“Moving JALT into the Future: Opportunity, Diversity, and Excellence,” is not merely the title of JALT’s 50th conference, but a call to action for all educators to innovate and adapt to our evolving educational landscape while encouraging students to understand their position and the place of others in our global society. Richard Culatta (2022), CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education explains, COVID-19 brought opportunities for innovations greater than any seen in decades, pushing the digital infrastructure upon us that we should have developed many years earlier. In many ways, the timing of that push was critical. Because in late 2022, we were shaken out of any digital malaise we had again developed as generative AI started coming for our classrooms!
Kim Martineau (2023) defines generative AI simply as deep-learning models that can generate high-quality text, images, and other content based on the data they were trained on. Some educators focus on challenging AI as a perceived evil and expend more effort trying to figure out how to stop or catch students using it than learning how to harness its power. These efforts are misguided. The genie is out of the bottle, and it is all too late. As fast as we can work to detect AI, ChatGPT and similar tools advance. For example, in May of this year, ChatGPT 4.0 introduced references for all results returned. As of writing this article, those references need to be checked for errors as they are sometimes “hallucinated” (i.e., ChatGPT makes them up!), but it’s reasonable to assume AI will continue to evolve. Whether educators view this evolution as exciting, challenging, difficult, or even regrettable, our teaching needs to embrace it. Students will use AI in their working lives. So, what are the downsides of student use of generative AI?
Certainly, showing students how to use AI effectively rather than just to shortcut task completion is an important teaching objective. It is not, however, the only issue or, arguably, even the most important one. Consider this experiment: Ask ChatGPT to generate a picture of a 14-year-old playing soccer, a studious-looking 10-year-old, or a white-collar adult behind a desk. You may discover that the gender balance in results is adequate in some instances, but the race balance is almost always appalling. Unsurprisingly, if we think about it, AI is massively biased towards Caucasians and, in business contexts especially, towards Caucasian men! Digital activist Joy Buolamwini (2023) is among several fighting this inherent AI bias, but educators should be aware of it and form strategies to address it. We must encourage the responsible use of AI to enhance learning while ensuring our students receive a global education with a diverse vision.
Gholdy Muhammad’s (2023) equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy is a great place to start planning lesson content. Although it was developed with traditional text selection in mind, both prior to COVID and the rise of generative AI, it can guide us in selecting appropriate texts and tasks, in crafting appropriate prompts for AI, and for ensuring a balance of different activity types in lesson planning. Muhammad argues that texts and activities should promote:
- identity development—help youth make sense of themselves and others
- skill development—develop proficiencies across academic disciplines
- intellectual development—gain knowledge and become smarter
- criticality—develop the ability to read texts to understand power, equity, and anti-oppression
Practical Example: Integrating AI in Class
In a 90-minute evening class for junior high school students at the A2–B1 CEFR levels, I introduced the QuillBot paraphrasing tool to help students enhance their writing skills. We started by reading textbook articles that aimed to develop curiosity about how children from other cultures go to school. The students, aged 12–14, read about a Ghanaian teenager’s school day and contrasted it with a blog post about students’ experiences in the UK and South Korea. The students, who all attended different junior high schools, then verbally shared their own school experiences with peers in pair work. After generating ideas orally, they had five minutes to speed write about their school week so that a student from another country could understand. The following is a sample of one student’s five-minute “speed write” activity:
I’m from Japan. This is my school day. My school starts at eight thirty and ends at three thirty or four thirty. After that, we sometimes have club activities. We have a 10-minute break and a 40-minute break for lunch. My favorite school days are Monday and Friday. It is because we have PE and there are no maths and science. Thursday is the worst day of the week because we have long homeroom and double science and just study subjects. On Thursday I always feel I am at school for hours. We get a lot of homework on Thursday but we don’t get too much homework on Monday and Friday. We also get more homework before tests. School is OK and I like playing with my friends.
In pairs, students had autonomy as to whether to speak or type their speed-written first drafts into Quillbot’s paraphrasing tool. The second student had to input the work by either verbally dictating or typing as the first student read their first draft aloud. Students then reviewed their dictated writing selections together, sentence by sentence, and chose different sentences from QuillBot’s generated suggestions to rewrite. The following is the rewritten text from above:
I’m from Japan and I’m going to tell you about my school day. My school day starts at 8:30 and runs until 3:30 or 4:30. We occasionally have club activities after that. During the school day, we take 10-minute breaks and we have a 40-minute break for lunch. Monday and Friday are my two favorite school days. The reason is easy, we have PE but no Math or Science! We have seven classes on Thursday, making it the worst day of the week. On Thursday, we have extended homeroom and double science. I always feel that school goes on forever because we have one academic subject after another. When tests are coming up, we have more homework than usual, but on normal weeks it’s not so much. I think my school life is OK, but the best part is hanging out with my friends.
