We’ve seen a surge of interest in how AI personalizes learning, adapts to student needs, and tutors various subjects, writes Thomas Arnett of the Clayton Christensen Institute in eSchool News. His post originally appeared on the Christensen Institute’s blog. AI also helps students design their learning pathways, generate creative ideas, or receive iterative feedback on their work.
But it is a mistake to believe AI is the ultimate solution to making students care about their education – their motivation.
AI can’t confer status or respect.
People must be selective about where they invest their time, who they include, and what kind of contributions they recognize, especially in collaborative or competitive group settings. That selectivity gives human respect its meaning.
But AI is not selective regarding recognition and belonging. Unlike humans, AI doesn’t have limited time, bandwidth, and resources that force it to make tradeoffs. AI doesn’t choose us to be on their teams or decide that relationships with us are worth their time.
Al will fail in solving the challenge of motivating students unless it evolves to a point where it plays a meaningful role in real social systems, where time, attention, and affirmation are scarce and must be earned. We may be approaching that kind of world—where AI begins to substitute for the human relationships essential to development and belonging. If AI ever reaches that point, the rules of human connection will be redefined and questions about whether AI can motivate students may be the least of our concerns.
Studies have found that while many online learning programs produce significant gains when used at recommended dosages, only about 5% of students actually use them as recommended. I hypothesize that motivation is the missing piece that can offer the most significant impact. AI tools may be engaging and enjoyable at first, but their novelty wears off quickly. Compared to apps and games designed purely for entertainment, edtech rarely wins the attention battle on its own.
If students saw working hard in these programs as something that earned them status and respect in the eyes of their peers, teachers, and parents I think we’d see far more students using the software at levels that accelerate their achievement. Yet I suspect many teachers are disinclined to make software usage a major mechanism for conferring status and respect in their classrooms because encouraging more screen time doesn’t feel like real teaching.
I recently read 10 to 25, a new book by David Yeager, one of the leading research psychologists in adolescent development and motivation. The book explores what young people need most between the ages of 10 and 25 to thrive. Yeager challenges the prevailing view that adolescents’ seemingly irrational choices—like taking risks, ignoring consequences, or prioritizing peer approval over academics—result from underdeveloped brains. Instead, he believes adolescents are evolutionarily wired to seek status and respect.
This resonates with what Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn wrote over a decade ago. They observed that the Jobs to Be Done that seem to motivate students center on feeling successful and having fun with friends.
And they point to a crucial insight: the key to unlocking students’ motivation, especially in adolescence, is helping them see that they have value—that they are valued by the people they care about and that they are meaningful contributors to the groups where they seek belonging. That realization has implications not just for how we understand student engagement, but for how we design schools…and why AI alone can’t get us where we need to go.
eSchool News
