Artificial Intelligence and Equity in Lesson Planning: Searching for Meaning Amid Information Overload

Abstract

The purpose of this philosophical inquiry is threefold: to investigate the nature of human versus AI created lesson plans, to examine how the use of AI for lesson plan creation might both promote and inhibit equity, and to consider what skills and dispositions teacher educators might emphasize to address AI’s simultaneous beneficial and harmful potential. One difference between an AI-generated lesson plan and a human-created one is that in the process of content selection, educators likely consider alternative content that may inform their teaching in the moment. Additionally, a human who creates a lesson plan works from an ethics informed by their past and present experiences; unless otherwise prompted, an AI created lesson plan relies on a generic set of ethical guardrails. AI may support more equitable music education practices by demystifying professional trends, providing practical ideas related to those trends, and informing educators about relevant music-making currently underrepresented in collegiate programs. Conversely, AI-generated lesson plans may inhibit equity because they cannot fully account for the complex nuances of one’s local context, including the range of individual students’ needs. Relying on AI can undermine teachers’ development and maintenance of the capacity for judgment, and the additive and cumulative nature of AI information works in tension with the sense-making and narration needed for political action. Music teacher educators might familiarize students with various values that could guide their AI interactions. They might also evaluate, enhance, and reimagine the meaningful, narrative aspects of AI-produced lesson plans.