Report: SchoolAI is being used to deepen thinking
New research from SchoolAI — a popular AI teaching assistant — argues that classroom AI is being used to deepen thinking rather than undermine it.
The report, “AI isn’t replacing thinking: Teachers are using SchoolAI to deepen it and boost engagement,” was written by Cynthia Chiong, Ph.D., Principal Research Scientist and analyzes 23,000+ teacher-created SchoolAI “Spaces” (2024–25, across ELA, math, science, and social studies). It found that teachers commonly design activities that require conceptual understanding, analysis, and evaluation, since teachers control the prompts and constraints. In other words, when educators design the experience, AI can reinforce rigor rather than replace it.
The report argues that because teachers design the Space (titles, descriptions, prompts, rules) and the AI assistant (“Dot”) operates within those parameters, Spaces provide a window into teacher intent about how students should think.
Tom’s Take: There’s little doubt that many teachers are leveraging SchoolAI spaces to promote critical thinking, and there are some wonderful examples in this study. But the report’s findings should be approached cautiously. For one, SchoolAI is a private edtech organization with a vested interest in promoting the worthiness of its product. In addition, the report primarily assesses teacher-authored prompts rather than student learning outcomes, so its claims regarding “deeper thinking” are essentially inferential. Finally, the dataset is clearly platform-specific (SchoolAI), yet the report generalizes beyond this controlled environment.
