Phi Delta Kappan

Editor in Chief Kathleen Vail introduces the Winter 2025 issue of Kappan on Technology and the AI wave.

News, quotes, and past insights related to the theme of the Winter 2025 issue of Kappan: “Technology and the AI Wave”

Authors from the Winter 2025 issue of Kappan recommend books that have inspired them professionally.

Calls to fix problems in schools usually lead to variations of the same reforms but little significant change. Rick Ginsberg and Yong Zhao explain that the limited effectiveness of past change efforts, the need for new skills, and the rise of artificial intelligence require schools to transform themselves. They founded the Center for Reimagining Education at the University of Kansas to help schools and districts transform themselves in ways that go beyond typical models for change. Their approach acknowledges that one-size-fits-all reforms are ineffective because changes have varying effects on different groups. They use a school-within-a-school approach, which enables those who are interested in transformation to experiment in small groups. Both teachers and students have a voice in transformation initiatives, which promotes both buy-in and engagement.

As generative AI tools reshape K-12 classrooms, teachers face urgent questions about what counts as thinking, learning, and authentic work. One thing is clear: teachers are responding and adapting, redesigning learning, leveraging and challenging AI’s affordances. Their stories reveal a profession in motion, grappling with deep pedagogical dilemmas — not just technical ones — at the heart of what learning is, and what we are deciding it still means. Drawing from over 60 teacher interviews, Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmberg propose five foundational “pillars” for ethical practice — Accuracy, Agency, Accessibility, Assessment, and Authenticity. Each of these pillars is associated with essential questions to guide intentional, equity-centered use of AI.

Most education technologies are adopted through a process of planning and procurement. By contrast, ChatGPT arrived. It entered schools without evaluation, assessment of risks and benefits, training for educators, or any other adoption steps that historically would have been considered indispensable to effective technology integration. Justin Reich and Jesse Dukes discuss the differences between adoption technologies and arrival technologies. The emergence of ubiquitous, individual mobile technologies owned by secondary and postsecondary students suggests that ChatGPT may be only the first in a parade of arrival technologies in the years ahead. A new theory of arrival technologies, grounded in the experiences of students, teachers, and school leaders managing the arrival of ChatGPT, may prove essential to the future of education technology practice, policy, and research.

Cheating with AI is the proverbial elephant in the room, with the widespread assumption that the amount of cheating has exploded since the appearance of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. However, the research on cheating tells a more complicated story. For high schools, cheating levels did not significantly increase after the release of ChatGPT. However, the methods for cheating are changing. Victor R. Lee, Denise Pope, and Sarah Miles share research findings and provide recommendations for how teachers can respond to the concerns about AI and cheating in schools based on their research and work with schools and districts across the nation.

Using strategies of game design can help teachers create learning opportunities that are engaging and motivating to students. However, not all forms of gamification are equally effective and motivating. John Hendron discusses the research into effective game design and its relationship to learning. To assist teachers in building gamified learning experiences, he used Chat GPT to create a Playful Learning Designer tool. The tool, which has been trained on research into gamification and learning, can create gamified learning experiences based on teachers’ specifications and related to specific standards. The tool can act as a coach to teachers as they explore how to include elements of play and games into their instructional design.

Zilong Pan, Jiayan Zhu, and Jennifer Kling explored the relationship between gamification platform usage and elementary students’ math performance across 60 schools using a gamification program. Schools were grouped by high and low usage levels, and student performance was compared in grades three, four, and five. Findings revealed significantly higher math scores in grades three and four for students in high-usage schools, with strong effect sizes, suggesting gamification is particularly effective for foundational math skills. In grade five, results were less pronounced, indicating a potential need to adjust gamification strategies for older learners. These results highlight the potential of game-based learning to support math achievement, especially in early grades, and suggest directions for refining its use in upper elementary education.

In this article, Charles Logan, T. Philip Nichols, and Antero Garcia argue for resisting the uncritical adoption of “inevitable” automating technologies — such as AI — in schools. To theorize what forms this resistance might take, they turn to perhaps an unusual source: the Luddites. The 19th century textile workers were not anti-technology; they fought technologies used to de-professionalize and disempower them. Learning from the Luddites, they offer three approaches to a Luddite praxis in education: embracing strategic playfulness, developing localized tactics, and building networks of resistance. Technological change is a series of choices about power, work, and dignity — choices that can and should be contested.

