Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 4:17:58 to 4:20:28
Examination of PISA data regarding digital device usage in Australian schools and the lack of a strong evidence base for the benefits of AI in classroom settings.
Topics: Education, Artificial intelligence, Child safety
Speakers: Dr Jennifer Donovan, Senator Matt O'Sullivan
>> Yeah, we'll we'll wrap up by then. Uh, thank you. Um, and thank you for the work that you do Dr. Don and for Arrow and all your staff. Um, it's important work. It's important that we have evidence-based uh application uh in education. So, thank you. PASA 2025 found Australian students spend an average of 2.6 hours per school day using digital devices for learning compared to 1.7 hours across the OECD. So, quite a quite a difference in Australian students experience. Uh found 39% reported that other students were frequently distracted by digital devices during uh science lessons. Um what do you what's your view on that
>> Senator? We recently published uh some explainers for teachers and for policy makers about what is the evidence base around the uses of AI in particular but edtech generally in Australian classroom settings and the truth is the evidence base is very slender. The evidence that we have is derived mostly from overseas from studies that are looking at higher education rather than school-based practices. Uh very shortterm studies as you would imagine. We haven't had AI for that long. It's hard to do a longitudinal analysis and a lot of studies that go to perceptions and uh qualitative responses rather than hard data. >> Yeah. So our advice in the documents that we published just last week is in the absence of strong evidence about the positive uses that it would be prudent to take a cautious approach to the amount of time that is spent using educational technology and AI in classroom settings. And that would be particularly the case for the younger children >> uh where AI in particular is to be introduced. It should be done in an explicit way and after solid knowledge foundations have already been established amongst the students.
>> Well, you recommend in your report that uh you avoid entirely uh the use of AI in the first three years of primary school. Well, what is if that's right? Um but but why why stop at uh at that