October, 2026 - TeacherTalk.site

4 Proven Ways to Set AI Rules That Protect Learning

Teaching in the Digital Age · Keep the Thinking Human (Part 2)

4 Proven Ways to Set AI Rules That Protect Learning

Blanket AI rules never fit every task. Set them one task at a time, and tell students why.

⏱ 6 min read · By Matt Faulkner · Pedagogy / Gen AI

Last week we looked at five AI shortcuts that cost learning. Brainstorming, research, summaries and first drafts all feel harmless. Each one can skip the thinking a task was built to teach.

That leaves a practical problem. Most school AI policies list what students may and may not do. Very few tell a classroom teacher how to decide for a given task. Good AI rules come from that decision, not from a list on the staffroom wall.

The gap is real. A recent Harvard Project Zero report found only 18% of US teachers said their school had a specific AI policy. Australian schools have the national Framework, but the task-level call still lands on you. Here are four ways to make that call well.

Way 1: Name the Skill Before You Set AI Rules

Daniel Willingham puts the principle in one line. Students should only use AI for things they already know how to do well. He compares it to calculators. Once a child has mastered multiplication, a calculator in an area problem costs nothing. While they are still learning to multiply, it costs everything.

So start every task by naming the skill it builds. Write it in one sentence on your plan. “This task is about choosing the strongest evidence.” “This task is about explaining how I solved it.” That sentence decides the rule before the rule is written.

This is backward design applied to AI. You decide what students must be able to do, then protect the steps that build it. The Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools asks for the same thing. Guiding statement 1.5 asks that student work clearly outline how AI should or should not be used.

Way 2: Sort Each Task Into Without, With or About AI

AJ Juliani borrows a simple frame from Paul Alivisatos, president of the University of Chicago. Students need to think without AI, with AI and about AI. Each task sits mostly in one of those three lanes.

In a primary classroom, most tasks belong in the first lane. Students in Years 3 to 6 are still building the knowledge and skills that AI would replace. The other two lanes still have a place, as long as you choose them on purpose.

🚦 Three Lanes for AI Rules

Without AI: The task builds a core skill. Think narrative planning, written explanations of maths strategies and first drafts.
With AI: The student already does the core skill well. AI handles a side job, like generating practice questions you have checked.
About AI: AI is the topic. Students check an AI answer, compare two outputs or ask who made the tool and why.

The third lane is where our earlier post on catching AI mistakes fits. Thinking about AI often works best with the teacher running the tool on the board. Many tools set age limits above primary, so a teacher-led demo also keeps you on the right side of them.

Way 3: Teach Where AI Works and Where It Doesn’t

Rules land better when students understand the reasoning. Juliani recently shared a lesson opener from neuroscientist Thomas Henning. Henning asked a class what they would need to know to guess someone’s height. Students answered fast: age, parents’ heights and so on.

Then he asked what they would need to know to judge how charismatic someone is. The room slowed down. Charisma has too many parts to measure. In Henning’s view, AI does best on problems with few parts that are easy to check. Code and maths answers are good examples.

By contrast, AI is weaker where quality is hard to measure. Kindness, leadership and taste all sit in that space. For a primary version, try two questions side by side. “What is 48 times 25?” versus “Which ending makes our class story better?” Ask students which one AI would handle well, and how they would check it.

Students who understand that difference start to ask the right question on their own. That habit ties straight back to the AI confidence trap.

Way 4: Say the Rule Out Loud, and Model Your Own Use

Juliani tells his students that letting AI do their learning is like sending a robot to the gym for you. The robot gets the workout. You get nothing. It is funny, and that is why students remember it.

He also states the rule for every assignment without shaming anyone. This task is about X. If a chatbot does X, you miss the learning. Students who know the rule upfront have no grey area to hide in.

Modelling matters too. When you use AI, say what it did and what you did. “I used AI to make 10 practice questions. I checked each one and fixed two.” Students see AI as a tool you control, not a tool that does the thinking.

An AI rule without a reason feels like a ban. An AI rule with a reason feels like a plan for learning.

