AI contributions include the ECHOES project that targets atypical development issues by using virtual agents to engage with children on the autism spectrum in order to improve their communication skills. http://echoes2.org/?q=node/2.

Versions of the headline ‘Intelligent agents replace teachers’ are increasingly common. ‘What if’ this transpires? with teachers replaced by AI products (robots, bots, virtual agents). What questions does it raise for Education? For example, what would it mean for a socio-cultural pedagogy that AI products are linguistically challenged and on current appraisal likely to remain so? Furthermore, the interdependence of emotion and cognition when learning is increasingly recognised, with empathy a foundational element of successful interpersonal interaction.  There is evidence from Neuroscience that both language and empathy are uniquely human capacities with dedicated brain structures and neural pathways. For a socio-cultural perspective meanings arise through social interaction and enable us to pursue personal goals and to think beyond the actual. It is social interaction that enables creativity. Therefore, it is significant that a recent report from Nesta concluded that ‘creative occupations are more future-proof to technologies like machine learning and mobile robotics’ http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/creativity-vs-robots.

That the ability to transform knowledge and create history through social interaction is a uniquely human ability can be supported by evidence from Neuroscience. However, according to Kevin Warwick http://www.kevinwarwick.com, by comparison with computers, our human ability to communicate information is slow, limited in reach, and error prone and our reliance on language may become ‘excess baggage’. Educational Neuroscience, a multidisciplinary area that assesses the potential of Neuroscience for informing Education, could usefully contribute to the debate.

Goodbye to Neuromyths

Being able to collect data in digital form has been profound for Neuroscience.  It has led to a rapid increase in knowledge about brain processes. Realising the potential of this knowledge for education i.e. what the brain might be doing while we learn has been bedevilled by neuromyths (interventions that claim to be informed by neuroscience but do not have any scientific provenance). Although these interventions have been challenged by both Neuroscientists and Educationalists they haven't always been dispelled. Yesterday, at the annual conference held by BERA http://www.bera.ac.uk/ Steven Spence from university of Derby and colleagues provided recent evidence (collected from NQTs, and also more senior practitioners) that supports this assertion.

Two other presentations,  one in the context of enabling social interaction for children with autism, the other on virtual social interaction, provided examples of how multidisciplinary work can progress in a principled way and be of value to learning.  There were some notable  similarities between them

•   Iterative development of procedures based on a true synergy between education & neuroscience

•   A pragmatic approach to method

•    Data collected in the wild, i.e. the classroom, the online forum, without compromising the complexity of these contexts.

As the presenter for one of these, virtual social interaction, it was exciting (and reassuring!) to find other researchers subscribing to this approach. Although I have attended a great many events on EdNeuroscience, starting with the TLRP seminar series 2005-2006 http://www.tlrp.org/users/cs5.html

the presentation by Jackie Ravet & Justin Williams, University of Aberdeen, was a first experience for me; a 'hard core ' neuroscientist and practitioner focused drama specialist demonstrating so clearly how they work together to test out the value of a Neuroscience knowledge base in an formal education context.

Presenting to an audience of educationalists, many of who have extensive practitioner experience and also a wide research interests, was a great opportunity to have our  work interrogated. There is real hope that we can say goodbye to the discourse of neuromyths and get on with the business of making neuroscience knowledge useful for Education.