Reflections on School Moral Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence ()
1. Introduction
The report of the 20th Party Congress puts forward, “Promote the digitization of education, and build a learning society and a learning country with lifelong learning for all.” In February 2023, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Overall Layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China, which points out that it is necessary to “vigorously implement the strategic action of digitization of national education and improve the national platform of intelligent education”.
Today, China has fully entered the digital era, and school education has undergone profound changes. As an important part of school education, moral education inevitably faces new changes and challenges. Digital technology empowers the construction and application of moral education resources, accelerates the transformation and upgrading of moral education work, improves quality and efficiency, and prompts the formation of new forms and new modes of moral education work in primary and secondary schools in the new era.
2. Literature Review
Literature review is to collect a large amount of relevant information on a certain field, a certain specialty or a certain aspect of the subject, problem or research topic, and then make a comprehensive introduction and elaboration of it by reading, analyzing, summarizing, and organizing the latest progress, academic insights, or suggestions on the current subject, problem, or research topic.
2.1. Current Status of Research
The integration of artificial intelligence and moral education is gradually showing its far-reaching impact. Artificial intelligence technologies, such as face recognition, voice recognition, big data analysis and text recognition, have opened up new paths for moral education and injected new vitality into moral education through digital means. These technologies have not only been applied to precise moral education practices, such as monitoring students’ performance in specific activities through face recognition technology and using big data to analyze students’ behavioral patterns and potential needs but have also promoted the innovation of moral education contents and methods. Personalized and diversified moral education content can be generated based on multi-dimensional data such as students’ age, interests, cognitive level, etc. At the same time, moral education methods tend to be intelligent and diversified, with intelligent analysis technology capturing learning status and emotional changes, and VR (virtual reality) technology providing an immersive learning experience. At the level of moral education evaluation, artificial intelligence technology, supported by big data and intelligent algorithms, realizes the comprehensive collection and analysis of students’ behavioral data and generates accurate and objective moral education evaluation reports. At the same time, digital moral education is facing challenges, such as the dilemma of AI emotional education and the cocoon effect caused by “algorithmic” technology, which requires active adjustment of strategies and multi-party response, but the overall trend is positive and cannot replace human work [1].
2.2. Definition of Concepts
This part explains the meaning of the keywords in the text to the readers so that they can better grasp the central idea of the whole article.
2.2.1. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence attempts to understand the essence of intelligence and produce a new intelligent machine that can respond in a manner similar to human intelligence. In recent years, due to the rapid development of big data, the maturity of deep learning theory and the rapid increase in computer computing power, artificial intelligence has made breakthrough progress, and artificial intelligence has begun to be widely used in all areas of social life. As the current cutting-edge science and technology, artificial intelligence has shown the characteristics of data, intelligence and high efficiency in the process of having a profound impact on social life [2].
2.2.2. Moral Education
The theoretical concept of “moral education” was first put forward by Spencer, a British sociologist and educationalist. Moral education, in the broad sense, covers the political, ideological, and moral influence on members of society, community, school, and family. Moral education, in the narrow sense, refers to moral education in schools, which means the activities of educators to systematically cultivate students’ character according to the requirements of society. Moral education is an important element of primary and secondary education, and in addition to the specialized Moral and Rule of Law curriculum, it is also integrated into daily school activities and out-of-school practical activities.
2.3. Research Review
Up to now, academic research on moral education in schools in the era of artificial intelligence mainly focuses on the two dimensions of opportunities and challenges and tends to rely on national policy documents as the analytical framework and description basis. Although this research method can grasp the overall trend and direction of moral education work from the macro level, it, to some extent, ignores the richness and diversity of practice and lacks in-depth analysis from actual examples.
3. Innovative Path of School Moral Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
This section provides innovative paths for moral education in schools through the three ways of artificial intelligence-enabled moral education content, method, and evaluation.
3.1. Artificial Intelligence Enriches Moral Education Content
Since the establishment of the National Primary and Secondary Schools Network Cloud Platform in February 2020 and its upgrade to the National Primary and Secondary Schools Intelligent Education Platform in March 2022, the platform has made significant progress in the construction of moral education resources. At present, its moral education section has covered nine core columns, such as party history learning, patriotism, and the constitution and rule of law, and is supplemented by a number of panels, such as family education and classical reading, forming a rich and diverse digital moral education resource system. The wide application of these resources not only enhances the convenience and vividness of education, but also realizes the precise supply to learners [3].
In the process of resource construction, the majority of teachers make full use of digital technologies such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other digital technologies to deeply collect and analyze the actual needs of students, and to promote the in-depth integration of digital technology and moral education. They present traditional moral education resources in a variety of forms through new technological means, while focusing on social hotspots and learning priorities in different periods, actively constructing a high-level digital moral education curriculum system, and continuously enriching the moral education thematic resource base. In this process, the introduction of artificial intelligence technology is especially crucial, as it opens up a wide world for the innovation of moral education content, enabling the system to generate highly personalized moral education content based on students’ multidimensional data.
With the rise of generative AI technology, digital moral education has shown new vitality in content innovation and personalization. Teachers can generate more rich and diverse digital moral education teaching resources or forms based on students’ individualized and differentiated needs, effectively stimulating students’ interest in participation and motivation for moral education activities. At the same time, we can design the role of digital moral education instructors, dynamically adjusting the content of moral education according to the actual situation to further enhance the effect of moral education.