Where students do use AI, choose tools that hint rather than answer. In the Bastani study from Part 1, a tutor version that gave hints largely avoided the learning loss. The open chatbot did not.

An AI Rules Card for Every Task

Put the four ways together and you get a short card for each task. Write it on the task sheet, the board or the top of the Seesaw activity.

✏️ The AI Rules Card

This task builds: one skill, in one sentence.
AI lane: without, with or about.
AI may help with: the side jobs, if any.
AI must not: the step that builds the skill.
Why: one line students can repeat back to you.

Clear AI rules solve half the problem. The other half is knowing whether the thinking really happened. Next week, Part 3 looks at how to see student thinking as it happens, so you can stop playing detective.

Your turn

Pick one task you are setting this week and fill in the AI Rules Card. Which lane did it land in? Share your card in the comments.

References

Australian Government Department of Education. (2023). Australian framework for generative artificial intelligence (AI) in schools. education.gov.au

Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakcı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26), e2422633122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2422633122

Juliani, A. J. (2026a, October 12). The kids still want to learn from humans. Next Gen Schools. ajjuliani.beehiiv.com

Juliani, A. J. (2026b, October 14). My simple strategy for dealing with AI slop as a teacher. Next Gen Schools. ajjuliani.beehiiv.com

Juliani, A. J. (2026c, October 20). What my students learned about AI and cognitive science from a neuroscience PhD. Next Gen Schools. ajjuliani.beehiiv.com

Nagelhout, R. (2026, October 6). The AI cheating crisis in schools isn’t (only) what you think. Harvard Graduate School of Education. gse.harvard.edu

Willingham, D. (2026, August 27). Students should only use AI for things they already know how to do well. Thomas B. Fordham Institute. fordhaminstitute.org

5 Proven Ways to Spot AI Shortcuts That Cost Learning

Teaching in the Digital Age · Keep the Thinking Human (Part 1)

5 Proven Ways to Spot AI Shortcuts That Cost Learning

The riskiest AI shortcuts look harmless. They skip the exact thinking the task was built to teach.

⏱ 6 min read · By Matt Faulkner · Pedagogy / Gen AI

A Year 5 student is stuck on a narrative. She asks an AI tool for story ideas and gets 20 in four seconds. She picks one, writes it up, and hands it in. Nobody cheated. The AI never wrote a word of her story.

So what was lost? The answer is the part of the lesson that mattered most. Generating ideas, sorting weak ones from strong ones, and backing a choice is the skill. Those quiet AI shortcuts rarely look like cheating, which is why they slip past us.

This post opens a three-part series called Keep the Thinking Human. Part 1 names five common AI uses that feel safe but cost learning. Part 2 shows how to set clear AI rules task by task. Part 3 covers how to see student thinking without playing detective.

The One Test Behind Every AI Shortcut

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham offers a simple filter. Most school AI policies treat the student as the lead and AI as the assistant. That works in a workplace, where the product is the point. In a classroom, the product is rarely the point.

Nobody needs another Year 4 information report about frogs. We set the task because writing it builds thinking we care about. For that reason, Willingham suggests one question before any AI use. Is doing this part yourself still part of what you need to learn?

If the answer is yes, AI is taking the learning, not saving time. With that test in mind, here are five AI shortcuts that fail it more often than they pass.

Shortcut 1: Brainstorming With AI

Brainstorming looks like the safest job to hand over. In fact, the research is mixed in a way worth knowing. Doshi and Hauser (2024) found writers given AI ideas produced stories judged more creative. Even so, those stories were more alike than stories written without AI.

A 2025 study by Zhou and colleagues followed what happened next. Participants did better on creative tasks while they had ChatGPT. Once the tool was removed, their creativity dropped away. Their ideas also kept getting more alike for months afterwards. The researchers called this a creative scar.

In practice, keep the messy first round human. Give pairs three minutes and a sticky-note goal of 10 ideas. Bad ideas count. The sorting that follows is where children learn what makes an idea strong.

Shortcut 2: Letting AI Find the Main Idea

Secondary teachers call it the thesis. In primary, it is the topic sentence or the main idea of a paragraph. Either way, it is the sentence a student has to think hardest to write.

