Students risk 'cognitive outsourcing' if AI overused, schools warned

Schools and teachers across Australia have been warned to use AI "sparingly" in the classroom or risk students' lifelong learning outcomes.

In fresh advice to educators and government released today by the government-owned Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), CEO Dr Jenny Donovan said there was a risk AI could cause disruption to student learning.

AERO is a national education research body and has reviewed studies in Australia and overseas to provide advice on the risks and benefits of AI, as schools rush to keep up the rapidly advancing technology.

Dr Donovan said AI could create an illusion of learning, with studies overseas showing students using AI were unable to replicate results when deprived of the technology in an exam setting.

"It's called cognitive outsourcing. It's when you rely on the tool to do the thinking for you, and there are real risks for students, because they are novice learners," Dr Donovan said.

"If they're never required to do that thinking for themselves, or if they don't do enough of it, they never build up the knowledge that they need to be able to become independent, creative, critical thinkers."

Dr Donovan said AI should be avoided completely in the first three years of primary school and only be used carefully after that, in combination with established teaching practices like explicit instruction.

"It's really important that students have foundational knowledge, that they can draw on, that is embedded in their long-term memories that has actually been learned and absorbed by them," she said.

"If they don't get that knowledge in place, if it's masked by the fact that they've always resorted to AI or other props, then they're not going to be able to develop in their knowledge and their thinking as they move through their lives."

Dr Donovan said AI was important to introduce in high school as it would be part of later higher education.

She said some school jurisdictions like NSW had developed generative AI tools that could guide students through reasoning rather than providing direct answers or essays on command.

Dr Donovan said tools like this were appropriate for students and warned parents against giving students "unfettered access" to tools like ChatGPT at home.

"Try not to let students use AI at home too much if you can. There's a reason that some of the jurisdictions went down the path of developing a bespoke version of ChatGPT," Dr Donovan said.

"They were able to make sure that the students still had to do the brain work for themselves, that they couldn't just subcontract their learning to the devices."

The advice comes amid a growing backlash to education technology with Education Minister Jason Clare warning too much screen time was contributing to recent poor results from Australian students in global PISA testing.

"These results and PISA over the past show us students who use screens a lot score lower than those who don't," Mr Clare said.

"Students need to learn digital skills. That includes how to use, and how not to use AI. But it does point to the need to wind back the amount of screen time in schools. A bit of a digital detox."