Scott Hewitt & Ben Hennessy-Garside, Leeds Conservatoire
Teaching, with its constantly evolving participants, syllabus and societal expectations requires educators to undergo continuous professional development. Undertaking this development is often challenging with a period of conflicting pressures (Weissova, 2024). It is believed that reflection can be an engine of intentional non-formal professional learning (Knight, 2006), but opportunities for high value applicable reflection can be difficult to establish. Perhaps recently emerging AI tools could facilitate personal development and allow increased productivity by educators and further attainment by students? The use of such AI tools would, however, require a holistic and perhaps even cautious approach (García-López, 2025). Here we present initial informal observations as a consequence of utilising a variety of AI tools to facilitate ongoing continuous professional development in an informal small group context. We comment on and identify dangers and possible remedies, whilst also identifying actionable outputs to inform both future research and ongoing teaching practice.
References
García-López, I.M., González, C.S.G., Ramírez-Montoya, M.S. and Molina-Espinosa, J.M., 2025. Challenges of implementing ChatGPT on education: Systematic literature review. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 8, p.100401.
Knight, P., Tait, J. and Yorke, M., 2006. The professional learning of teachers in higher education. Studies in higher education, 31(03), pp.319-339.
Weissova, L., Gregersen-Hermans, J. and Pantelic, D., 2024. Academic Voices: Continuing Professional Development for Teaching in Internationalized Classrooms. Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education, 16(5), pp.91-105.
Conference themes: Digital Collaboration; Peer-to-Peer Learnin; Collaborative Research in Education