High school English teacher Chanea Bond let her students choose. They could write their own thesis or feed their notes to AI for one. The students who used AI wrote weak essays. They lacked the skills to turn AI output into something worth reading.

For example, a Year 4 student writing about echidnas needs to decide what matters most. That decision is the learning. A main idea handed to them skips it, and the paragraphs that follow show it.

Shortcut 3: Using AI to Do the Research

Research is where AI feels most like a librarian. In reality, it often pulls from whatever pages it finds and presents them with equal confidence. For a student still learning to judge sources, every answer looks equally solid.

The bigger loss is the skill itself. Choosing a source, checking it and comparing two of them is what research teaches. We covered how to teach students to catch AI mistakes earlier this term. That only works once students know how to check a claim without the tool.

A useful middle ground comes from Benjamin Barbour, a US high school teacher and librarian. His students may use AI to find weak spots in their own plan. They must still talk fluently about their research to an audience. That expectation keeps the learning with the student.

Shortcut 4: Reading an AI Summary

Students love a tidy summary. A photo of their notes becomes a neat page of dot points in seconds. Even so, reading a summary is passive, and it gives students a false sense that they understand.

The evidence for doing it yourself is strong. Lawson and Mayer (2021) compared students who wrote their own explanation with students who read one. On a delayed test, the writers did better. Writing the explanation forces students to pull ideas from memory and reorganise them.

In other words, the summary is not the goal. The act of making it is. A two-minute “write what you remember” before students check their notes does far more than any polished AI summary.

Shortcut 5: Starting From an AI First Draft

The blank page is hard, so an AI first draft feels kind. The evidence says otherwise. Bastani and colleagues (2025) gave nearly 1,000 high school maths students access to GPT-4 during practice. Their practice scores rose by 48%.

Then the researchers removed access for the exam. Those students scored 17% lower than peers who never had AI. Students had used it as a crutch. By contrast, a tutor version that gave hints instead of answers largely avoided the drop.

Students using AI looked better at practice and turned out worse at the test. That gap is the cost of a shortcut.

Writing works the same way. A first draft is where a student finds out what they think. Hand that over, and the student edits someone else’s thinking instead of building their own. This links straight back to designing for productive struggle.

How to Check Any Task for AI Shortcuts

None of this means AI has no place in your room. It means the job you give it matters. Before any task, run it past the questions below.

🔍 The AI Shortcut Check

What skill is this task for? Name it in one sentence before deciding anything else.
Which step builds that skill? Brainstorming, choosing, drafting or explaining are the usual suspects.
Would AI do that step for them? If yes, keep AI out of that step.
Can they already do it well? If a student has mastered the step, AI help costs far less.
Will you see their thinking? If the only evidence is the product, plan a way to see the process.

Most students will not choose the harder path on their own, and that is human nature, not laziness. That is why the decision sits with us. As we saw with fake engagement, a finished product can hide shallow thinking.

Next week, Part 2 turns the check into a routine. We look at how to set clear AI rules for each task. We also cover how to explain them so students follow the logic.

Your turn

Which of these five AI shortcuts have you already seen in your classroom? Tell us in the comments, along with one task you plan to keep AI-free this term.

References

Doshi, A. R., & Hauser, O. P. (2024). Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 10(28), eadn5290. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn5290

Lawson, A. P., & Mayer, R. E. (2021). Benefits of writing an explanation during pauses in multimedia lessons. Educational Psychology Review, 33(4), 1859–1885. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09594-w

Tutt, P., & Merrill, S. (2026, October 16). 5 ‘good’ AI use cases that are actually bad for students. Edutopia. edutopia.org

Willingham, D. (2026, August 27). Students should only use AI for things they already know how to do well. Thomas B. Fordham Institute. fordhaminstitute.org

Zhou, Y., Liu, Q., Huang, J., & Li, G. (2025). Creative scar without generative AI: Individual creativity fails to sustain while homogeneity keeps climbing. Technology in Society, 103087. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2025.103087

4 Proven Ways to Build Student Persistence With Stories

Core Pedagogy · Motivation

4 Proven Ways to Build Student Persistence With Stories

Success stories show students what is possible. Struggle stories build student persistence by showing what to do next.

