JOB SECURITY: It’s a mantra that’s often repeated in education circles: technology will never replace good teaching. Why not? It all boils down to emotional intelligence, according to EFL teacher Amanda Murphy, in a recent piece for Teacher Cast.
When it comes down to it, students don’t connect with canned lectures or impersonal technology. They prefer to interact with real, thinking humans, whose feedback and decision-making skills are invaluable for creating an environment where students can thrive. MOOCs and early attempts at robotizing the teaching profession just don’t have the same impact, and research from Oxford University looking at online course dropout rates has suggested that teaching is one of the safest professions.
Real-live teachers are also crucial for dealing with problems and parents as well as teaching emotional intelligence skills, which are a factor in determining career success among adults, Murphy continues. (“While machines are becoming better and better at making decisions for us,” she writes, “ we're not so sure how robo-teacher would handle talking to Johnny and Jimmy's parents about the inappropriate gestures they were making in sex ed.”)
The machines are here to stay, but so are teachers if education has any interest in attempting to truly personalize learning.