The diverse presentation of digital resources, such as e-books, online videos and virtual reality (VR) technology, provides strong support for the richness and vividness of moral education content. These resources enable students to experience historical events and social phenomena in an immersive way, deepen their moral cognition and stimulate emotional resonance. For example, during the post-disaster reconstruction of the Qinghai earthquake-stricken areas, the school utilized the platform to push out thematic resources on earthquake disaster prevention and mental health adjustment, which effectively helped students acquire practical knowledge and information.
In addition, in order to further enhance the effectiveness of digital moral education, a moral education resource database was established with the help of blockchain technology, and a moral education digital resource platform was built. This platform realizes the maximum sharing of moral education resources between regions, breaks the limitations of space and time, promotes the sharing and circulation of moral education resources, centralized management and real-time monitoring, and effectively breaks down the teaching barriers between regions. Through these efforts, the types of digital moral education resources have been improved and enriched, basically realizing the goal of using diversified digital teaching resources to serve teachers’ classroom teaching and students’ independent learning.
3.2. Artificial Intelligence Expands Moral Education Methods
The rise of digital moral education has successfully broken through the limitations of traditional face-to-face offline communication, which not only makes the process of moral education more convenient and efficient, but also greatly enriches the method of moral education, and effectively solves the problems of traditional moral education in the form of a single, insufficient interaction. Digital moral education, through the presentation of diversified content, transcends the traditional verbal form and touches the hearts of students in a more vivid and infectious way.
In this context, the integration of artificial intelligence technology has injected new vitality into moral education teaching. Intelligent analytics technology is like a pair of keen eyes that can capture students’ learning status and emotional changes in real time and accurately, providing teachers with instant feedback so as to help them adjust their teaching strategies and achieve more personalized teaching. Artificial intelligence means such as personalized recommendation and emotional calculation further enhance the relevance and effectiveness of moral education teaching.
Resource construction is the cornerstone of the development of digital moral education, while application is its ultimate goal. In the process of education digitization, it is necessary to adhere to the principle of “demand-driven, application is the king” and be committed to building a digital field that can carry out rich moral education activities. With the help of advanced digital technologies such as VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), MR (mixed reality), 3D, 4D, etc., it is possible to break the limitations of space and time and build a realistic learning place and practice space for moral education activities. These technologies can not only restore historical scenes, stories and characters and give new vitality to traditional moral education resources, but also enable students to gain an immersive sense of figurative experience and gain a deep understanding both emotionally and ideologically.
In practical application, digital technology has shown its potential in many fields. For example, in places such as red museums, exhibition halls, practice bases, and party learning spaces, digital technology has been used to build experiential spaces that enable visitors to gain a deeper understanding of history and culture. Meanwhile, in the education of safety knowledge such as home firefighting, network safety, and bullying elimination, digital technology has also been used to create realistic learning scenarios for students by means of interactive games, etc., which enhances their sensory stimulation and emotional infections, and improves their learning effects.
In the whole process of moral education activities, the advantages of digital moral education resources, such as image, vividness and intuition, have been fully demonstrated. Different application scenarios are built through the digital platform, and the powerful expressive power of digital means is used to achieve the effect of empathy, which helps students to make better reflections and internalize knowledge in learning. In addition, through the digitization of moral education application scenarios, the structure of the moral education curriculum has been reconstructed, and new attempts and explorations have been made in terms of form, experience, and effect, in order to further improve the quality and effect of moral education work.
3.3. Artificial Intelligence Empowers Moral Education Evaluation
Traditional moral education evaluation often relies on teachers’ subjective judgment and experience accumulation, making it difficult to accurately reflect students’ moral character and growth. Artificial intelligence technology, on the other hand, comprehensively collects and analyzes students’ behavioral data through the support of big data analysis and intelligent algorithms, so as to form an accurate and objective moral education evaluation report. Students’ behavioral characteristics provide schools with a comprehensive and objective perspective for assessing and analyzing students’ moral qualities. At the same time, the human-machine co-assessment model can form a multi-dimensional, whole-process evaluation of students’ moral development, thus more accurately grasping the moral development of students [4].
Supported by digital technology, artificial intelligence empowered moral education comprehensively improves the objectivity, scientificity, precision and effectiveness of educational evaluation, and gives full play to the correct orientation of educational evaluation. At present, there are already many schools that use digital technology in the evaluation of students’ comprehensive quality, and with the support of digital technology, moral education evaluation tends to be digital and precise, which can better meet the needs of students’ personalization and precision. For example, social practice, class meetings, school characteristic theme activities, etc., through technical means to record, analyze and give feedback on students’ participation and the use of moral education resources, and then integrate the process records, according to the examination indexes of the students’ moral education portrait, the system generates assessment reports, teachers, parents timely grasp of the student’s situation, and make timely adjustments to the teaching strategy.
In the practice of digital moral education, Jinhua Huancheng Primary School II innovatively introduces a medal system and uses artificial intelligence technology to build an intelligent moral education evaluation system. The intelligent system is able to conduct an all-round, real-time and objective evaluation of students’ moral education performance. Through the comprehensive analysis of students’ data in classroom learning, practical activities, daily behavior and other aspects, it generates detailed moral education evaluation reports and growth suggestions to help teachers find problems and deficiencies in the teaching process in a timely manner and provide teachers with targeted teaching adjustment strategies and methodological suggestions.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.