TAICO-Dialogue: A Dialogue Lab on the Role of Teachers and AI in Education

Workshop at the 20th European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (ECTEL 2025)
📍 Newcastle, UK – 15 September 2025 (in person)

About the Workshop

The TAICO-Dialogue Lab marks the beginning of a Europe-wide conversation about the future of teaching in the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted as a side event of EC-TEL 2025, this policy-oriented workshop brings together researchers, educators, EdTech developers, and policymakers to discuss how AI is transforming the teaching profession and what this means for teachers’ roles, skills, and development.

The workshop will explore whether AI will replace, complement, or augment existing teaching practices—and how we can prepare for these shifts in a way that supports and empowers educators. Participants will engage in interactive dialogue and foresight sessions to share insights, identify pressing questions, and collaboratively begin shaping a roadmap for the future.

This event also launches a year-long series of Dialogue Labs across Europe, with the aim to consolidate insights and return to EC-TEL 2026 with outcomes and recommendations for policy and practice.

Why Focus on Teachers?

While AI has become central to debates on the future of education, discussions often overlook the specific implications for teachers. Much of the attention is placed on defining so-called “AI competences” for educators, but this narrow view fails to address more fundamental questions: What will the role of teachers be in AI-enhanced classrooms? How will their work change? And what kind of support do they need to navigate this transformation?

Teachers are often expected to implement AI tools without adequate integration into their daily practices, and without the training or voice to influence how these technologies are designed and used. This workshop aims to change that. By placing teachers at the center of the discussion, we hope to ensure that future AI innovations in education are truly supportive—designed with educators, not just for them.

Program Highlights

The workshop will feature short presentations from selected contributors, followed by thematic roundtables designed to spark meaningful exchange. The day will conclude with a panel to reflect on insights and outline next steps, including the creation of a task force to coordinate further Dialogue Labs throughout Europe.

What We Aim to Achieve

This first Dialogue Lab is the starting point for a broader movement. It will provide a foundation for a European dialogue series on AI and the teaching profession, develop a blueprint for organizing national-level workshops, and result in a draft policy brief or white paper highlighting the key themes and open questions. The outcomes will guide a series of follow-up events through 2025 and 2026.

Organisers

For this workshop, three European project consortia of researchers, educational practitioners, representatives of the EdTech sector and policy experts have joined forces:

TAICo Teacher AI Complementarity (www.taico-project.eu), GenAI4ED (https://genai4ed.eu/) and augMENTOR (https://augmentor-project.eu)

Tobias Ley (University for Continuing Education Krems), Kairit Tammets (Tallinn University), Nikol Rummel & Astrid Wichmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Sanna Järvelä (Oulu University), Paraskevi Topali (Radboud University), Mutlu Cukurova (University College London), Michelle Duquette (European EdTech Alliance), Sander Jürisson (Education and Youth Board, Estonia), Martina di Ridolfo (European Trade Union Committee for Education), Pinelopi Troullinou (Trilateral Research), and Irene-Angelica Chounta (University of Duisburg-Essen).

In collaboration with Taico & augMENTOR