AI in Early Education: How AI May Undermine the Early Childhood Workforce
Summary of Insights
Artificial intelligence is changing early childhood education, but overreliance on it may weaken the role, expertise, and decision-making power of educators. This blog explores how AI can impact the workforce and why preserving human judgment is essential for high-quality early learning.
- AI-generated curriculum can reduce educators’ autonomy, shifting them from decision-makers to implementers.
- High-quality teaching depends on responsive, relationship-based interactions that AI cannot replicate.
- Overuse of automation may erode professional identity and job satisfaction in the early childhood field.
- Leaders must balance efficiency with protecting the expertise and agency of educators.
The Role of AI and the Future of Early Childhood Educators
In CEO John Olsen’s recent post, we examined the developmental risks of overreliance on AI-generated lesson plans in early childhood education. While artificial intelligence offers convenience and efficiency, it lacks the nuance and human responsiveness essential to high-quality early learning experiences. To continue this conversation, I’d like to turn our attention to a less visible, but equally pressing concern: how automation and AI in curriculum development and implementation erodes the professional identity and autonomy of early childhood educators.
The Loss of Professional Autonomy
The highest quality early childhood education is a reflective, responsive, and adaptive practice—every day, pretty much all day. When I think back to my time as a classroom teacher and then in my role as a coach, I remember it almost as a dance, the ongoing effort to observe, reflect, and make intentional decisions in response to what I saw children doing and needing in real time similar to adapting my rhythm to a new song or dance partner.
When curriculum planning is outsourced to AI, I worry educators will feel like their roles are reduced to solely being implementers rather than designers and engineers of learning experiences. The ability to exercise professional judgment for the benefit of children—to make informed decisions based on deep knowledge of child development and the specific needs of a classroom that only the educators present in that room with those children are privy to—is compromised when an algorithm becomes the primary driver of instructional content.
For administrators and program leaders, this shift has serious implications. It may streamline operations on the surface, but does that efficiency come at the detriment of teachers’ opportunities to engage in the kind of thoughtful planning that not only ensures individualized instruction for each child but also deepens their professional practice? Over time, I see a world where this significantly erodes both the quality of instruction and the professional growth of staff.
Undermining Teacher Expertise
Early childhood educators are more than caretakers—they are skilled professionals trained to support young children’s holistic development. They understand how to scaffold language, spark inquiry through play, foster emotional regulation, and nurture peer relationships. These are not skills that can be easily coded into a digital program. When AI-generated curricula and content replace human-centered planning, it sends a message that anyone—or anything—can do this work, devaluing the knowledge base and skill set educators bring to the classroom.
This perception is especially dangerous in a field where public understanding of early childhood education as a profession is already limited. It risks reinforcing misconceptions that early childhood teaching is low-skill work, rather than the high-stakes, relationship-based, intellectually demanding profession that it truly is.
The Impact on Morale and Retention
Perhaps the most immediate consequence of this devaluation is its effect on teacher morale. Feeling sidelined, replaceable, or disconnected from the heart of their work can leave educators feeling disengaged and disrespected. In a field already facing persistent challenges with compensation and turnover, how does removing opportunities for professional agency and creativity not further contribute to burnout and attrition?
For program administrators and center owners, this is not just a philosophical concern—it’s a very tangible one. Retaining skilled, passionate educators is essential to maintaining quality and continuity for children and their families. Supporting teachers’ autonomy and valuing their expertise must remain a priority in any effort to integrate new tools or technologies. We recently saw firsthand the positive impacts on retention when teachers felt respected and supported through access to an integrated ecosystem of resources that put them in the driver’s seat.
Moving Forward With Intention
Technology can be a helpful partner in early education, but only when used to enhance, not replace, the professional voice of the teacher. As we navigate the rise of AI in our field, we must ask, “Are we leveraging innovation in ways that strengthen the workforce, or are we inadvertently contributing to its erosion?”
As we approach instructional design for educators, we are always reflecting on how technology can work for the teacher, not the other way around. Overwhelmingly positive feedback on our use of QR codes to bring daily microlearning videos to teachers right when they need them and the significant rise in teachers joining and completing our virtual 8-week Teacher Acceleration Program are clear signs that teachers aren’t averse to technology—they just crave tools that help them strengthen, their practice not replace it.
The role of the early childhood educator is irreplaceable. Let’s ensure our choices reflect that.
About the Author
As our senior vice president of Educational Content at Teaching Strategies, Breeyn Mack oversees the instructional design of educational resources and professional development initiatives that support early childhood educators and families.
Breeyn is a well-known and highly regarded speaker and author whose background in education—as a preschool teacher and program director and as a public school teacher serving second- and fifth-grade inclusion classrooms—gives her deep insight into the challenges, opportunities, and obstacles that educators face every day.
In her almost 10 years at Teaching Strategies, Breeyn has collaborated with early childhood educators in the field to create innovative, high-quality, and developmentally appropriate curriculum, assessment, and professional development materials to support teachers, including coauthoring Coaching to Fidelity, Preschool Edition.
Fun Fact: Breeyn is also the mother of Lucy, whose time in elementary school gives Breeyn yet another window into the joys of nurturing young learners.