Outcomes and Reflections
This activity was highly engaging for students. They enjoyed exchanging phrases and discussing the best ways to express their thoughts. The process not only improved their written work with new phrases appropriate to their level but also fostered collaboration and critical thinking. It ensured the work was their own and provided an opportunity to develop identity, skills, intellect, and critical thinking as per Muhammad’s (2020) framework, as well as improve pronunciation, spelling, and grammar.
Conclusion
As we move into the future, embracing the opportunities that technology offers is essential. By rethinking and reshaping our teaching approaches, we can ensure that students improve their language skills and are equipped with the skills, tools, and mindset needed in the workplace, while also understanding their position in society and the place of others. Join me at JALT’s 50th conference to explore more practical examples and strategies to transform our educational practices and students’ attitudes towards learning. Together, we can create learning environments that are effective, demand student input and critical thinking, and are inspiring and inclusive for all students.
References
Buolamwini, J. (2023, April 26). How I’m fighting bias in algorithms [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG_X_7g63rY
Culatta, R. (2022, July). Education in an evolving digital world [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw3CDqYnAWI
Martineau, K. (2023, April 20). What is generative AI? IBM. https://research.ibm.com/blog/what-is-generative-AI
Muhammad, G. (2023). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.
Janina Tubby is the founding head at Kobe Bilingual School (KOBILS), a bilingual international elementary school, kindergarten, and licensed daycare. With 30 years of diverse teaching and educational leadership experience, from university to corporate setting to public school, she is committed to pushing educational boundaries; and fostering resilience, creativity, and a passion for learning in the teachers and students she works with.
Plenary Abstract
Transform Education: Embrace Diversity and Excellence
How can we help our students strive for excellence, embrace diversity, and maximize opportunity? As we celebrate JALT’s 50th conference, we find ourselves reflecting on our journeys as educators in Japan and looking forward to where we should go. Sixteen years ago, I founded KOBILS, a bilingual international school in Kobe, with the aim of cultivating creative thinkers bold enough to take responsibility for their own learning, make mistakes, embrace diversity, and view challenges as opportunities for growth. In this session, I share innovative strategies and examples from our work at KOBILS that transcend traditional language teaching to enhance socio-emotional learning and foster resilience, autonomy, creativity, and flexible thinking among students of all ages. I propose a three-pronged approach that: (1) integrates soft skills with highly engaging, collaborative learning; (2) encourages students to identify what needs changing in our world, to speak up and speak out against everyday injustice, and to fiercely protect the environment; and (3) leverages the power of AI to responsibly boost students’ academic contributions without overshadowing their individual voices. Join me in exploring this plan that transforms language classrooms into incubators of innovation and empathy. Let’s rethink and reshape our approaches to teaching to ensure we equip our students with the skills, tools, and mindset to thrive in an ever-changing world. By doing so we can commit to making a difference by embracing opportunity, celebrating diversity, and striving for excellence, so it is reflected back in our students’ achievements, contributions, and their love of learning.
Workshop Abstract
Rethinking Assessment for Future Success
This future-forward workshop will challenge educators to explore alternative approaches to assessment that align with the themes of opportunity, diversity, and excellence and turn traditional assessment on its head by embracing innovative approaches to evaluating and supporting student growth. It is crucial we develop assessment strategies that not only measure academic performance but also foster creativity, critical thinking, personal growth, autonomy, and resilience in our students. This session will examine formative assessments, project-based learning, and student self-assessment techniques that provide a more holistic view of student capabilities while developing their pride in their achievements. Participants will engage in practical exercises to kickstart the design and implementation of these alternative assessments in their own classrooms whether they be teaching children, university students, or adults. We will discuss how these methods meet diverse student needs and how they promote a growth mindset, encouraging students to see assessments as a tool for learning and development rather than just to please parents or teachers, or to secure a grade, or as a ticket to career advancement. Additionally, we will explore the integration of technology in assessment, particularly the use of AI to provide personalized feedback and to support student learning. Educators will leave this workshop with actionable strategies to transform their assessment practices that ensure they are equitable, inclusive, and conducive to preparing students for future success.
