Preface
ChatGPT has become the topic of global excitement in a range of disciplines, a “Pandora’s Box,” or “Aladdin’s Lamp.” Scholars on ChatGPT have unambiguously maintained a neutral position while admitting that its entry into daily life and education is an irreversible trend. They suggest preparing ahead, embracing it hesitantly, and understanding it as much as possible to see through possible difficulties. Although ChatGPT is still in its infancy, and the majority of discussion about its application in education is more based on hypothesis, it is important to understand the impacts of change and risks the method might bring to education.
Moreover, it should consider the future orientation of the educational system to meet its great mission of “adaptation” and “transcendence.” There is not much practical application of artificial intelligence in kindergarten teaching activities. Preschool educators should first understand the essence of ChatGPT and clarify the essence of education, seeking a symbiotic relationship between preschool education and ChatGPT.
Impact Of Chatgpt On The Educational Ecosystem
Autonomous Learning and Academic Integrity Face New Challenges
Compared to traditional search engines, ChatGPT can provide more comprehensive knowledge and even select more precise or creative answers. With the help of the database. behind ChatGPT, learners can transcend their original knowledge perspectives and gain broader insights. The advantages for learners are obvious; it’s like having the world’s smartest brain assisting you with your homework, accessible anytime and anywhere.
In this context, autonomous learning is being redefined. Given that it can provide personalized guidance and interactive assistance to learners, ChatGPT creates favorable conditions for their autonomous learning. A study by Li on whether students’ use of ChatGPT affects research skills found that, in the experimental group with instruction integrated into ChatGPT, there was a significantly higher level of self-directed learning behavior compared with the control group (Li et al. 2024). When learners are out of a school environment and not able to find in-person tutoring with teachers or elder people, it can still supply targeted answers.
real-time feedback and direction through dialogue and engagement for all unique questions of each learner. ChatGPT can function as an encyclopedic personal learning assistant for students; it may guide them in the process of autonomous learning or scholarly investigation.
Yet under this comfort, there lies an even bigger crisis. In terms of creativity, when learners become heavily reliant on ChatGPT, the initiative in learning shifts, and learners may become slaves to technology. The role of general large models is such that they may no longer be required. the arrangement of knowledge; students obtain facts from content automatically generated by ChatGPT without needing to deeply understand the theoretical basis behind it.
Students who are deeply engaged in short-term, shallow learning do not learn the deeper abilities of theoretical thinking and may be subject to a decline and masking of creativity so that cognitive structures are superficialized. In the experiments carried out by Qinghan Liu, Yiyong Zhou, Jihao Huang, et al., it was seen that human creativity, when used to complete creative tasks with the help of ChatGPT, displayed short-term improvement. However, on day 7 and day 30, human creative performance went back to the baseline when ChatGPT went offline.
In addition, the homogenization effect caused by using ChatGPT in creative tasks continued even when ChatGPT was not used. Additionally, the results generated by ChatGPT are based on the rearrangement of knowledge derived from big data, and whether or not they constitute original work is a controversial issue. If students use ChatGPT to complete homework and academic research, obtaining higher scores without it being considered plagiarism, then surely no one would resist the temptation of ChatGPT. In terms of critical thinking, ChatGPT is still prone to making mistakes, if students. excessively rely on the output generated by ChatGPT without discernment or have limited discernment abilities, they may learn incorrect knowledge without even knowing it.
In terms of knowledge authority and teacher-student, student-student interactions, when learners no longer view teachers as authorities on knowledge and no longer obtain knowledge outcomes. through practice, they may refuse to cooperate with teachers and classmates in reality, with the subjects of learning imprisoned on their respective “islands.”
Teacher Professional Development and Career Crises
The essence of teachers’ professionalism encompasses three dimensions: teaching students how to learn, nurturing students’ growth, and providing services. The basis of teacher professional development comprises their professionalism, knowledge, and capabilities. Teachers professional development involves making use of professionalism, knowledge, and capabilities through scientific methods to fulfill the objectives of teaching students how to learn, promoting their growth, and providing services. Like blackboards, textbooks, and smart classrooms, ChatGPT will also be a teaching assistant for teachers in the future. It will help them in their daily work, decrease their workload, and allow them to focus more on teaching.
With the help of ChatGPT, teachers will have more energy to reflect on their effectiveness in teaching and ponder how they can advance in their professional development. With its database and dialogue functions, ChatGPT offers ideas for teacher curriculum design, enhances teaching content before class, can simulate classroom dialogue to understand which confusion it will create, assists teachers in developing lesson plans and other materials necessary for class, becomes an AI assistant to teachers that provides an instantaneous feedback platform as teachers and the students interact on their questions answered in real-time, and infuses vividness, interest, and charm into the classes.
