Educational Leaders: Promote Ethical Utilization of AI That Encourages Critical Thinking Skills!

To promote ethical utilization of Generative AI that encourages critical thinking skills, educational leaders should take a proactive, strategic, and values-driven approach. Having a structured framework and a professional development (PD) outline would help in this regard to develop policies, create professional development opportunities, and highlight classroom practices that prioritize ethics, inquiry, and student empowerment. This month we will examine the question: How might educational leaders promote best policies, practices, and PD programs for generative AI implementation in schools?

Integrating AI into pedagogy with purpose requires learning to use  generative AI to model Socratic questioning, hypothesis generation, and multiple perspectives. The school culture needs to encourage utilization of AI as a “thinking partner" rather than a content generator. For example, leaders should expect lessons that plan for students to use AI to brainstorm arguments, critically evaluate the generated output, then revise them using further evidence. Therefore, encourage grade 6-12 lessons that plan for students’ interrogation of AI outputs by identifying for bias, assessing credibility, and comparing to human sources. 

Fostering AI literacy and critical digital skills requires providing explicit training for both teachers and students on how generative AI’s basic mechanisms include limitations and potential biases. Explicitly train AI consumers how to ask effective prompts and critically analyze results. The process needs to include teaching how to integrate media and data literacy to equip students with tools needed to verify and challenge AI-generated content.

Modeling ethical decision-making requires educational leaders to exemplify ethical AI use during administrative and instructional decision-making processes. Willingly share real-life case studies of ethical dilemmas in AI such as plagiarism, misinformation, or surveillance to inspire relevant classroom discussion. Empower students to develop codes of conduct for their own AI use.

Creating a culture of inquiry and reflection requires the promotion of project-based learning whereby students use AI in creative, responsible ways.  Think how vibrant a class could be if students were empowered to design AI tools that addressed a community problem.  Opportunities abound and our options are only limited by our imaginations and willingness to innovate.  Begin by embedding reflective practices.  Journaling about AI use and decision-making or peer discussions on how AI influenced their thinking or learning process begins developing this culture of inquiry and reflection.

Supporting ongoing professional development requires leaders offering sustained, scaffolded PD for teachers.  Scaffolded support begins with pedagogically sound uses of generative AI. Teachers need to become familiar with AI tools and platforms aligned with learning goals. Evaluating student work when AI may be involved in the generation of assessments suggests the need for discussions and professional development.  These needs and more invite creation of learning communities for educators to share best AI-practices and concerns.

Monitoring, evaluating, and adapting AI policies, practices, and processes, requires regularly assessing the impact of AI tools upon student learning and critical thinking development. Educational leaders need to be ready to adjust policies and practices based on quickly evolving insights, technologies, or challenges.  This invites the involvement of students to give feedback on how AI is impacting their learning and thinking processes.

As advocated by Invitational Education theory and practice (Purkey & Novak, 2015), educational leaders should exhibit I-CORT: an intentional, caring, optimistic, respectful and trustworthy mindset (Purkey, Novak, & Fretz, 2020; Anderson, 2021) to invite optimal realization of the principle, “AI should amplify human thinking, not replace it (Hoffman, 2025).” By inviting AI implementation as an opportunity to enhance human reasoning, rather than replacing it, educational leaders can ensure that generative AI becomes a tool for empowerment rather than dependency.  As noted above a policy framework and a PD outline should help educational leaders implement generative AI ethically while fostering critical thinking skills in students.

To begin, educational leaders should draft a policy framework for ethical and critical AI use in schools.  This framework typically would entail a vision statement, guiding principles, and acceptable compared to unacceptable utilization scenarios.  The following are examples for each and invite further collaboration before implementing.

A Draft Vision Statement: "We believe generative AI should be used as a tool to empower learners, encourage critical thinking, and promote ethical decision-making. AI will be implemented in ways that support creativity, inquiry, and responsible digital citizenship."

Draft Guiding Principles:

·         Advance Human-Centered Learning: AI supports, but does not replace, human judgment, inquiry, and originality.

·         Promote Ethical Responsibility: All AI use must respect privacy, equity, fairness, and integrity.

·         Exhibit Transparency & Consent: Stakeholders, including students, parents, educators will be informed of how AI is used in learning and data handling.

·         Develop AI Literacy for All: Students and staff will receive age-appropriate training on AI’s strengths, limitations, and ethical implications.

·         Optimize Critical Engagement: Students will be encouraged to challenge, verify, and contextualize AI-generated information.