The dead internet theory postulates that online communication is often bots talking to other bots. English teacher John D. Duffy suggests that the use of artificial intelligence in school could lead to a similar phenomenon: dead classrooms. AI promises to make work and school more efficient by enabling users to complete tasks more quickly, but a focus on efficiency can reduce or eliminate the human struggle that makes learning happen. Classrooms without struggle become dead classrooms, where a lot appears to be getting done, but there’s little actual learning. He urges educators to preserve and protect the slow, uncertain, deeply human process of learning.

Concerns about the effects of social media use have led some states, districts, and schools to set policies limiting or banning student use of cellphones at school. Virginia implemented a bell-to-bell cellphone ban in January 2025, forbidding the use of cellphones during the school day. David T. Marshall and Tim Pressley surveyed teachers in a Virginia school district before and after the ban. In both surveys, teachers showed majority support for the policy, but they were concerned about implementation and administrator support before the ban was in place. Four months after its implementation, teachers remained supportive but were frustrated with inconsistent enforcement among colleagues.

While rigor is often used as a term in educational practice, its meaning can be elusive, making it difficult to apply to professional learning for educators. Russell Carlock seeks to define the concept of rigor as it pertains to theoretical frameworks that have been connected to improvement in student learning outcomes and to provide educators with concrete examples of how this concept can be applied to everyday practice in curriculum and instruction.

Increasingly, states, districts, and schools are looking toward adopting alternative forms of assessments to measure what students know and what they can do. Making systemwide changes in education regarding what skills to assess and how to assess them is a big change and takes planning, strategy, and the time and space to be able to fail and start again. The Thomas A. Edison Career & Technical Education High School in Queens, New York, has been experimenting with alternative forms of assessments for several years. Their journey toward implementing a new model for teaching skills and assessing student learning shows how schools can begin with a small team of change-minded teachers before attempting to scale new models schoolwide.

Catherine M. Gross, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Courtney Stone, and Grace L. Beall examine teacher observation systems through the lens of the reality show “Survivor,” outlining how high-stakes evaluations can mirror the competitive, subjective, and sometimes unfair nature of the show. Drawing on a systematic review of three major U.S. models — Danielson, Marzano, and TAP — they analyze the systems’ reliability, validity, fairness, and potential biases. While observation models can improve instruction and support teacher growth, they should be used cautiously, especially in high-stakes contexts, to ensure they produce accurate, equitable, and research-supported outcomes.

Although conversations about teacher shortages have focused on teachers leaving their districts or the teaching profession, many teachers move within districts, a phenomenon known as teacher migration. As a Philadelphia teacher, Lydia Kulina-Washington left her school for another in the city and observed other teachers doing the same, typically because of working conditions at their original school. Tracking teacher migration patterns within a district can help leaders determine which schools need more attention and support.

Meagan Booth explores the lasting impact of 1990s gifted education on today’s school leaders. As a former “gifted kid” born in 1984, she reflects on how Cold War-era urgency and reports like A Nation at Risk instilled in her generation a deep fear of wasted potential and a relentless drive for output. Now in leadership, that mindset manifests as anxiety and overwork. The arrival of Gen Z professionals — who prioritize sustainability over exhaustion — prompts a personal reckoning. She calls for a shift in educational benchmarks, urging schools to measure not just achievement, but also the sustainability and wholeness of their people and systems.

Teachers have a responsibility to care for students and to create an environment where students feel cared for. However, as Peter Clyde Martin explains, that care comes with boundaries. To care for students, teachers need to also learn how to care for themselves. Teacher educators and school leaders need to encourage teachers to practice self-care and to support educators in setting boundaries to protect their own well-being.

In this regular column, Starr Sackstein offers advice to educators. In this issue, she shares strategies for helping teachers embrace and implement learning targets.

Connie Hamilton shares how teachers can use ChatGPT as a thought partner to generate ideas for lesson planning.

Future teachers express skepticism about the use of artificial intelligence in school.

The 2025 PDK Poll found that a majority of Americans oppose the elimination of the Department of Education,