This helps students grasp intricate material and ideas. At the end of the class, ChatGPT can engage in homework assessment. It can be seen that ChatGPT can help teachers finish a comprehensive teaching plan. Using information technology in teaching also falls under one aspect of the development of teachers’ professional competence. However, when ChatGPT is capable of completing most of the teacher’s work, it also brings about the fear that teachers may be replaced.
In the face of increasingly intelligent human-computer interaction, teachers may face the risk of being replaced, but they will not be easily supplanted. When teachers excessively rely on ChatGPT to develop curriculum plans and implement them verbatim based on the lesson plans generated by ChatGPT, teaching may become alienated into one-dimensional knowledge impartation, posing risks of rigid teaching processes and alienated teachers.
student interactions. Teachers would just recite texts. That “transmitting knowledge” becomes unable to bring out the idea of teaching children and fails to surpass even artificial intelligence’s ability to solve problems. The best solution to restore the existential meaning of teachers’ professionalism will be to come back to their professionalism’s heart and deepen it into a clearer professional identity that cements their professional beliefs. Teachers’ sense of identity with their profession is highly correlated to their capacity. Teachers must understand how to teach students the art of learning, how to foster students, and the type of individuals to foster, taking advantage of humans in an age of human-computer interaction and coexistence. between human and AI teachers.
Chain Reactions in Educational Ecology
It is already a consensus that ChatGPT will bring profound changes to future education, particularly in facilitating the reconstruction of relationships and role transformations among the three core entities in educational activities: teachers, conversational robots (like ChatGPT), and students. ChatGPT helps students become self-educators and makes teachers reflective educators, and ChatGPT itself becomes an institutionalized educator in school education, which complicates the roles of individuals in the educational ecosystem.
Humanity is moving into a period of smart mutual connections between humans, machines, and objects, which implies ternary melting. The introduction of AI conversational robots such as ChatGPT in education will have both advantages and disadvantages for educators, learners, and educational systems. This is neither the first nor the last test of information technology’s possibilities.
The knowledge revolution that ChatGPT may have set off may, to some extent, exacerbate knowledge alienation, with major risks manifesting in four aspects: difficulty in distinguishing the authenticity of knowledge, difficulty in ensuring the authority of knowledge, intensification of knowledge fragmentation, and the disintegration of universal knowledge, which may even jeopardize people’s faith in knowledge. The process of education involves understanding knowledge and exploring its essence.
When knowledge is untrustworthy, education will have a tough time remaining unscathed. The vulgarization of education refers to “in the combination of general large models and education, superficial technical use and sensory pleasure obscure people’s pursuit of deeper meanings of education. Education is replaced by superficiality, sensuality, and impressionism, while depth, rationality, logic, and reflection can no longer be embodied in education, turning learners into deformed ‘one-dimensional people’ eventually.”
ChatGPT is destined to replace the education system that has only focused on knowledge impartation. “The role of teachers will shift completely from knowledge impartation to intellectual guidance, increasingly tending towards a one-on-one teaching model.” (Wang 2023). When ChatGPT becomes an instructional tool in teaching, it challenges teachers’ educational wisdom and professional competence more deeply. The threshold for entry-level teachers has also risen, and normal universities have been encouraged to think about how to instill a sense of responsibility and mission in future teachers.
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Challenges & Reflections Posed By Chatgpt
ChatGPT Should Stay within its Designated Scope
Every technological revolution demonstrates its “creative destruction effect” (Gao and Yan, 2023). This has made ChatGPT a popular search tool, and the idea of totally excluding it is something in the realm of pie in the sky. As human evolution is driven by technological empowerment, no one knows how advanced artificial intelligence will be in the future
However advanced artificial intelligence may become, if humans need to master the technologies that they invent and stand a step above AI, then it is possible only with the participation of this kind of technology. Embracing ChatGPT comes with conditions and limitations. We must consider how to use it with dignity, fully understand the challenges it brings, and rise to meet those challenges.
Artificial intelligence aims at making machines think like humans and be intelligent. Still, up to now, Al can only copy human thinking, and it still cannot come up with original thoughts independent of human intervention, unlike a human being. Nevertheless, “it can push humans to explore and engage in more creative labor, prompt changes in traditional education and learning methods, and set higher standards for human development in the future.”
There is also a possibility that when people use ChatGPT for dialogue and communication, they may unconsciously be influenced by the patterns and templates behind the robot. “In the imitation and reinforcement of these patterns, people may develop uniform cognitive structures and knowledge networks, and learners may become homogenized and standardized individuals, falling into the trap of homogeneity.” Gao and Yan (2023).
