Source
The European Digital Education Hub
Summary
This European Digital Education Hub report explores how explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) can support trustworthy, ethical, and effective AI use in education. XAI is positioned as central to ensuring transparency, fairness, accountability, and human oversight in educational AI systems. The document frames XAI within EU regulations (AI Act, GDPR, Digital Services Act, etc.), highlighting its role in protecting rights while fostering innovation. It stresses that explanations of AI decisions must be understandable, context-sensitive, and actionable for learners, educators, policy-makers, and developers alike.
The report emphasises both the technical and human dimensions of XAI, defining four key concepts: transparency, interpretability, explainability, and understandability. Practical applications include intelligent tutoring systems and AI-driven lesson planning, with case studies showing how different stakeholders perceive risks and benefits. A major theme is capacity-building: educators need new competences to critically assess AI, integrate it responsibly, and communicate its role to students. Ultimately, XAI is not only a technical safeguard but a pedagogical tool that fosters agency, metacognition, and trust.
Key Points
- XAI enables trust in AI by making systems transparent, interpretable, explainable, and understandable.
- EU frameworks (AI Act, GDPR) require AI systems in education to meet legal standards of fairness, accountability, and transparency.
- Education use cases include intelligent tutoring systems and lesson-plan generators, where human oversight remains critical.
- Stakeholders (educators, learners, developers, policymakers) require tailored explanations at different levels of depth.
- Teachers need competences in AI literacy, critical thinking, and the ethical use of XAI tools.
- Explanations should align with pedagogical goals, fostering self-regulated learning and student agency.
- Risks include bias, opacity of data-driven models, and threats to academic integrity if explanations are weak.
- Opportunities lie in supporting inclusivity, accessibility, and personalised learning.
- Collaboration between developers, educators, and authorities is essential to balance innovation with safeguards.
- XAI in education is about shared responsibility—designing systems where humans remain accountable and learners remain empowered.
Conclusion
The report concludes that explainable AI is a cornerstone for trustworthy AI in education. It bridges technical transparency with human understanding, ensuring compliance with EU laws while empowering educators and learners. By embedding explainability into both AI design and classroom practice, education systems can harness AI’s benefits responsibly, maintaining fairness, accountability, and human agency.
Keywords
URL
https://knowledgeinnovation.eu/kic-publication/explainable-ai-in-education-fostering-human-oversight-and-shared-responsibility/
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