15 May 2026

How Churchie uses AI to strengthen learning

At Churchie, we take a deliberate, evidence-informed approach to artificial intelligence. We use it to strengthen teaching and learning while protecting the attention, reasoning and independence students need to thrive.

Below, four of Churchie’s teaching leaders explain how technology and AI are being used in our classrooms, and the clear limits the School maintains to protect deep learning.

AI in the academic space

Dr Alex Krzensk, Acting Deputy Headmaster, provides an overview of Churchie’s approach to technology and AI.

Our approach to learning is grounded in research, data and professional judgement. Recent international studies provide a timely snapshot of how today’s students are learning and where schools can have the greatest impact.

Capability has not changed, the environment has

One finding is consistent across the literature: today’s students are just as biologically capable as any generation before them. High-performing students continue to achieve strongly and intelligence has not declined. What has changed is the learning environment, particularly the volume, speed and accessibility of information that surrounds young people. Across many education systems in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), large datasets show average declines or stagnation in literacy, numeracy, sustained attention and extended reasoning. These trends point to environmental influences rather than inherent ability.

How technology shapes outcomes

Technology use is one important contributor. Research consistently links heavy, unregulated screen and smartphone exposure with reduced attention, shallower processing and weaker academic outcomes over time. Students can be more inclined to skim rather than read deeply, and to outsource steps of thinking rather than build them. Importantly, the evidence also makes a second point clear: technology itself is not the problem. Outcomes depend on how it is used and how well it is governed.

Deliberate use, clear limits

That distinction underpins Churchie’s approach to technology and artificial intelligence. We use AI deliberately to support teaching and learning, for example to refine lesson design, strengthen feedback and help students practise and improve. At the same time, we maintain clear limits around its use to protect deep learning. Students regularly:

• work offline
• read complex texts in print
• write at length
• grapple with problems without digital assistance
• practise under exam conditions.

These structures are not a step backwards. They are essential for building attention, judgement and reasoning.

Our position is clear. By being explicit about expectations, disciplined in classroom practice and evidence-based in the way we deploy technology, we ensure students develop both the cognitive skills required for success today and the learning habits they will need well beyond school.

AI supporting student-led study

At the heart of Churchie’s Learning Framework, Dr Victoria Leighton explores how A Learner’s Toolkit is evolving through ALT Compass, a study companion designed to strengthen how students think, reflect and learn in an age increasingly shaped by AI.

A Learner’s Toolkit (ALT) is a school-wide commitment to helping students understand how they learn, not just what they learn. Grounded in the science of learning, ALT equips students with practical study strategies, metacognitive routines and a shared language for learning across the curriculum.

Can AI support learning without eroding it?

As AI becomes a more prominent presence in students’ study lives, a pressing question has emerged. Can AI genuinely support learning without quietly eroding the very habits we are trying to cultivate? The research invites a degree of caution. Academics have warned that poorly designed AI may make work faster but thinking thinner, reducing cognitive effort, weakening metacognitive monitoring and ultimately limiting durable learning.

At Churchie, our ALT team sees something more promising. When carefully designed and teacher-led, AI can do much more than complete tasks for students. It can make learning more accessible, more responsive to individual learners and able to present material in a way that challenges students to think. The question for us has never been whether students will use AI, but whether it can be shaped to work with their thinking rather than instead of it.

A study companion built on the science of learning

Now in an early pilot across two subjects, ALT Compass, developed in partnership with software developers Circean, has been designed as a study companion. Its role is to strengthen habits of thinking that AI itself cannot replace, prompting reflection, guiding revision and reinforcing effective study strategies rooted in ALT.

The design draws explicitly on established principles from the science of learning: retrieval practice, spaced and interleaved (or ‘jumbled’) practice, and elaborative interrogation, which requires students to explain ideas and connect new knowledge to what they already know. These are the behaviours that underpin self-regulated, sustainable learning rather than short-term performance.

Meeting every learner

Crucially, ALT Compass also responds to the reality that learners are not all the same. It provides targeted, student-led support, helping each learner move forward in a way that is realistic and meaningful for them. At the same time, teachers can track their students’ progress and respond accordingly. In doing so, ALT Compass ensures AI strengthens, rather than substitutes for, the work of learning.

Beyond plagiarism: authorship, authenticity and integrity

Dr Terry Byers examines how the rise of AI is reshaping student authorship and academic integrity, and how Churchie is responding by making the process of thinking and writing more visible.

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence has fundamentally challenged traditional assumptions about student authorship, with significant implications for the visibility of the learning process. Historically, academic integrity relied on a ‘policing’ model, where teachers checked for copied or reused work after it was submitted. The large language models that drive AI generate fluent text without copying from a clear source, making this approach less effective.