The underlying logic is that over-reliance on artificial. intelligence can affect an individual’s accumulation of knowledge, thereby impacting the expression of their creativity. Excessive dependence on AI reduces students’ willingness to actively acquire knowledge, thus restricting the accumulation of individual knowledge. However, the enhancement of creativity is predicated on a foundation of prior knowledge accumulation. Without a sufficient knowledge base, students will struggle to process knowledge, and creativity will be unattainable. Then the positions of humans and robots are reversed, shifting from intelligent robots imitating humans to humans imitating robots, with humans becoming like robots.
To avoid the risk of homogenized cognitive thinking, individuals need to remain vigilant. Regarding the governance of ChatGPT, beyond individual self-awareness, legislation in the fields of the internet and artificial intelligence has always been a weak area. Keeping educational laws and regulations in sync with the constantly evolving ChatGPT and other AI technologies poses a significant and ongoing challenge.
On the ethical front, it must hasten the improvement of Al ethics literacy among educators at all levels, strengthen the consciousness of ethics first, build self-discipline and autonomy, formulate usage and application guidelines for content-generating smart tools such as ChatGPT, and bring home to students, teachers, administrators, and others. Together, it can foster a healthy ecosystem for the educational application of ChatGPT.
Returning to the Essence of Education and Starting from the Perspective of Humans is Crucial
With the mass adoption of artificial intelligence, production technology models have moved from mechanization and automation to intelligence. Artificial intelligence has freed human beings from mundane and repetitive tasks, but this also means that common workers struggle for survival. This is very much evident in the logistics industry. China’s logistics industry has become one of the fastest-growing sectors, and giant courier sorting stations now use intelligent management systems. These systems can scan and transmit several packages to the right sorting areas in a second, a speed that was impossible to achieve with manual labor. The application of highly efficient intelligent technology implies job displacement for labor workers.
However, as seen in ChatGPT, AI also represents the liberation of humans from instrumental mental labor. As humans break away from the yoke of instrumental labor step by step, that marks the end of instrumentalism, and a new avenue starts. In essence, the rise means more prestige for the humanistic spirit within the realm of education and how mainstream society incorporates free exploration into everyday life (Wang 2023). It also reflects how education would center on building creativity and innovating talents.
Teachers should accept a dual mission: first, to shape students’ emotions, attitudes, and values; and second, to cultivate higher-order skills. The need for all-round development in morality, intelligence, physique, aesthetics, and labor will continue to exist in the future. This scenario of human-computer interaction will further test students’ voluntary adherence to values and moral standards, and school education should place greater emphasis on cultivating students’ values, emotional communication, and willpower.
In the era of exploding knowledge and immediate access to information, people are growing both smarter and more ignorant. They can gain universal and factual knowledge at any time, anywhere, but this knowledge is out of their brains, raising questions about whether they have really acquired this knowledge. What is known is that ChatGPT has made “repetitive mental labor useless. Against this backdrop, critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, aesthetics, emotional intelligence, and character will be crucial in the educational ecology” (Jiao 2023). The traditional education model of rote
Memorization is being pushed to the brink. Therefore, education must adapt to this new environment by focusing on cultivating students’ critical thinking, creativity, and other higher-order skills. Traditional education methods must be reevaluated and updated to meet the demands of the current era, ensuring that students are not just passive recipients of knowledge but active learners who can apply their knowledge creatively and ethically.
Education plays a dual role in fostering creativity. On one hand, it enhances creativity by increasing knowledge. On the other hand, it can also stifle creativity by suppressing curiosity and imagination. Therefore, education should create a more relaxed environment with ample space and time conducive to students’ individual development. It is crucial to better protect. Students’ curiosity must be stimulated; their imagination needs to be triggered, and higher values should be pursued while eschewing the utilitarian of the short-term kind (Qian, 2017). At the same time, artificial intelligence and other applications, like ChatGPT, have complicated matters in the field of educational assessment. It’s time to look deeper into how the evaluation process needs to be evaluated.
The total development of a student, their information literacy, and creativity are things that the older methods of standardized answers can’t measure. The education sector should, therefore, focus on the development of abilities like independent thinking, creativity, emotions, values, and interpersonal skills, as emphasized by Wang. To sum it all up, education must adjust to the new realities presented by artificial intelligence. It should be an environment that promotes creativity and individuality and rethinks how students are evaluated. Education can better prepare students for the future and help them thrive in an increasingly complex and interconnected world by shifting the focus from rote memorization and standard answers to higher-order skills and personal development.