⏱ 6 min read · By Matt Faulkner · Pedagogy / New Teachers

You know the moment. A Year 4 student hits a tricky division problem, the pencil stops and their head drops onto the desk. “I’m not a maths person.”

What happens in the next two minutes decides whether that struggle turns into learning. We have written before about designing tasks for productive struggle. This post tackles the other half. How do you build student persistence so children keep going once the struggle arrives?

Todd Finley’s recent Edutopia piece points to a simple, research-backed tool. Tell students true stories about people who struggled before they succeeded. Done well, struggle stories lift persistence. Done badly, they turn into another poster slogan, much like the general capabilities we looked at last week.

What the Research Says About Student Persistence

The evidence starts surprisingly young. In a 2022 study, Amanda Haber and colleagues read four- and five-year-olds a storybook about Albert Einstein or Marie Curie. Some versions described the scientist’s intellectual struggles. Others described struggles in their personal life. Then each child faced a puzzle with no solution.

Children who heard a struggle story kept trying for around 74 to 79 seconds. By contrast, children who heard neither struggle story gave up after about 55 seconds. A 2024 follow-up with preschoolers and their caregivers found a similar boost.

Older students respond too. In a well-known 2016 study, Xiaodong Lin-Siegler and her team gave high school students stories about famous scientists.

Students who read about the scientists’ struggles earned better science grades afterwards. In contrast, students who read achievement-only stories saw their grades drop. The effect was small, yet strongest for lower-performing students.

Achievement-only stories tell children success comes naturally. Struggle stories show them what to do when it doesn’t.

Way 1: Choose Stories Students Can See Themselves In

Not every role model works. Gladstone and Cimpian reviewed 55 studies of STEM role models in 2021. The role models who motivated students had three things in common. They were competent, students saw them as similar to themselves, and their success felt within reach.

On the other hand, extreme success can backfire. A child struggling with spelling may feel further away, not closer, after hearing about a Nobel Prize winner. At the same time, role models from under-represented groups had broad positive effects. That held for students of all backgrounds.

In practice, mix the famous with the familiar. A Year 6 student who finally cracked long division. The school gardener who retrained in their 40s. An Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community member your school already works with. You, learning to play guitar at 35. Familiar faces close the gap between “them” and “me.” That sense of “someone like me” is where student persistence starts.

Two cautions from Finley are worth keeping. Skip the “anyone can do anything” line, because children know it isn’t true. And when poverty or racism shaped someone’s struggle, don’t suggest persistence alone beat it.

Way 2: Name the Move, Not the Trait

“She never gave up” describes a trait. Children can admire a trait, but they can’t copy it. Instead, name the specific move the person made.

For example, picture a Year 5 student who couldn’t learn her times tables by chanting them. So she made her own flashcards and tested her brother at dinner every night. That is a move another child can borrow tomorrow. Borrowed moves like this are the building blocks of student persistence.

The research backs this up. In one 2016 study, students struggled to pick out a role model’s actual strategies. So researchers asked them to write a short learning contract with two actions they would try in class.

A primary version is a “When I’m Stuck” card on each desk. Students add one strategy from each story they hear.

This connects with the mediated learning approach in our Feuerstein and growth mindset post. Effort only becomes useful once a child knows what to do differently.

Way 3: Pause the Story at the Hard Part

Finley suggests the interrupted narrative. Tell the story up to the point where everything goes wrong, then stop. Ask the class what they would try next. Only then reveal what the person did.

That pause turns students from listeners into problem-solvers. As a result, they rehearse the decision before they ever need it. That rehearsal builds student persistence before the hard moment arrives. Most good struggle stories also follow the same shape, so teach students to spot it.

🪜 The Struggle Story Arc

Struggle: What went wrong?
Analysis: What did they notice about why it went wrong?
Strategy: What did they decide to try?
Action: What did they do, step by step?
Result: What happened, including the parts that still didn’t work?

