TAICO-Dialogue

A Dialogue Lab on the Role of Teachers and AI in Education!

Workshop hosted at the European Conference on Technology-enhanced Learning 

Newcastle, UK – 15th or 16th September 2025 (in person) 

Goals of the Workshop  

The purpose of the workshop is to start a policy-oriented dialogue of how we envision the future of teaching with AI in schools, universities and training organisation with a specific focus on the role of teachers. The workshop will explore the potential impact of AI on future teaching tasks – their replacement, complementarity or augmentation – and what this will mean for teachers’ knowledge and skills and the teaching profession more broadly. 

The workshop will use different methods applying dialogue and foresight to discuss the latest research in the area, and to discuss what impact AI could have for the future of education, the teaching profession and the professional development of teachers. We will make first steps in deriving themes for future policy recommendation. The workshop will kick-start a yearlong series of similar events throughout Europe, summarize the results and return for a reflection to EC-TEL 2026. 


Background of the Workshop 

AI is now at the center of much of the debates around education and the future of education is once again under scrutiny. There is an urgent need to contribute to this debate in an evidence-based way that transcends the hype and horror scenarios. For this, researchers in educational technology, technology-enhanced learning, learning analytics and AI in education need to provide a strong voice. At the same time, it is known that researchers often do not communicate in a way that is directly relevant for policy makers and practitioners. The dialogue lab at ECTEL should provide a first opportunity to refine those messages together with policy experts and practitioners.   

We focus this workshop on teachers and their interaction with AI, as our research indicates that there is currently a lack of both research and policy discussions on this aspect. The debate around teachers and AI often limits itself to defining future “AI competences”, but this misses much broader implications around the questions of what role teachers will actually have in the future and how their profession will change. Having teachers actively participate in this dialogue is crucial because it ensures that their insights and needs are central to the design and development of AI tools. Often teachers have to introduce new technologies like AI solutions into their teaching practice without a meaningful integration into their practices and without sufficient support or training. Thus, fostering their presence within this AI dialogue could genuinely support and enhance teaching practices rather than replace or sideline them. 

How you can contribute? 

For a broad dialogue on the role of teachers and AI, we would like to include diverse voices in our workshop. We invite short contributions (2 pages) on diverse perspectives in one of the following four categories:  

Research Perspectives:  

  • What can we learn from past and current research about the possible role of AI and its impact on teachers? What are some of the current findings, what do we know, and what is not yet known?  

Practitioner Perspectives: 

  • What are the needs, worries and wishes of educators around the use of AI in teaching? What works and what does not work? 

EdTech Perspectives: 

  • What are some of the new directions, good practices and opportunities of AI being used to complement educators? What are the pitfalls to avoid? 

Policy Perspectives: 

  • In what areas is there a pressing need for evidence-based guidance? Where is current consensus emerging and where are the biggest controversies? 

When preparing your contribution, it would be helpful to formulate your current hypothesis and indicate on what basis this was formed. Please also shortly describe the area of education your perspective addresses and give details about your own background.  

Please send your contribution to (email) by 10th of July at the latest. The organisers will review all contributions for scope and relevance. All contributors should be ready to shortly present their contribution at the workshop in person and take active part in the discussion 

Preliminary Program 

  • Short presentations of perspective contributions (research, practice, technology, policy) on AI-enhanced teaching practices and the impact of AI on teachers  
  • Thematic roundtables and documentation of short summaries 
  • Final panel to review results of the discussion  
  • Creation of a task force to organise further dialogue labs 

    Expected Outcomes 

    • Successful launch of a European dialogue lab series on AI and the teaching profession   
    • A blueprint for organizing national dialogue labs  
    • A first draft of a policy brief or whitepaper that raises the themes for discussion  
    • A roadmap for follow-up events in 2025/26 

    Workshop Organisers

    We are a European consortium of researchers, educational practitioners, representatives of the EdTech sector and policy experts (www.taico-project.eu). 

    • Tobias Ley, University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria 
    • Kairit Tammets, Tallinn University, Estonia  
    • Nikol Rummel & Astrid Wichmann, Ruhr-Universität Bochum 
    • Sanna Järvelä, Oulu University, Finland 
    • Paraskevi Topali, Radboud University, The Netherlands 
    • Mutlu Cukurova, University College London, UK 
    • Michelle Duquette, European EdTech Alliance 
    • Sander Jürisson, Education and Youth Board, Estonia 
    • Martina di Ridolfo, European Trade Union Committee for Education, Brussels 

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