Draft Acceptable Use Guidelines

Stakeholder	Example of Acceptable Use	Example of Unacceptable Use
Students	Using AI to brainstorm essay topics, then researching and writing the essay independently.	Submitting AI-generated text as original work without attribution.
Teachers	Using AI to generate example problems or differentiated materials.	Using AI to assess student work without human review.
Administrators	Leveraging AI for data analysis to inform instruction.	Using AI tools to monitor students without transparency or consent.

 

Effective educational leaders understand that a goal without a plan is just a wish.  Therefore, the following steps could be useful.  By its very nature, any implementation strategy is a starting point.

·         Plan your pilot programs: Launch AI use in select classrooms with diverse student populations.

·         Create a student AI use agreement: All students sign a Responsible AI Use Agreement.

·         Identify a review committee: Form an AI Oversight Committee that includes educators, students, parents, and information technologists to monitor AI use and guide adjustments.

Monitor, evaluate, and seek feedback throughout the pilot program.  Subsequently annual surveys for students and staff on AI’s impact on learning and engagement will sustain this practice. By reviewing incidents of misuse and addressing them through restorative, educational interventions, a growth mindset is instilled and high expectations maintained. Annual policy updates based on new research, technologies, and school needs help to make better possible.

Likewise, a clear goal and an action plan is needed for effective professional development (PD) when we desire to empower educators toward ethical AI integration.  Consider the worth of the following PD Goal:

·         To equip educators with the tools, mindset, and strategies to integrate generative AI in ways that enhance student inquiry and critical thinking while upholding ethical standards.

If seen as worthwhile, the following structure for 5 PD sessions may serve as a draft action plan for K-12 teachers, curriculum designers, instructional coaches. Note the importance of ensuring your PD sessions’ desired outcomes are observable and thereby measurable:

During session 1: Understanding Generative AI. The measurable objective could be, “Given Interactive demo of generative AI tools, participants will learn how AI tools like ChatGPT, DALL·E, and others work by categorizing the capabilities and limitations of generative AI.”

The debrief would include the participants discussing “What AI can and can’t do.”

During session 2: Ethical Considerations & Student Integrity. The measurable objective could be, “Given case study analysis eliciting, "What would you do?" participants will discuss ethical risks including plagiarism, bias, and surveillance identify (x) strategies for fostering academic integrity.”

The summary activity would include the participants drafting classroom AI use norms with colleagues.

During session 3: Designing AI-Enhanced Critical Thinking Tasks. The measurable objective could be, “Given sample lesson plans, participants will practice prompting AI for effective classroom use and embed AI into a lesson such as to enhance rather than replace student thinking.”

The summary activity could include the participant groups workshopping to rewrite one lesson plan to include AI as a tool for inquiry followed by cross peer-group feedback sessions.

During session 4: Assessing AI-Influenced Work. The measurable objective could be, “Given opportunities to review student work samples, participants will detect and assess AI-assisted student work and promote student reflective practices around AI use.

The summary activity could include the participants developing a (grade-level) reflection rubric based on the prompt: “How did you use AI, and how did it help or hinder your thinking?”

During session 5: Ongoing Learning & Leadership. The measurable objective could be, “Given a planned session, participants will exhibit skills of an AI leader or mentor in the school by collaboratively creating a grade or department AI use plan.

The summary activity could include the participants beginning an implementation plan for developing a collaborative AI integration guide or forming a professional learning community (PLC) for continued support.

The effective, intentionally inviting educational leader’s desire to establish clear ethical guidelines requires development of AI-use policies rooted in transparency, privacy, bias mitigation, and accountability. For this purpose, it is crucial to involve students, educators, and community stakeholders in crafting these guidelines to ensure broad support and awareness. The suggestions and guidelines provided above are provided as an opportunity to make it explicit that AI should support learning, not replace original thinking.

 

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (September 30, 2025) Educational leaders: Promote ethical utilization of AI that encourages critical thinking skills! [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

 

References:

Anderson, C. J. (2021). Developing your students' emotional intelligence and philosophical  perspective begins with I-CORT. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, 27, 36-50.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2025.). AI in education and accessibility. ISTE. https://www.iste.org

Purkey, W. W., & Novak, J. M. (2015). Fundamentals of invitational education. (2nd Ed) International Alliance for Invitational Education. Retrieved from: Fundamental of Invitational Education | IAIE

Purkey, W.W., Novak, J.M., & Fretz, J.R. (2020). Developing inviting schools: A beneficial framework for teaching and leading. Teachers College Press.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology. (2023). Artificial intelligence and the future of teaching and learning: Insights and recommendations. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/