This year, UNESCO's theme invites reflections on 'AI and education: Human agency in an automated world'.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is advancing rapidly within education, already widely used in EdTech applications for learners, through to lesson planning tools for teachers. Alongside, there are growing calls for the curriculum to better equip citizens to navigate the technology themselves.
AI holds much promise for education and society, however there are many reasons to approach AI judiciously. Above all, we must attend to the ethical and social justice dilemmas in education that AI threatens to reinforce, from inequalities in access, to biases, through to exploitation of others’ intellectual property.
These are threats and opportunities that many of my colleagues at IOE are addressing, across teacher education, assessment and edtech applications.
In discussion on the IOE podcast

The evolution of Artificial Intelligence | RFTRW: S20E02
This podcast explores how artificial intelligence (AI) has grown over time and whether it can be used as a tool to support education, rather than as a replacement for human thinking.
25 August 2023

How do we make EdTech work for everyone? | RFTRW: S20E01
This podcast discusses how technology can be viewed and implemented in a meaningful way within education, and building partnerships with the EdTech industry.
14 August 2023
Bringing education into the digital age
ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, is a chatbot type of AI known as generative AI. In Portico Magazine Emeritus Professor Rose Luckin explains how ChatGPT can be applied in educational settings in the form of personalised learning, round-the-clock student support, and as an aid for teachers getting through their workloads surrounding the teaching itself. However, this must be tempered with understanding how it works and the risks and limitations, from perpetuating bias and misinformation to overreliance.
The Blended and Online Learning Design short course, developed by Professor Eileen Kennedy and Emeritus Professor Diana Laurillard, is teaching educators how to develop the best pedagogies for blended and wholly online learning. This includes equipping teachers with the skills they need to understand and integrate technology into their teaching with human agency in mind. MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, enable unlimited participation and open up access to learning through the web. Initially developed in response to the pressing need to adopt online forms of learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, the course has enrolled over 26,000 participants to date. In December 2024 it won the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance (GMA) Award.
Children's agency amid AI
UCL researchers Professor Manolis Mavrikis, Dr Wayne Holmes, and Professor Kaska Porayska-Pomsta are involved in an Oxford University-led project that aims to address the critical issue of fostering children’s digital autonomy in a world where childhood is increasingly intertwined with AI-mediated systems, such as connected toys, apps, voice assistants, and online learning platforms. Children's Agency In the age of AI: Leveraging InterDisciplinarity (CHAILD) is funded by a share of a new £32.4m scheme designed to stimulate interdisciplinary research.
Putting people's interests first
It is all too easy for these kinds of debates to fixate on the technology, and not on the complex ethical dimensions to their application."
IOE researchers at the intersection of AI and education have been providing policy makers with evidence and insight to navigate these ethical challenges and guide decision-making.
Partnering with organisations like UNESCO and the Council of Europe, Dr Wayne Holmes has promoted a critical and human focus on AI and education, enhancing inclusion, equity, and social justice. Dr Holmes led the development of a legal resolution to protect the human rights of users of AI in education, which will now be developed into legal convention benefiting millions.
In June 2024 the UCL ESRC Education Research Programme led debate among researchers, policymakers, practitioners and campaigners on where the priorities for AI in education should lie. Dr Holmes reported back on some of the most frequently-cited issues, from teacher workloads, teacher shortages, student outcomes, to crisis resilience, in the summary: EdTech - a solution looking for a problem?
AI and the Human in Education
This London Review of Education special feature offers diverse perspectives on the role of big data in humanity's path into the future.
Read all articlesScaling up innovation
We look forward to working together to support countries in advancing equity-first, research-backed approaches to digital transformation in education.” — Borhene Chakroun (UNESCO)
At the end of 2024 the UCL Department of Culture, Communication and Media became a member of the UNESCO Global Education Coalition, as well as joining its sub-group, the Digital Transformation Collaborative (DTC). This partnership will enable UCL contribute academic knowledge, toolkits and expertise to the coalition’s mission to protect the right to education for all and steer its transformation in the digital age.
Innovative EdTech start-up, Graffinity, has won a share of £1 million as part of the Department for Education’s AI Tools for Education Competition. Graffinity will work with UCL experts to develop an AI-powered formative assessment tool that reduces teacher workload by providing personalised student feedback. IOE is a collaborator in the project, along with the UCL Advanced Research Computing Centre and the UCL Centre for Digital Innovation.
This announcement comes in the wake of the Prime Minister’s AI Plan, launched at UCL East, which aims to harness the power of AI to revolutionise public services, including education. Key UCL figures were in attendance at the launch including IOE's Director and Dean Professor Li Wei, and Professor Allison Littlejohn, UCL's Pro Vice Provost for Grand Challenge of Data Empowered Societies and Director of the UCL Knowledge Lab.
Innovation in EdTech by UCL students
- UCL startup business ZNotes, created by UCL Mathematics alumnus Zubair Junjunia, was recognised as the best EdTech solution globally at the QS Reimagine Education 2024 awards, for its work to address educational inequalities.
- And UCL alumni Kavi Samra and Paul Jung are exploring the potential that AI has to level the educational playing field through their startup, Medley AI.
Participate
Public events
29, January 2025: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Future of Global Security
The UCL Department of Political Science will host a timely conversation between Craig Mundie, former Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft and advisor to three US Presidents, and UCL's Dr Melanie Garson, Associate Professor in International Security and founder of UCL's course 'Cyberwarfare to Robots: Future of Conflict in the Digital Age.'
3, February 2025: An Ed-Tech Tragedy? Technology, crisis and future of education
UNESCO Education Specialist Mark West will present UNESCO’s global analysis of what happened when technology became the backbone for education in countries around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic.
4, February 2025: Lunch Hour Lecture - Why brain tumour care needs artificial intelligence
UCL Clinical Research Fellow Dr James Ruffle (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology) will discuss the benefits of using Artificial Intelligence in brain cancer care.
18, Feb 2025: Digital futures and inequalities
Join the UCL Knowledge Lab and ReMAP for a day of critical discussions on AI and EdTech from decolonial, environmental, and anti-capitalist perspectives.
26, February 2025: The relevance of quickness in times of digital education
IOE's Centre for Philosophy of Education will co-host this seminar with invited guest speakers to explore current digital school education climate and the ideas of author and journalist Italo Calvino.
Images
- The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, delivers his AI Opportunities action plan speech at the UCL Institute of Making. Pictures by Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media.