The summer school was led and organised by Dr Sara Ratner, Professor Elizabeth Wonnacott and Dongxia Nie alongside their colleagues and students from Oxford University with Fay Skevington from the Department for Education. It brought together AIEOU collaborators and supporters from around the world. This was an opportunity for teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, researchers, policy makers and those from industry to come together to share experience and think deeply about how AI might be used safely in schools (and what use should be avoided).
There were several highlights for me. Firstly, and most importantly, the people that attended, who each brought different experience and expertise, were incredibly insightful and inspiring. The conversation was deeply philosophical in nature and much of it explored themes that matter deeply within education, including equity, inclusion, participation, social justice, children’s rights, ways of learning and the purpose of education.
Another highlight was the learning from research. We heard from Susanna Loeb and Chris Agnew from Stanford University’s AI Hub for Education about a project they have been involved with in Estonia. They also shared their report The Evidence Base on AI in K – 12: A 2026 Review (https://scale.stanford.edu/research-in-action/understanding-evidence-base-ai-k12-education). Erin Mote from Edsafe AI talked about AI governance and introduced the SAFE framework which calls for Safety, Accountability, Fairness & Transparency and Efficacy (https://www.edsafeai.org/safe). The leaders of the AIEOU Collab Labs shared the research they are undertaking around AI in Education which is moving at speed to support educators and policy makers around the world.
Finally, a collaboration with the Good Future Foundation meant we had the opportunity to hear student voices as secondary school pupils from the UK and around the world engaged with us daily to share their thoughts and questions about the themes we were discussing.
I believe that education should involve dialogue with learners around key concepts. I collected a list of concepts connected to AI and education during the week. I would argue strongly that we need to be engaging children and young people in more collaborative dialogue around these themes in schools. My list is below. Do comment and add further concepts that I have missed.
hope, curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, wellbeing, safety, danger, value, community, manipulation, transparency, profit, protection, empowerment, love, agency, learning, privacy, security, misuse, literacy, fluency, capability, supervision, care, relationships, connection, reflection, effectiveness, inclusivity, bias, dignity, equity, integrity, transparency, fear, optimism, question, explore, think, develop, create, generate, humanity, transformation, freedom, ownership, dialogue, meaning, purpose, isolation, governance, stewardship, journeys, diversity, rights, collaboration, sharing, team, friend, companion, automation, experience, communication, unity, possibilities, the world, people, environment, thriving, belonging, mattering
You can find out more about the work of AIEOU here – https://aieou.site.ox.ac.uk/home
DfE Generative AI Product Safety Standards: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/generative-ai-product-safety-standards/generative-ai-product-safety-standards
Written by Emma Goto
