Founding Declaration
In the AI Era, Restore Education to Understanding, Practice and Growth
To individuals and institutions concerned about the next generation and the future of education:
When answers can be generated in seconds, can education still measure learning by answers alone? As future pathways continue to change, how can we help the next generation develop the capacity to understand the world, exercise independent judgment and create the future?
We jointly propose the establishment of the International Association for AI and Innovation in Education (IAAIE). Starting with authentic teaching and learning needs, we seek to connect academic research, school practice and the development of educational AI products, advancing educational transformation centred on human growth.
Taking the China Institute Centennial Celebration and U.S.–China Education Forum at Columbia University as an opportunity, we seek to sustain the spirit of cross-cultural dialogue and testing ideas in practice, turning shared concerns into visible changes in classrooms.
1. Confronting the Crisis: Education Is Accelerating but May Be Losing Its Direction
We must confront a profound crisis: students continually complete tasks, teachers continually race to keep up with schedules, and parents continually invest more. Yet more assignments, more frequent assessments and more polished portfolios do not necessarily produce deeper understanding or a clearer direction for growth. This loss of direction in education does not reflect a lack of effort; rather, education may be drifting from its purpose as it accelerates.
Generative AI makes this problem more urgent. When essays, answers and proposals can be generated rapidly, completing a piece of work no longer provides sufficient evidence that learning has occurred. If understanding, verification and judgment are continually outsourced, the efficiency of these tools may conceal gaps in actual capability. We must not let polished results conceal inadequate understanding, or mistake task completion for learning.
The ways we design curricula, assess learning and use AI today are shaping students’ habits of thought and sense of responsibility. Transformation can proceed in stages, but it cannot wait indefinitely; nor should it be reduced to more training, more certificates and competition at ever younger ages.
It is the education system that needs to transform faster, rather than children being made to run faster on the same old track.
2. Setting a Direction: Building School 2.0 around Human Growth
“School 2.0” is neither a traditional classroom equipped with more AI devices nor a system that entrusts every student to a screen. It is a learning community connecting knowledge, real life, people and society. Our aim is not to reject technology, but to enable AI to extend inquiry, support creativity and serve each student’s authentic growth.
We advocate the joint development of three mutually reinforcing capacities:
AI Intelligence: Building on AI literacy, combine human knowledge, judgment and creativity with AI to extend inquiry, integrate knowledge, and design and improve solutions, while maintaining independent judgment and accepting responsibility in complex situations.
Hands-on Intelligence: Through investigation, making, experimentation and revision, translate knowledge into action that can withstand real-world testing.
Social Intelligence: Learn to listen, communicate, negotiate, care for others and share responsibility through authentic collaboration.
This transformation does not mean abandoning foundational knowledge or lowering academic expectations. It means putting sound knowledge to work in inquiry, creativity and judgment. Assessment should consider both students’ work and their ability to explain its basis, respond to questions, verify conclusions and transfer their learning. Teachers should receive support for professional learning, collaborative lesson planning and pilot projects, rather than bearing the pressures of transformation alone.
Drawing on UNESCO’s concepts of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED), we are concerned not only with students’ future careers, but also with their ability to live together with others and contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future.
3. Safeguarding Humanity: Ensuring Technological Progress Serves Human Dignity and the Common Good
Education should help students extend their capabilities with AI while safeguarding human curiosity, empathy, independent judgment and responsibility. Schools should preserve ample space for dialogue between teachers and students, peer interaction, independent thinking, emotional expression and real-life experiences, so that every student is seen, heard and respected. AI can support learning and creativity, but should not replace essential human care or use algorithmic labels to define a person’s worth or developmental possibilities.
We advocate integrating AI ethics and risk awareness into curricula, teacher professional learning and school governance. Students should learn to recognise misinformation, algorithmic bias, overreliance and privacy violations, and to ask through authentic projects: Is this use of technology necessary? Who benefits, and who might be harmed? What alternatives exist, and who should take responsibility? Education should help students judge not only whether something can be done, but whether it should be done.
