Teachers Using AI in Literacy with Dr Simone Smala

Dr Ellie Meissner sits down with Dr Simone Smala, Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, to unpack what artificial intelligence really means for teachers, students, and literacy in today’s classrooms. The conversation explores how teachers are using AI for everything from lesson planning to communication, the ongoing concerns around bias and professional learning, and Simone’s innovative framework for using AI to analyse the hidden literacy and cultural challenges within texts. Thought-provoking, practical, and timely, this is a must-listen for educators navigating the future of teaching and learning. 

Transcript

Ellie Meissner: Welcome to another episode of our podcast for the Technology and Learning Special Interest Group. I'm Ellie, and I'm here with Doctor Simone Smala, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland. And her work is impactful in bilingual education, and she has been researching how A.I. can be supporting teachers and ultimately their students in their work and learning. So today, we're going to talk about all of the amazing things that Simone is doing in her work. Welcome, Simone.

Simone Smala: Thank you.

Ellie Meissner: Tell us about your interest in A.I. in teacher education?

Simone Smala: Yeah, so A.I. it's obviously one of those areas that is moving very, very fast. Things seem to be, moving up and moving forward and then of course, we know what happened in November 2022. For the first time, it became something that everyone kind of had to deal with. My disposition, for about a year beforehand was that this was something I wanted to get involved, but not knowing a lot. And definitely not understanding the technical side, and I think that's probably something that a lot of people share with me. So when, 2022, November 2022 happened, the first thing I felt I wanted to do, was to figure out what a large language model actually is. I tried to engage with what is artificial intelligence and why is ChatGPT all of a sudden something that everybody talks about? How does it work? And what does that mean in terms of its ability in textual manipulation?

So I've always been interested in texts. Analysing texts, dealing with texts. And this could be literature. I come from a literature background, both German and English. Bu also from a literary analysis and linguistics background. So language and literacy is my central concern. And this was also the concern that I brought with me when I started to consider what chat GPT, what large language models and the text manipulation, that they're able to do what they could offer us in this field of language literacy.

Ellie Meissner: And in good research fashion, you went out and did a lot of understanding the foundations before you even explored it context. And then, you've done some amazing research, based on what you just shared. And looking at, how do teachers now actually use it? Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Simone Smala: Very early then in 2023, a colleague of mine, Peter Crosthwaite from the University of Queensland, School of Languages and Cultures, approached me and was very interested in working with somebody in the school of education. And we worked out a research project that would involve teachers at different schools in Queensland, who had expressed an interest in using ChatGPT and being involved. Now, Peter comes from the, TESOL and ELD field. So he had already had quite a number of contacts at different schools who were working in that support of English language learners, in schools. And I work at the School of Education and am involved in teacher education programs, both primary and secondary school teachers, and had other contacts in mainstream schools, and Indigenous programs and remote online programs. And we recruited teachers who worked across many different areas of teaching in Queensland. And we recruited 35 teachers across all those different sectors, who had expressed an interest and we started our project there.

Ellie Meissner: Amazing. And then my understanding from reading your article is they then shared how they used it. They did interviews with you. So what was your key takeaway from from that research?

Simone Smala: It's not astonishing, but, teachers are using it! Teachers are using it left, right, and center. So it was at that stage a very insecure moment in time. Schools would still ban any use of ChatGPT or any AI. There was insecurity, there was a sense of it was a tool for cheating, mainly. In a way, one can say we were quite brave. There was a certain hostility towards A.I. Nobody really knew yet how to do it. It's astonishing to think that this is only two years ago.

Ellie Meissner: Yeah. And this continues in some areas still, I would argue.

Simone Smala: Absolutely. It's splitting. One side embraces A.I., the other side feels it is not, something they want to embrace. So it does continue. But in those days, it was quite brave of the teachers to say, 'well, we don't really know what it is, but we'll give it a go.'

We, we didn't give them any particular prompt or anything, how to use it. We basically just said, 'you see how you use it in your work day, in your work life, what do you use it for?' And what we found out was that teachers used it across all of their work requirements. Developing lesson plans, finding good definitions for complex concepts, breaking down concepts and developing activities. They used it for communication. They used it in emails which were going out to everyone. They had some prompts for that. Newsletters, that the school required them to write. So, busy work. It was quite astonishing of how broad the text genres, that teachers, without any prompts etc. immediately kind of embraced and and used etc. We then followed that up with interviews. Two rounds of interviews, where we just asked them, 'what their feeling was, how they felt about everything?' I distinctly remember that the, Indigenous teachers we interviewed were not happy about the bias that they encountered, in their engagement was ChatGPT. And I think this is an experience that hasn't really gotten much better. I still read about that. Yeah. It still has this kind of like a white Western bias, based on all the texts that it has, the language model has been fed with.