Way 4: Debrief, Then Hand Over the Struggle

A story without a debrief is entertainment. Finley offers three short questions to use after each one. What did the failed attempt reveal? What did the person change or learn? Which strategy could help with the task we are working on now?

Then comes the step that matters most. A borrowed story can’t replace a child’s own success. Lasting student persistence grows from a child’s own small wins. Follow the story straight away with a task at the right level of challenge. Then give students the support to try the strategy. Our post on fading the scaffold covers how to pull that support back as students grow more confident.

Build Student Persistence in Ten Minutes a Week

You don’t need a new program. One short story a week, told well, builds a class bank of strategies by the end of term. For younger students, picture books work well. Ashley Spires’ The Most Magnificent Thing follows a girl whose invention keeps failing until she steps away and comes back.

💡 A Ten-Minute Struggle Story Routine

2 minutes: Tell the story up to the hard part.
2 minutes: Pairs predict what the person tried next.
2 minutes: Finish the story.
3 minutes: Debrief with the three questions.
1 minute: Each student adds one strategy to their “When I’m Stuck” card.

Your turn

What is your own struggle story, the one your students would never guess? Share it in the comments, along with the move that got you through. It might become someone else’s Monday lesson.

References

Finley, T. (2026, October 1). A research-based strategy for guiding students to engage in productive struggle. Edutopia. edutopia.org

Gladstone, J. R., & Cimpian, A. (2021). Which role models are effective for which students? A systematic review and four recommendations for maximizing the effectiveness of role models in STEM. International Journal of STEM Education, 8, Article 59. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-021-00315-x

Haber, A. S., Kumar, S. C., & Corriveau, K. H. (2022). Boosting children’s persistence through scientific storybook reading. Journal of Cognition and Development, 23(2), 161–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2021.1998063

Lin-Siegler, X., Ahn, J. N., Chen, J., Fang, F.-F. A., & Luna-Lucero, M. (2016). Even Einstein struggled: Effects of learning about great scientists’ struggles on high school students’ motivation to learn science. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(3), 314–328.

Spires, A. (2014). The most magnificent thing. Kids Can Press.

5 Proven Ways to Make the General Capabilities Real

Core Pedagogy · Curriculum

5 Proven Ways to Make the General Capabilities Real

Every school has the general capabilities poster. Far fewer can show you the promise behind it.

⏱ 6 min read · By Matt Faulkner · Pedagogy / New Teachers

Walk into almost any Australian primary school and you will find the poster. Seven icons, seven labels: literacy, numeracy, critical and creative thinking and the rest. The general capabilities sit on the staffroom wall, in the planning template and in the annual report.

Now ask a Year 4 student what any of them meant for their Tuesday. Most will shrug.

AJ Juliani spotted the same pattern in the US craze for a “Portrait of a Graduate.” By his count, around 70% of districts in one large US network now have a portrait. Even so, few can show you what changed for a child because of it. His fix is a line worth borrowing: a portrait is a picture, a goal is a promise. This post turns his five promises into an Australian primary version.

What the General Capabilities Already Promise

The promise is already in writing. In December 2019, every Australian education minister signed the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration. In particular, its second goal names three outcomes. All young Australians become confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the community.

The Australian Curriculum turns that goal into seven general capabilities. ACARA is clear that they are not separate subjects. Instead, students develop them through the content of each learning area. Five of the seven also come with a learning continuum.

That design makes sense. Even so, it leaves a gap. A capability taught “through everything” is easy to assume and hard to see. As a result, the icons go on the planner and nobody checks whether every child had the experience.

Way 1: Promise Every Child Goes Deep on Something

Juliani’s first promise is depth in at least two areas. To make the case, he draws on David Epstein’s Range. Breadth matters, yet students also need to know what real expertise feels like from the inside.

In a primary room, depth looks like one sustained inquiry where a child becomes the class expert. For example, picture a Year 3 student who spends five weeks on local frogs. She keeps a field journal, counts calls at dusk and teaches the class what she found. In other words, that one project draws on critical and creative thinking, literacy, numeracy and personal and social capability.

