To use or not to use AI? What Teachers Need to Know By Naghmeh Babaee

To use or not to use AI? What teachers need to know
By Dr. Naghmeh Babaee

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been extensively implemented in various industries and investigated by scholars. AI refers to machines that imitate features of human intelligence, such as perception, learning, reasoning, problem-solving, language interaction and creative work (COMEST, 2019). The industries which have employed AI include financial services, wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, healthcare, research, energy, entertainment, public safety, and education (Filipsson, 2024).

To facilitate AI literacy, several countries offer AI training courses and programs. AI literacy refers to “some level of competency with regard to AI including knowledge, understanding, skills, and value orientation” (UNESCO, 2022, p. 11). China, for example, offers AI literacy courses in the K-12 school and after school programs. With the gradual development of AI education in primary and secondary schools, issues including insufficient hardware equipment, curriculum resources, and unprepared teachers have increasingly emerged (Dan, 2022). To address this gap, China Ministry of Education has developed guidelines on how to teach AI in primary and middle schools, stressing the need to develop AI resources and suggesting making AI labs accessible to elementary and middle school students (“MOE issues guidance”, 2024).

Lack of historical information for teachers, schools, and governments to define AI competencies and design AI curricula is a worldwide issue. To “guide the future planning of enabling policies, the design of national curricula or institutional study programmes, and implementation strategies for AI competency development”, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has offered guidance for K-12 AI curriculum development and endorsement, integration and management, content and learning outcomes, and implementation (UNESCO, 2022, p. 5).

Given the increasing attention to and application of AI in Education, investigating ethical concerns is timely. The studies which have investigated using AI in Education (for example, Holmes & Tuomi, 2023) tend to lack ethical recommendations for educators. To address this gap, this paper reviews the application and ethical considerations of AI in Education and offers recommendations for promoting ethical AI use. While the student and teacher application of AI is reviewed, the recommendations are offered for the teachers due to the scope of the research.

The Application of AI in Education

Student Application of AI

Students use AI-assisted applications to learn a new language, improve their research writing skill, and enhance their learning experiences (Holmes & Tuomi, 2023). These applications include, but are not limited to, Ed GPT (“edugpt”, 2025), Quill (“Quill”, 2025), and Duolingo (“duolingo”, n.d.). Ed GPT is a pre-trained AI bots and customizable portals for students. Ed GPT provides personalized learning, simplified instructions, speech to text and text to speech recognition in a multimodal (image and text) manner. Quill is a free literacy tool which builds reading comprehension, writing, and language skills for elementary, middle, and high school students. Duolingo is used to learn a new language. Using these applications can provide personalized learning experience and instant available potentially free support.

Teacher Application of AI

Teachers employ AI-powered tools to develop lesson plans and materials, share the content with students, and proctor exams. fobizz (“fobizz”, n.d.) is educators’ personal assistant for lesson planning, designing and organizational tasks, and sharing content with students. Playpower (“Playpower”, 2024) provides data science, design, and software development services to education organizations. The Smart Paper technology platform provides AI software for Paper-Digital Integration. Dugga (“Dugga”, 2025) is a secure digital assessment platform, maximizing exam efficiency by auto-generating exam questions, in-built accessibility tools, enterprising security, high security lock-down, remote and automated proctoring, and seamless Learning Management System integration. Employing these tools can facilitate teaching, designing materials, and assessing student competence. Also, using AI powered applications, teachers can dedicate more time to other professional priorities, professional development, and student support.

Ethical Concerns about Using AI

Gender Bias

Gender bias refers to “prejudiced actions or thoughts based on the gender-based perception that women are not equal to men in rights and dignity” (Gender Bias, 2023). When one asks ChatGPT what a CEO looks like, it gives a description that includes tailored suits, dress shirts, ties, formal shoes and well-groomed hair, clean-shaven face, or neatly trimmed beard. Chat GPT acknowledges, ‘A CEO … doesn’t have one specific “look”’ and provides a male-female balanced example of Tim Cook, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, and Melanie Perkins. That said, the skirts, high heels, and makeup that would be typically associated with women are not mentioned. This limiting description stems from imagining men, not women, in leadership positions. On the other hand, when asked what a secretary looks like, Chat GPT gives a description that includes blouses, pencil skirts, knee-length dresses, closed-toe flats, low heels,well-groomed and tidy hair and makeup (if used), and minimal or tasteful jewelry. Ties, mustache, and beards are not mentioned. While anyone may occupy secretary positions, AI systems like ChatGPT have yet to imagine a secretary with a trimmed mustache and beard. Similarly, recent research describes automated robots which were trained on large datasets and standard models and exhibited strongly stereotypical and biased behaviour regarding gender (Hundt et al., 2022).

Although AI may be considered “a neutral objective technology, it is imbued with new meanings and implications through its use in specific contexts by humans” (O’Connor & Liu, 2024, p. 2046). Using AI generated gender-biased content in class can marginalize gender minority students and perpetuate gender stereotypes in the broader society.

Language Bias

Given the popularity of AI tools among students to complete assignments, teachers use AI detectors to validate assignment authenticity (Holmes & Tuomi, 2023). These detectors, however, can misclassify English as an Additional Language (EAL) writing samples as AI-generated, whereas native writing samples are accurately identified (Liang et al., 2023).

Given the potential AI bias against EAL writing, failing to verify the plagiarism detector results can lead to the unfair assessment and penalization of student work. While employing AI detectors can assist teachers with identifying AI written texts, being aware of the potential inaccuracies and mitigating them is deemed necessary.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Given the benefits and extensive application of AI in Education, offering AI training sessions to teachers is deemed necessary. These sessions should highlight how AI can enhance teachers’ performance and offer a personalized learning experience to students while raising awareness about potential bias and inaccuracy in the AI generated content. Also, to ensure fair assessment, teachers who use AI detectors need to verify the results when an assignment is flagged plagiarized. They can ask the student to elaborate on the assignment and ask follow-up comprehension and analytical questions. Also, the existence of advanced jargons, a different writing style, and suspicious submission speed can provide additional evidence for potential plagiarism. Implementing these recommendations can ensure that educators’ teaching experiences are enhanced by AI tools while the ethical concerns are mitigated.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Naghmeh Babaee. Email: nbabaee@lasallecollegevancouver.com.

BIO: Dr. Naghmeh Babaee is an award-winning researcher and educator with a Ph.D. in Second Language Education and over 20 years teaching English and Liberal Studies, researching, and offering academic and community services in international contexts. Naghmeh’s teaching is informed by the most recent educational research. She extensively and passionately investigates socio-cultural and critical perspectives on language education and English as an Additional Language (EAL) students' educational performance in English dominant institutions. Her research has won awards, fellowships, and scholarships such as the International Conference on Education Best Paper Presentation, International Gender and Language Associations’ Bursary, Government of Manitoba Scholarship, and University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship. She is also a reviewer of Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education Journal and has organized local and international conferences and professional development events. Naghmeh’s goal and passion is to contribute to language and academic literacy education research and make education in an English-speaking environment a fulfilling and pleasant experience for students, particularly those with academic literacy needs.

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