One of the biggest things that we found out was that, teachers felt there was not enough support, from their schools. There was not enough support from the government. We need someone to give us professional development in this area. This was I think, the biggest voice that we heard across all different sectors. 

Ellie Meissner: And that's probably still true to quite an extent. I would argue.

Simone Smala: Yeah. I think there's a lot more on offer now, but there's also a lot of noise. So beyond the provisions for professional development, I think teachers are also looking for guidance as to, what kind of professional development they should enroll. It is very important to develop a strong guidance as to how, A.I can be useful or harmful in the profession of being a teacher.

Ellie Meissner: And that is really the broader conversation that still needs to to be had and is ongoing. And that is a nice segway into your more recent work as well. Isn't it. Really thinking very holistically in your passion area of text and literacy and literature on how we can actually use it. And I'm thinking of a framework that you presented in Sydney very recently. Do you want to share some of that with us as well?

Simone Smala: It is interrelated with my work that I did with Peter Crossway. And Peter and I share a PhD student, Franciele Spinelli. And her work is in looking at how international students use A.I. to support their language learning needs when they come to Australia. So she's at the forefront of the usage of A.I., in a language and literacy space. So Franciele was part of our research with the teachers in Queensland as well. And she now brings it into the higher education sector, and particularly for international students. Texts, for example, can be very difficult for, students if their first language is not English. And the difficulty does not come from not speaking English, so to speak. Becuase most people in that situation, speak English. But there are other aspects of every text that, are maybe not necessarily, identified. And this is the focus that I chose, for the presentation in Sydney. So what I chose was to see how ChatGPT can support a textual analysis around challenges that a text represents. Now, these challenges could be in terms of genre. Are students familiar with the genre? Is there a mixture of genres in the text that is presented? How can we talk about those different text types and text genres? What are the text functions and what are the language functions connected to those different text, onerous text types, etc? And very importantly, what are the cultural assumptions in those texts?

Ellie Meissner: And that goes beyond language. Yeah.

Simone Smala: Exactly. We had one text, for example, that mentioned the term, 'Australia's Red Center'. If you're not familiar with the term 'Red Center', as an ELD student, or as any student really. You would not really know, what this refers to. So what I did is, I developed the prompt, for for chat GTP. And I asked it to analyse the challenges. The literacy challenges around a whole spectrum of things. Genre, language functions, cultural assumptions and so on. I gave it a text. And to break those down, for me to analyse it before I would give it to a group of students who are ELD learners. And it did a marvellous job. From that I developed a little framework of how you could use ChatGPT to help you break down the challenges and needs. Literacy, cultural assumptions, that might be challenging. But it's also very useful for any student in the class

Ellie Meissner: Yes, it sounds like it. 

Simone Smala: Because we cannot assume that sort of language literacy understanding across everyone in a class. So even people whose first language is English, might very much benefit from this extra scaffolding around those things that I mentioned. 

Ellie Meissner: Amazing. And I'm just looking at that framework as we speak. So it definitely is fascinating. So what's your next step with that framework.

Simone Smala: Yeah. So the framework, I would like to write a little bit more about it and develop into an article, to support people who want to use it in their mainstream schooling situation. But the next step, I suppose, in the A.I. field, for me, is to investigate how we can use A.I. in the upcoming, kind of rounds of developing secure A.I. assessment in education. I think this is the biggest topic at the moment. How can we develop secure assessment with the knowledge that A.I. is available. Not actually rejecting A.I. but embracing A.I. for this secure assessment question. How can we do it? And I'm in the middle of it, and I have no answer yet. 

Ellie Meissner: No. Fascinating. And I'm sure that's on a lot of educators minds, around the globe actually. I'm sure if someone is keen to have that conversation with you, they can get in touch. We will put up your link to some of your work with the podcast and obviously all your contact is there as well.

Simone Smala: A.I. is something that I feel we have to get our head around it.

Ellie Meissner: Thank you so much Simone. I really appreciate you talking to me and taking time to be part of our podcast. Thank you so much. 

Simone Smala: Thank you. That was a great opportunity and lovely to catch up with you.