Schools and partner institutions should preserve teachers’ professional judgment, protect students’ independent learning, and establish boundaries for AI use according to students’ ages and learning contexts, including when tools should be restricted or avoided. Learning data should be handled according to principles of necessity, transparency and security, preventing excessive collection, inappropriate surveillance and commercial misuse. Important decisions affecting student assessment and developmental opportunities should remain subject to human review and correction, with clear channels for assistance, feedback and appeals. Students and their families should not bear the risks of innovation alone.
In response to AI’s potential effects on human agency, social equity and our shared future, we advocate ongoing interdisciplinary research, risk assessment and public dialogue, using evidence to understand risks and responsibility to guide innovation. Technological progress should not come at the expense of human dignity, authentic connections or equitable opportunities.
4. Acting Together: Connecting Research, School Practice and Technological Innovation
Educational transformation cannot rely solely on individual teachers’ enthusiasm or the promises of a single product. IAAIE proposes collaboration in the following five areas, bringing research into classrooms, school needs into product design, and innovation under scrutiny through evidence of learning outcomes.
1. International Dialogue: Move from exchanging views to shared exploration. Through conferences and thematic working groups, connect researchers, schools, policymakers, businesses and students to share practices, discuss challenges and bring young people’s voices into discussions about education’s future.
2. Curriculum and Professional Learning: Make transformation part of everyday teaching. Explore curriculum and assessment designs that balance foundational knowledge, authentic inquiry and ethical boundaries. Support the integration of AI literacy and entrepreneurship education, and help teachers improve teaching, assessment and administrative work. Incorporate ethical judgment, risk identification and privacy protection into curricula and teacher professional learning, and share practices that can be tested and refined in different contexts.
3. Research and Publications: Ground educational innovation in evidence. Progressively publish research reports, policy briefs, tool evaluations and documented classroom cases, sharing progress while openly acknowledging limitations. Focus not only on which technologies are used, but on whether students truly understand, can apply what they learn and continue to grow.
4. Resource Sharing and Collaboration: Make opportunities for transformation available beyond a privileged few. Gradually build resource-sharing platforms and collaborative networks to share curriculum frameworks, project templates and teaching tools. Support participation by schools with different resource levels and expand students’ opportunities to engage with real problems and partners.
5. Educational AI Product Development and Evaluation: Assess technology against educational values. Encourage schools, researchers and businesses to co-design and pilot products, examining pedagogical value, accuracy and bias, usability, accessibility, data protection, equity and learning outcomes. Evaluations should follow transparent, independent standards, with appropriate disclosure of methods and interests. Projects involving joint development or related interests should disclose those relationships and preserve impartiality through independent review and appropriate recusal arrangements. Membership or sponsorship does not guarantee favourable evaluations or the Association’s endorsement.
5. Invitation to Join: From Signing a Declaration to Sustained Collaborative Practice
We warmly invite educators, researchers, schools and universities, technology companies, community partners, parents and young people to join this initiative. A real problem, a professional capability, a setting for practice or an experience to share can each be a starting point for collaboration.
Where circumstances permit, participants can begin with one real problem, one partner and learning records that show how students inquire, verify and improve. They can undertake appropriately scaled pilots, revise them in response to feedback and share their experience more widely. Let researchers and teachers co-design, let technology developers hear classroom needs, and let students participate in transformation.
Signing this declaration expresses support and opens a dialogue. We do not ask all participants to undertake the same tasks; rather, we invite everyone to identify a sustainable action within their own capacity and circumstances.
We cannot let the speed of technology determine education’s direction, or leave the next generation to bear the consequences of education losing its way.
Let knowledge become a force for understanding the world, technology a tool for expanding possibilities, and schools places for growing together.
Let us begin today to renew education’s direction together and open possibilities for the next generation to shape the future.