Developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly impact our daily lives. Especially teachers and school leaders face challenges to make informed decisions about what AI applications can or cannot do in education. At the same time, students struggle to learn academic skills like reading and writing, as the use of generative AI technology seems helpful in achieving goals in schools. Its omnipresence makes it furthermore very tempting to use. The few guidelines that exist primarily highlight possible benefits (e.g., saving time/money) which makes the use of AI technologies tempting, suggesting that its use is inevitable.
However, an uncritical introduction of AI technologies at schools and universities will have serious consequences for educational professionals and might lead to several problems: for example, research shows that it results in workload increase, and missing awareness of privacy-related issues can lead to serious security risks. For education, this could mean that work pressure further increases because schools first have to adapt their current procedures to integrate AI technologies and then mitigate the undesirable side effects of those same technologies. Furthermore, costs could rise in the long term because subscription fees are consistently increased, which further undermines the sovereignty of schools and increases their dependence on external commercial parties. Lastly, the use of AI may conflict with values that a school and higher education institutions wish to promote, such as sustainability, equal opportunities for all, or creativity. Critical AI literacy is therefore urgently needed.
In the present project, we answer the questions 'How can educational professionals and students learn to make value-driven choices about when (not) to use AI technologies and decide which AI technologies are (not) aligned with relevant values? And how do they give meaning to their role as educator, given that AI technologies strongly influence educational practice?' We will develop and validate materials which support educational professionals to develop Critical AI Literacy, that is, encourage ‘learners to analyze, question, critique, and transform the information they encounter, giving them the ability to foster deep and nuanced understandings of the sociological, cultural, political, and ethical aspects of texts and contexts’ (pp.1, Veldhuis et al., 2025). We focus on developing educational materials on CAIL for primary and secondary school children, higher education students, teachers, school leaders, and school board members. Based on transformative, transdisciplinary, and participatory learning and by engaging our target groups from the start, we will be able to align our approach with innovative ways to teach. This results in empowering people to regain agency when it comes to how they want to engage with AI technologies.