From surveillance to transparency

In response, Churchie is moving from a model of surveillance to one of transparency and process visibility through Turnitin Clarity. This shift ensures best practice around the authenticity requirements of the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority and the International Baccalaureate. More importantly, it prioritises documenting ideation, creation and learning as it occurs, giving students a more credible demonstration of their authorship.

Making the drafting process visible

A defining advantage of Turnitin Clarity is its ‘film strip’, which makes the drafting process visible. It records typing patterns and drafting phases up to the point of submission, documenting how ideas are developed and refined over time. Teachers can see how students adapt and refine material, distinguishing between legitimate research and the outsourcing of thinking. This transforms assessment into a learning-focused conversation that values observable evolution rather than retrospective suspicion.

The student’s defence attorney

Because generative AI relies on statistical language patterns rather than direct detection of tool use, sophisticated student writing can trigger false indicators of AI assistance. In these instances, Turnitin Clarity becomes the student’s defence attorney, providing tangible drafting records that protect and endorse their original work. This replaces a culture of distrust with one of confidence and fairness, ensuring that the effort of our most talented writers is celebrated and defended.

The School’s investment in Turnitin Clarity shifts integrity from policing to proof, making thinking visible. It restores authenticity and the human voice to the work of our students, rather than relying on outsourced technology.

AI supporting learning

Fiona Philip, Senior School Teacher Librarian, examines how AI can support learning rather than replace it, focusing on the role of timely, targeted feedback in keeping students engaged in the thinking that drives genuine progress.

The rapid development of generative AI has created both opportunity and risk for schools. Used poorly, AI can make it easier for students to bypass the very thinking that learning depends on. If a student uses AI simply to generate an answer, summarise a text they have not read or polish work they do not understand, the technology can weaken learning rather than strengthen it. While academic dishonesty is the most visible concern, the more important issue is what happens to learning over time. If students regularly outsource the hard mental work of questioning, drafting, explaining, revising and improving, they miss the practice that builds understanding and durable skills.

AI as a learning coach

This is why the way we use AI matters. The most valuable uses of AI are not those that replace student thinking but those that support it. Used ethically and deliberately, AI can act as a learning coach, asking students to clarify their ideas, prompting them to strengthen their reasoning and helping them notice where their work does not yet meet the required standard. In this model, the student remains the thinker and author.

Churchie’s use of Class Companion is an example of this more constructive approach. Rather than functioning as a shortcut to a completed answer, it provides students with immediate, personalised feedback while they are working. It helps them understand where their response is strong, where it needs development and what they can do next to improve. Used under teacher guidance, it offers a way to harness the power of AI without removing the cognitive effort that students need in order to learn.

Why feedback works

This focus on feedback is grounded in research on how learning improves. Effective feedback is clear about the goal, connected to the criteria for success and gives students a practical next step. Hattie and Timperley (2007) describe this as helping students answer three questions:

• Where am I going?
• How am I going?
• Where to next?

Sadler (1989) similarly argues that students improve when they understand the standard they are aiming for, compare their current work against it and take action to close the gap. Students need to know what quality looks like before they can meaningfully improve their own work.

Why timing matters

That is why timing matters. Feedback on a piece of writing a week after it is finished can still help, but it loses some of its power because the student has moved on. It is a little like giving a basketball player advice on their shooting technique a week after practice. The player needed the coach beside them while they were shooting, noticing the movement, correcting the technique and helping them try again.

Class Companion supports this kind of feedback loop by giving students guidance while their thinking is still active. A student can draft a response, receive feedback, reconsider their answer and make improvements before the task is complete. Feedback is no longer just an end-point judgement. It becomes part of the learning process itself.

The teacher remains central

Importantly, this does not replace the teacher. The teacher still designs the task, sets the learning goals, selects or creates the rubric, decides what good work looks like and teaches students how to use feedback well. The tool then supports students as they practise, helping them clarify their thinking and revise their work before submission.

This distinction matters for families, because ethical AI use should reinforce learning, not shortcut it. The purpose of Class Companion is not to give students the answer or remove the need for effort. Its value is in prompting students to think more carefully about their own work, whether by clarifying an idea, adding evidence, strengthening reasoning, addressing criteria more directly or checking whether their response actually answers the question.

In a classroom, every student deserves guidance that meets them where they are. Class Companion offers one way to make that more achievable. Our goal is to use AI in ways that strengthen learning by keeping students actively engaged in the thinking, judgement and improvement that genuine learning requires.

References

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487

Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18(2), 119–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117714