Conference Agenda

Have AI tools found their way into schools using the freely accessible ChatGPT tool as an example? How eagerly do students use the new tools for their school work? How uncertain are teachers about their role as initiators and facilitators of the learning process?

AI tools have not only existed since February 2023, when the ChatGPT tool was made available to the public. Zhang & Begum Aslang (2021) and Feng & Law (2021) summarized several years researching the use of AI applications in schools and universities and their implications for education. Zhang & Begum (2021) report having reviewed 40 empirical studies on AI in education published between 1993 and 2020. Feng & Law (2021) reviewed more than 1800 articles on artificial intelligence in education from 2010 and 2019.

However, since the release of the ChatGPT tool, the topic has reached a wider audience and gained a new emotional intensity. People of different professions, ages, and educational backgrounds have felt compelled to engage with it more intensively. Artificial intelligence has become part of our everyday lives. It has changed them, and it will most likely continue to change them. VanLehn (2011) was able to show that personalised, digital 1:1 support and fine-grained feedback lead to similar learning outcomes as human support. The change that has already begun has aroused emotions such as curiosity, enthusiasm for the new possibilities, but also fears about whether and how to keep up with the change. In many cases, schools have also responded with concerns about the role of the teacher and the learning effectiveness of school homework in the future. The uncertainty seems justified. After all, the ChatGPT chatbot is a technology that can process natural human language and generate a response, and it can be used for tasks such as content generation in both native and foreign languages, explanation, translation, and much more. Even if the tasks are not part of everyday school life, it is assumed here that the AI tools are used in a school context at home. This has an influence on the institutionalised educational processes, which are not independent of the processes that take place outside. The question of how their benefits affect learning outcomes remains under-researched (de Witt, 2023).

In this contribution I will first present the theoretical background. Then I will present the first results of the survey I conducted for my PhD thesis. The aim of the survey is to take a closer look at the use of ChatGPT among students.

Schools as socially desired organizations have always been focal points of social, political and economic developments and uncertainties due to the associated mission they have to fulfill. Social change and the omnipresent crises have a direct and indirect impact on organizations, including schools. Crises and uncertainties have the potential to erase or blur existing school structures. In extreme cases, the lack of structures for dealing with these impacts can even threaten the existence of both the organizations and the actors involved, which Weick (1993) illustrated very clearly using the example of a forest fire and the firefighters working there (Weick 1993). In this respect, schools are faced with the question of how they react in moments of crisis and how they manage to handle unexpected situations.

Etymologically, the term crisis can be traced back to the Greek “krisis”, which initially marks a turning point or climax, the end of which is open. The negative connotation that accompanies the use of the term only came into use in today's language (Thießen 2011, p. 63). If one understands a crisis as a turning point or climax, the momentum shifts back to the side of the actively acting actors, who no longer see themselves at the mercy of the situation through passive, reactive behavior, but rather actively shape it, or in the words of Weick and Sutcliffe (2003 ) 'manage' it. A challenge that exists in many European countries - also due to the uncertain times - is the lack of qualified teachers willing to 'manage' the impacts of crisis and therefor the uncertainty in schools. This finding also applies to teachers. Programs for career changers who have previously carried out other professional activities are evidence of this problem. The problem is doubled here: Schools need committed and motivated teachers in order to defy the current uncertainties and are also faced with the situation that there is a shortage of teachers and they have to recruit the most motivated teachers.In this respect, schools as organizations are also required to provide short- and long-term answers to these challenges by asking themselves how they can make themselves attractive as employers for potential teachers. Schools are competing, not only for future students but also for teachers (Altrichter and Feyerer 2017). The perspective of employer branding offers a possible answer to this challange. This term originally comes from strategic corporate management (Sghendo & Said 2022) and is understood as a corporate strategic measure with which companies position themselves as credible and attractive employers (Jepp 2014; Schuhmacher & Gschwill 2014; Biswas 2013). Employer branding can therefore be seen as a concept against the background of which an organization develops as a brand for potential employees and thus stands out from competing organizations. The focus is on so-called attractiveness factors that are relevant when choosing a school as a future employer.

The proposed paper is intended to be a theoretical-conceptual contribution. This article critically discusses the potential of the employer branding approach for the development of an employer brand for schools. The central question here is what contribution schools can make to build an employer brand and what makes an attractive workplace from the perspective of teachers. To this end, the proposed article first outlines the problem. The concept of employer branding is then developed and critically discuesse. The considerations provide an insight into various exemplary attractiveness factors from the perspective of teachers and school management, which we were able to generate as part of an initial exploratory study. The article ends with a summary conclusion.