Teachers in the Lead

• In Event: Teachers and AI: Centering Educators in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Proposal

As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to influence classrooms worldwide, much of the conversation has focused on technology itself—its capabilities, risks, and potential—rather than on the professionals most central to learning: teachers. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in particular, teachers face mounting pressure to adapt to changing expectations while receiving little support or voice in shaping how AI is integrated into their daily work. The Teachers in the Loop initiative, launched by the EdTech Hub’s AI Observatory and Action Lab, seeks to correct this imbalance by engaging teachers directly as co-creators, testers, and evaluators of AI’s role in education.

The initiative rests on three pillars of evidence generation and participatory experimentation:

1. Teachers in the Loop Survey.
Distributed across multiple geographies, the survey captures the real-world perspectives of teachers on AI. Early findings reveal a mix of optimism and caution. Teachers see clear opportunities for AI to reduce administrative burdens, such as grading or lesson planning, but also voice concerns about bias, equity, student data privacy, and the erosion of professional judgement. These insights highlight the importance of grounding AI adoption in teachers’ lived experiences and priorities, rather than imposing top-down solutions.

2. Learning Brief: Upgrade, Disrupt, Transform.
The Teachers in the Loop learning brief synthesizes emerging evidence on how AI is already affecting teacher practice. It identifies three distinct patterns of change:
Upgrading routine tasks, such as AI-enabled lesson planning, grading, or generating teaching materials.
Disrupting established practices by introducing new forms of assessment or reshaping teacher-student interactions.
Transforming pedagogy by creating entirely new ways of teaching and engaging learners, such as adaptive content pathways or AI-enabled collaboration.
By framing AI’s effects along this spectrum, the brief provides a structured way to analyze not only what AI does, but how it may reshape the nature of teaching itself.

3. Teacher-in-the-Loop Sandboxes.
Leveraging innovation methods, sandboxes bring participatory design principles to life by partnering with teacher-facing organizations. Each sandbox functions as a rapid learning sprint, in which teachers co-design and test AI applications in real-world settings. By the time of this presentation, three sandboxes will have been completed, with examples such as:
User testing with frontline educators to refine an AI-powered coaching tool.
Co-developing practical guidance for teacher professional development organizations to support AI use in classrooms.
Piloting teacher-led classroom strategies that creatively integrate AI tools.
These sandboxes demonstrate how iterative cycles of teacher engagement and feedback not only improve the usability and adoption of AI tools, but also generate context-specific lessons for policymakers and developers about what works in practice.

By combining survey data, evidence synthesis, and participatory experimentation, the Teachers in the Loop initiative provides one of the first comprehensive views of how teachers perceive and interact with AI across diverse LMIC contexts. Ultimately, the initiative underscores a crucial insight: AI in education will not succeed if designed in isolation from teachers. By ensuring that teachers are meaningfully included “in the loop,” we can build AI futures that enhance—not undermine—the quality of teaching and learning.

Author

• Felicity Burgess, uBoraBora