Teacher Choices trials explore some of the most common questions teachers ask about their practice and the everyday choices they make when planning lessons and supporting pupils. The aim of Teacher Choices research is to investigate the impact of these different day-to-day pedagogical practices and to generate evidence that can be readily applied by teachers in the classroom.
This Teacher Choices project studied the impact that using ChatGPT (alongside a guide) for lesson and resource preparation in KS3 Science had on teacher time spent on this activity, compared to other approaches unassisted by Generative AI (GenAI) technology.
This project was co-funded by the Hg Foundation, who help under-represented groups to access high quality jobs in tech by supporting education- and employment-based programmes. Supporting achievement in STEM is an important part of Hg’s mission.
ChatGPT is one of several freely available online GenAI tools, using advanced artificial intelligence to provide human-like responses to prompts entered by users. There is limited robust evidence on the use of GenAI for teaching and learning, including the potential impact on disadvantaged pupils, whilst guidance for implementation in schools is also limited. GenAI has the potential to reduce teacher workload, but support is needed for teachers to ensure that outputs are high quality and to use ChatGPT effectively and ensure high quality outputs.
Developed by Bain & Company’s Social Impact practice team and funded by Hg Foundation, an online guide to using ChatGPT for lesson planning was provided to participating teachers who were asked to use ChatGPT.
Teachers using ChatGPT experienced significantly lower lesson and resource preparation time than a comparison group of teachers who were asked not to use GenAI tools to plan their lessons. The lesson and resource planning time for ChatGPT teachers was 56.2 minutes per week compared to 81.5 minutes in the comparison (non-GenAI) group, a saving on average of 25.3 minutes per week for participating ChatGPT teachers. This represents a reduction of 31% for ChatGPT teachers compared to the comparison group teachers. This result has a high security rating. Quality did not appear to be affected based on an expert panel reviewing the quality of lesson resources, without knowing which had been produced using ChatGPT.
The results of this trial are promising: with minimal support, teachers could save time without reducing the quality of their lessons and also being able to reallocate time to other aspects of their day-to-day teaching.
The ChatGPT guide is available online and the EEF will work alongside the evaluator, NFER, to produce a simple guide to support teachers to use these results. The EEF may fund further trials in this promising area.