The student choice structures we covered in August, such as genius hour, give you a ready frame.

Way 2: Promise Every Child Is Known by an Adult

Second, every student should be known well by at least one adult at school. After all, personal and social capability grows through relationships. A child struggles to practise self-awareness with an adult who never asks.

In practice, this takes ten minutes. First, list every student in your class. Next to each name, write one thing they care about outside school. Any blank line is a child nobody knows well yet. Fix the blanks first.

Way 3: Promise Work for a Real Audience

Third, every student completes a longer project for an audience beyond the teacher. We called this a performance of worth back in 2021, and the idea still holds.

Katie Martin works with school systems on learner-centred redesign. On Juliani’s Next Gen Schools podcast, she named student presentations of learning as her biggest lever for change. In her experience, reluctant teachers watch one and say they want it every year. In primary, the audience might be families at a learning expo, a Year 1 class or a local councillor.

A worksheet hides the general capabilities. A real audience puts them on display.

Rewrite the Poster as a Promise

Each general capability can become an “every student will” statement. Here are five starters to adapt for your school.

🎯 From Poster to Promise

Critical and creative thinking: Every Year 5 student will design, test and improve one solution to a real school problem.
Personal and social capability: Every student will be known by name and interest by two adults at school.
Intercultural understanding: Every student will learn directly from a member of our local community.
Ethical understanding: Every student will help make one class decision by weighing up who it affects.
Digital literacy: Every Year 6 student will safely publish one piece of work for an audience outside school.

Way 4: Promise Learning That Leaves the Classroom

Fourth, students should use their learning beyond the school gate. Juliani cites a 2026 Gallup survey of US young people. Around 41% said they had not learnt anything interesting at school in the past week.

Above all, transfer gives learning a reason to exist. For example, a Year 2 measurement unit might end with students measuring something at home and reporting back. A Year 6 civics unit might end with a letter to the local member about a real issue. The task stays small, yet the child sees their learning work in the world.

Way 5: Promise to Track Engagement

Juliani’s last promise is the hardest. At present, schools track reading levels and NAPLAN bands closely. By contrast, far fewer track whether children want to be there. Gallup’s US data shows engagement dropping sharply with age. About three in four Year 5 students are engaged, against roughly one in three by the senior years.

Two cautions apply here. First, engagement is easy to fake. Busy, quiet and finished early can all hide shallow thinking, as our post on fake engagement shows. Second, resist the urge to rubric-score creativity. Juliani warns about Campbell’s Law. Once a number drives decisions, people start bending their behaviour to move the number.

Track engagement to learn about your class, not to grade your students.

As a result, student voice and your own observation beat a score out of four. A two-question exit slip once a fortnight tells you plenty. Ask what students enjoyed and what they would change.

Make the General Capabilities Real, One at a Time

Nobody keeps five promises in one term. Instead, pick one capability and one promise. Then plan backwards from the experience you want every child to have. The backward design process works the same way. You decide the evidence first and the activities second.

Martin’s point holds for schools of any size. The poster is where the work begins, not where it ends.

🪜 A One-Term Starter

Week 1: Choose one capability your school already names as a priority.
Week 2: Write it as a promise that starts “Every student will…”
Weeks 3 to 8: Plan and run the experience that keeps the promise.
Week 9: Check your class list. Who missed out, and why?
Week 10: Share the evidence with families or colleagues.

Your turn

Which general capability does your school talk about most? Write it as an “every student will” promise and share it in the comments. We would love to see what you come up with.

References

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (n.d.). General capabilities. Australian Curriculum. australiancurriculum.edu.au

Education Council. (2019). Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration. Australian Government Department of Education. education.gov.au

Epstein, D. (2019). Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world. Riverhead Books.

Juliani, A. J. (2026, September 24). Portrait of a graduate: Developing goals and outcomes with REAL impact. AJ Juliani. ajjuliani.com

Juliani, A. J. (Host). (2026). Katie Martin: Redesigning the future of public education (with tech and people) (No. 3) [Video podcast episode]. In Next Gen Schools. YouTube. youtube.com