KJZZ is a service of Rio Salado College,
and Maricopa Community Colleges

Copyright © 2025 KJZZ/Rio Salado College/MCCCD
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

This ASU professor is researching how AI in the classroom can help, and not harm, students

Smiling boy using system AI Chatbot on mobile application. Chatbot conversation, Ai Artificial Intelligence technology
Getty Images

AI is making its way into education — and fast. Some people’s initial reaction was to restrict it to prevent cheating, plagiarism and misinformation. Others are going all in.

One new charter school made waves recently when it was approved by the Arizona State Board of Charter Schools to start a virtual school where students will use AI platforms to learn core instruction for two hours per day. An AI tutor will see how students are doing on individualized learning plans. Teachers, meanwhile, will take on the role of “guides.”

It’s the first school of its kind here, and it’s a sign of the times, in which schools around the country are using AI in various ways.

Jessica Early, an English professor at Arizona State University, doesn’t think we should run away from it. Early studies the teaching of writing, including in AI. She spoke with The Show about the new AI teaching model — and how she sees the technology both benefiting and hindering education.

Jessica Early
ASU
Jessica Early

Full conversation

JESSICA EARLY: Well, I'm still excited about AI and the teaching of writing. However, I'm really interested in the ways that we can empower teachers and give them agency and really involve them in the use of AI and in the planning of curriculum and instruction in connection with their expertise, not as a replacement of their expertise.

So I think for me, the biggest question is: How can teachers design AI so that humans are intricately woven in and looped into the process of teaching students? Because AI isn't disconnected from the human world, and it has all this information that we provide and feed it, but it's only useful in an education setting, I think, when experts are involved in creating really amazing inquiry projects for students with it and using it as a point of reflection and a launching pad. I think AI as a replacement for teachers is really problematic.

LAUREN GILGER: So, I want to dig into that a little bit. That's an interesting reaction and a nuanced one. Talk a little bit about some of the work that you've done in this realm, looking at the use of AI in teaching, particularly for writing. For you, where does it work, like, how does it work well?

EARLY: So I've been working with a group in New York and in connection to the National Writing Project. And we are looking at the way teachers of writing, particularly at the secondary level, can use AI as a thinking partner for students in their writing process. So for example, there's a teacher in Philadelphia that we're partnering with, and she's having students work on writing letters to the next president and using AI in peer review. And asking AI to give responses to student writing so they're the creators and generators of the letters to the next president, but then AI is giving suggestions for ways to make the pieces stronger in a way that you would have a peer review with another student. So it's just another lens into the writing.

GILGER: I want to ask you more about this idea you said about AI being a tool for teachers, as opposed to being a replacement for teachers. What's important in that, in your work, in your research? Like, is it about the sort of human interaction that students get? Is it about how AI can be susceptible to misinformation, that kind of thing? What are the concerns?

EARLY: I think the concern is that we forget how incredible teachers are at reaching students where they are, understanding the nuances of state standards, but also reaching way above those. So I think, thinking of ways that AI can only support and add to what they're already doing, rather than taking away what they're doing and replacing it.

And I also think that idea of false information, and I think starting with their own writing, their own ideas, their own reactions to text, and then using AI only to enliven or enrich or to add to what they're doing is helpful the minute that we replace something completely like human interaction and support and guidance. I think that takes away the value of what we have in schools as social contexts and settings.

GILGER: Let me ask you about the broader context here. Because this certainly isn't the only, you know, kind of experiment in education using AI, like you talked about, ways in which you're using it, in which you think it's being used really well and is helpful. What does the landscape look like in terms of AI making its way into classrooms?

EARLY: Well, I think there's a whole gamut of things happening, and that we don't completely know, all the things that are happening. I mean, I think there are some there's a huge reaction, which is, just keep it out.

GILGER: Right.

EARLY: Not use it. Then there's other incredibly innovative and creative teachers who are doing things like in the National Writing Project. Where they're using AI as a tool and thinking of ways to enliven, innovate and shift their teaching practices to have students recognize how powerful it is, its flaws, and the ways that it can really help our writing, literacy and thinking in the world.

And then I think there's a lot of programs and innovation where we're trying to create shortcuts in learning, and this is what I think we want to push against. I think, you know, learning to write, for example, is hard and it's complicated, and the purpose of writing is social. We write for social contexts and purposes. So I think we want to really be careful about replacing teachers, human teachers and social contexts and peers. You know, it's a whole new map that's out there, and one of the things that we need to do in education is see what's happening, but also really push for teachers excellence.

GILGER: So do you think that as schools start to experiment with this technology in various ways that you kind of just outlined there? Like, do you think it's moving too fast? Do you think that it's moving too slow in some places? Like, are there guides in our state for how classrooms, how teachers, how school model makers should use this?

EARLY: In terms of a guide, the National Council of Teachers of English, there's different programs and researchers who are coming out with that language with guides for how to think about this. But to be really honest, I don't think we know yet. It's so new, I think we need to play around with it before we start using it as a model for education. So we need to know what it does and all the possibilities as it's changing. If that makes sense, like it's always going to be changing.

Education is always changing. Literacy is always changing. But I think if we just start by creating something and changing education completely using AI that, that's dangerous, that we need to, like, really reflect and notice how students are using it and taking it up. This is the value of research to understand what's happening, and that's why, like, I'm a part of a research group right now in the National Writing Project, looking at this with teachers in their classrooms to see how they're using it. It's super exciting.

GILGER: OK, we'll leave it there for now. Jessica Early, an English professor at ASU who researches writing and studies the teaching of writing, including AI. Jessica, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

EARLY: Of course. Thank you.

A representative from Unbound Academy responded to our request after the story aired and told us the learning outcomes of their model are clear.

"There’s no substitute for 1:1 learning, research that dates back to renowned educational researcher Benjamin Bloom highlighted this, years ago, and continues to provide the basis for strategies to overcome learning loss recovery (huge post-COVID) and also to achieve academic excellence."

They highlighted two students whose parents bring them across the border from Matamoros, Mexico, twice a week to take advantage of their learning platform.

"Rafaela went from reading slightly below grade level in Fall of 24 to above grade level in 2025 (in 4-and-a-half months). For her sister Luisela, it was more dramatic. She went from the 38th percentile to the 93rd percentile in reading in the same period of time."

"Both are ESL, some of the most challenging students to teach in reading and achieve these kinds of outcomes but the adaptive apps adjust to their unique aptitudes and proficiencies and allow for Spanish-language plug-ins for students who may need instructional assistance in Spanish while learning."

They also told KJZZ, "There are teachers leading in this model, in the same way other schools work, all certified teachers, their role shifts to 360 support in this model because there are no lecture-based classrooms."

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.
More Arizona education news

Lauren Gilger, host of KJZZ's The Show, is an award-winning journalist whose work has impacted communities large and small, exposing injustices and giving a voice to the voiceless and marginalized.