This trial is no longer recruiting.

What’s involved?

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 will explore different approaches to lesson and resource preparation in KS3 Science. Specifically, this evaluation will assess the impact of ChatGPT-assisted lesson and resource preparation on teacher time compared to other approaches unassisted by Generative AI (GenAI) technology.

ChatGPT is one of several freely available online GenAI tools, using advanced artificial intelligence to provide human-like responses to prompts entered by users.

An online ChatGPT Toolkit (guide) for teachers, developed by Bain & Company’s Social Impact practice team and Hg Foundation, will be provided to teachers to support their use of ChatGPT for teaching and learning based on six use cases. The guide provides technical support on getting started on ChatGPT, teacher-led demonstration videos, and example scripts showing the prompts that a user entered. It aims to support teachers to find activity ideas, adapt materials for their pupils and find effective examples and ready-made practice questions and model answers.

This trial was open to state-funded secondary schools in England with teachers who taught a minimum of one science class to either Year 7 or 8 pupils.

This project is being 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 it’s mission.

There is limited robust evidence on the use of Generative AI (GenAI) in teaching and learning, including the potential impact on disadvantaged pupils, or guidance for implementation in schools. GenAI has the potential to reduce teacher workload, but support is needed for teachers to ensure that outputs are high quality and to effectively implement approaches.

A Teacher Choices trial to test an online Toolkit for teachers using ChatGPT will help provide timely and robust evidence for this rapidly developing sector.

This project will be evaluated through a two-armed Teacher Choices trial involving 58 schools and approximately 170 – 300 Y7 and Y8 teachers. Year 7 and 8 science teachers in one trial arm will be asked to use ChatGPT in line with the guide over a 10-week period in the summer term of 2024. Teachers will have the freedom to apply any of the use cases. Year 7 and 8 science teachers in the second trial arm will be asked not to use any GenAI resource to support their lesson and resource preparation.

The evaluation will assess the impact of using Generative AI (ChatGPT) for KS3 science lesson preparation on teacher workload. It will also evaluate the impact of using ChatGPT on lesson quality.

An Implementation and Process evaluation will be conducted alongside the Impact evaluation to explore adaptations in technological integration and guidance usage by teachers, pupil responsiveness to lessons as well as teacher perceived impacts, benefits, and risks of using ChatGPT for lesson preparation. The evaluation is being led by a team from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).