The Era’s Bond: Chatgpt Children And Between Preschool
The Innate Advantages of Young Children
In the present and future, we are in the midst of a flourishing era of digital technology and AI, marked by relentless innovation and transformation that will only continue to advance and profoundly affect various aspects of lifestyles. Preschool education lays the foundation for school education and lifelong learning, while preschool children, as the newborns and natives of this era, have a natural advantage in learning new information technologies. Preschool education and kindergartens should actively respond to the demands of AI education, integrating emerging technologies such as AI and ChatGPT into kindergartens and children’s lives as educational goals while innovating educational content and methods to allow children to grow amidst the waves of the times.
Al can give auxiliary services, for example: information management, kindergarten hardware facilities, and software platforms, such as facial recognition and video surveillance; home school co-education platforms; and also information-based teaching equipment, which include classroom whiteboard projections, which are part of the hardware foundation needed to implement Al in kindergartens. Al will support teachers’ work in curriculum design, children’s development evaluation, and professional training. This means it helps improve teachers’ working methods to increase their professional competence and effectiveness in teaching. At the same time, Al can relieve kindergarten teachers of the administrative burden, freeing them from monotonous daily tasks to be more focused on raising children and doing creative educational and instructional work.
The application of information technology in kindergarten education and instruction is still very limited. Al does not directly participate in teaching in kindergartens or only does so indirectly. First, kindergartens can supply very few or almost no AI devices. Second, whether Al can be effectively utilized in kindergartens heavily relies on teachers’ ability to apply information technology, digital literacy, and skills. The practical application of AI, such as ChatGPT, in kindergarten education and instruction is a long and laborious journey.
Principles of Early Childhood Cognition Are Embedded within ChatGPT
The learning approach of ChatGPT embodies significant educational thinking, which may hold certain reference values for human education.
For instance, it has been observed that ChatGPT, like humans, encounters problems that cannot be solved in one step and requires breaking down. large problems into smaller ones to achieve the ultimate goal of resolution.” At the preschool stage, children’s cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills are in their initial stages of development, and the learning approach of ChatGPT aligns with the way preschool children’s minds grow. It is not just the learning approach of ChatGPT; machine learning. essentially simulates human consciousness, thinking, and information processing. The concept of “deep learning” was initially applied in the field of machine learning, and subsequently, research in the field of education focused on deep learning from the perspective of learning sciences.
Scholar Wu Yongjun defines deep learning as “a process of meaning generation in a specific sociocultural context, where learners, through interaction with others and the environment, focus on the organic connections between knowledge, ultimately enabling transfer and solving real-life problems.” Perhaps some may believe that deep learning is not relevant to preschool children with lower cognitive levels, but in fact, the problem-solving skills that preschool education aims to cultivate are precisely deep learning. Elements that encourage problem-solving in young children include relevance to their life experiences, mobilization of their life and learning experiences, stimulation of their enthusiasm, and use of multiple strategies to solve problems, including seeking help from teachers and collaborating with peers.
Therefore, young children possess the ability for deep learning, albeit not targeted at highly difficult problems. Scholar Wang Xiaoying proposes a logical framework for deep learning in young children: problem-solving orientation, positive emotions as motivation, hands-on creation as a foundation, peer cooperation as support, and evaluation and reflection as the main axis ..
In modern life, it is common to see a situation where small children who cannot even read know how to use mobile phones. Some can play games or view video applications requiring no operating skills with just simple and clear instructions. With the widespread use of smart devices among young children, it would definitely lead to
The potential risks include vision impairment, exposure to inappropriate content, and hindrance to interpersonal communication. On the other hand, it offers abundant educational resources, which can provide children with rich opportunities for perception and manipulation. As far as language development is concerned, information technology devices can enhance children’s participation and comprehension in language learning, create a favorable language learning environment, optimize the language learning and transfer process, and strengthen their oral cooperation and communication skills.
“Existing research on information technology in preschool education mainly focuses on kindergarten teachers’ exploratory applications of information technology in educational and teaching practices, as well as theoretical. explorations by experts and scholars on information technology in preschool education.’ With the irresistible trend of ChatGPT, teachers must update their concepts of education and apply new technology to promote their professional development and even save much workload. In China, the phenomenon of kindergarten teachers’ use of AI to seek educational resources and write reports on work is common. It is very appealing to understand how ChatGPT is likely to integrate with preschool education in the near future.
Conclusion
This article explores the scope of how ChatGPT could change the landscape of education by focusing on its different impacts on the education ecosystem. These impacts are challenges to the learner’s autonomy and academic integrity, threats to the professional development and career progression of teachers, and challenges to the future structure of education also underline the importance of keeping the focus on the essence of education while implementing ChatGPT, paying attention to human-centered teaching and learning methods to avoid the degradation of educational values. The article further discusses the psychological background that allows for the integration of ChatGPT early. childhood education, as well as expectations for the future use of ChatGPT in this field.