AI is evolving fast and every new application raises new questions for schools. What do teachers actually need to know about artificial intelligence? How can they keep up with constant technological change? And, most importantly: what does it take for teachers not just to understand AI, but to make confident, reflective decisions about using it in the classroom?
That was the focus of a panel titled “Building and expanding teachers’ agency” at UNESCO’s Digital Learning Week, held from 8th to 11th of September 2026 in Paris. Among the speakers were Dr. Diana Knodel, founder and CEO of the German EdTech platform fobizz, and Prof. Dr. Sebastian Becker-Genschow of the University of Cologne, alongside colleagues from Spain, Côte d’Ivoire, France, China, and Italy. In their talk, “AI in education: Advancing through the friction,” Diana and Sebastian presented recent research findings on teachers’ AI literacy and brought practical, classroom-level experience into an international conversation about AI in education.
At the center of it all was a question fobizz has been thinking about for a long time: how can we help teachers stay capable of acting with confidence in a world increasingly shaped by AI?
ChatGPT, image generators, AI assistants, and a constant stream of new models: anyone trying to stay current with every technological development quickly discovers how difficult that is. For teachers, that can’t mean having to know and master every new AI tool. What matters far more is a solid foundation of AI literacy; understanding how AI works, being able to assess its capabilities and limitations, critically questioning its outputs, and making a conscious decision about when using it makes pedagogical sense, and when it doesn’t.
However, knowledge alone isn’t enough. That was the core message Diana Knodel and Sebastian Becker-Genschow brought to Paris: the biggest lever isn’t knowledge but self-efficacy. When teachers feel confident, and have the tools and infrastructure they need, they draw on their own pedagogical expertise and build supportive and useful outcomes: from art-history chatbots for primary school to accounting bots for vocational schools.
Because even someone who knows a great deal about AI in theory doesn’t necessarily feel confident actually using it in the classroom. What helps? Trying things out. Gaining experience. Developing your own ideas. And having a framework in which uncertainty and critical questions have a place too.
How such an intensive engagement with AI actually affects teachers has now been studied empirically. A research team at the University of Cologne, Julia Lademann, Jannik Henze, Nadine Honke, Caroline Wollny, and Prof. Dr. Sebastian Becker-Genschow, evaluated fobizz’s AI Literacy Training, a multi-week professional development program for teachers. It combines foundational knowledge about AI with self-paced online modules, live webinars and workshops, and a hands-on project phase. Across three cohorts, the researchers surveyed and tested roughly 300 to 440 participating teachers, making this one of the largest empirical studies to date on AI training for teachers in the German-speaking world. Several thousand teachers have taken part in the program overall. So the teachers weren’t just engaging with AI in theory but applying what they learned directly: trying out AI tools, adapting them to their own school context, and developing concrete projects for their own practice. The study looked at what happens during that process. Does teachers’ AI literacy actually change? How does their attitude toward AI develop? And do they end up feeling better prepared to actually use the technology in their teaching?
The study’s results first show that participating teachers’ AI literacy increased significantly. On the test used in the study, the average score rose from 13.15 to 15.13 points. Ten of the 14 competency areas assessed showed significant improvement, for example, in understanding AI’s strengths and weaknesses, in understanding the human role in working alongside AI, and on ethical questions. Teachers’ practical use and attitudes shifted too: after the program, they reported using AI in everyday life and for preparing teaching materials significantly more often, and felt noticeably better prepared to integrate AI into their teaching.
This effect shows up especially clearly in a companion evaluation fobizz ran among the program’s first participants (186 teachers, surveyed January/February 2024): before the training, 25.8 percent of participating teachers felt well prepared to integrate AI technologies into their teaching. Afterward, that figure was 85.5 percent. That same evaluation found a clear jump in actual use: the share of teachers actively using AI to prepare teaching materials rose from 38.2 to 86.6 percent. And around 88 percent of participants saw AI in schools more as an opportunity than a risk after completing the program. That distinction matters. Ultimately, it isn’t knowledge about AI alone that determines whether teachers can put new technology to meaningful use. Just as important is their own sense of conviction: I can make sense of this. I can try it out. And I can decide for myself what’s useful for my classroom.
One finding from the study is particularly interesting: more intensive engagement with AI didn’t make participants uniformly more positive about the technology afterward. On some questions, critical assessments and concerns actually increased too. At first glance, that might seem surprising but it’s actually an important part of what AI literacy is.
The goal can’t be for teachers to come out of a training program using AI uncritically. On the contrary: the more someone understands about how AI works, and the more first-hand experience they’ve had with it, the better they can also recognize its risks, limitations, and problematic use cases. The study’s authors interpret this shift accordingly as a sign of teachers’ improved ability to realistically assess AI’s risks and hazards. AI literacy, in other words, doesn’t mean enthusiasm for AI. It means being able to make well-informed decisions. When does AI genuinely support my students? When might it be doing too much of the work? Which outputs do I need to check? What role do data protection, copyright, and bias play? And where do I deliberately choose not to use AI at all? These questions are part of AI literacy too.
The three days of the 2026 UNESCO Digital Learning Week were dedicated entirely to AI in education. Colleagues from Spain, Côte d’Ivoire, France, China, and Italy brought very different perspectives on AI, digitalization, and education to Paris. Conditions differ: technologically, socially, and in terms of education policy: some countries have only just restricted screen time and AI-tool access for younger students, while others have long embraced a more open approach. And yet two themes kept coming up again and again: the need for AI training and AI literacy for teachers and students alike and the importance of preserving human agency amid increasingly human-centric AI development.
The two go hand in hand. AI literacy is the first step toward responsible use, human agency, and human-centric AI development in the first place.
The more AI becomes part of everyday life, the more important it becomes not simply to react to technological developments as they come. Teachers and students alike need to be able to understand what’s behind these technologies, reflect on their impact, and make their own decisions.
Perhaps this is one of the most important takeaways from Paris: we don’t need to wait for the moment when we “know everything about AI.”
Given the pace of development, that moment is probably never going to arrive anyway.
What matters far more is getting started: understanding the basics, trying out first applications, gaining experience, reflecting critically and developing your own stance on using AI along the way.
Training programs can create a safe space for exactly that. The results of the University of Cologne’s study on fobizz’s AI Additional Qualification show that such programs can build not just knowledge, but something at least as important: the confidence to handle new developments on your own.
Perhaps, that is the decisive competency in the age of AI: not knowing every new tool, but trusting yourself to independently make sense of new technologies and use them in a pedagogically responsible way.
Learn more: fobizz’s AI Literacy Training – a scientifically evaluated, multi-week program, helps teachers build their AI competencies, test applications hands-on, and develop their own ideas for school and classroom use. (Currently offered in German and English.)
The results of the accompanying University of Cologne study are published in the journal Frontiers in Education.
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