Navigating AI Challenges in the Portuguese School Cluster of Águas Santas

Author | Lídia Serra and Ângela Andrade

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming educational landscapes worldwide, promising to enhance teaching and learning and supporting organisational decision-making and strategic planning. However, the growing adherence to AI in public schools presents either a unique opportunity or a set of challenges. Limited resources, lack of expertise among users, lack of capacity-building programmes for teachers, ethical challenges, preoccupations regarding the critical use of AI, and concerns regarding data privacy populate parents, teachers, school leaders, scholars and politicians’ minds. Understanding the challenges and being proactive in supporting the transition to an AI-based school is part of the solution. This problem is being discussed with two different approaches. One considers where the line is for using AI in teaching, learning and assessment (Corbin et al., 2025), and the other looks for new directions for teaching and learning (Ardito, 2024). Generative AI allows students to complete assigned tasks without possessing and using relevant knowledge or skills (Nikolic et al., 2024). This is part of a challenge that schools, principals, and teachers need to address by determining the knowledge gap that led the Águas Santas School Cluster to apply a survey within its community. The aim of the survey, an exploratory exercise, was to assess teachers’ and students’ use of AI and define orientations for effectively integrating these technologies into teaching and learning. This article presents the outcomes of teachers’ and students’ perceptions regarding AI use and the orientations for improving its responsible and equitable adoption in the schools of Águas Santas.

The study was conducted in Portugal, at Maia, in the School Cluster of Águas Santas. The questionnaire was developed by the self-evaluation team of the institution in collaboration with the team responsible for the Action Plan for Digital Development of the School. The questionnaire included questions organised in three dimensions: the frequency and kind of use school actors made of AI, and feelings regarding AI use. It stands out for the exploratory character of the questionnaire, developed to diagnose the context, define the baseline for monitoring future developments, and define orientations for decision making regarding the pedagogical use of AI, either by students or teachers.

The questionnaire was administered online in November 2024 using Google Forms. A total of 147 educators and teachers (58,2%) and 952 students (59,5%) from 5th to 12th grade responded to the questionnaire. All teachers and students who voluntarily participated in the study gave their informed consent to the confidential use of information for supporting organisational decisions in the school. The samples were statistically significant with 95% confidence and standardised error inferior to 5%. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, namely, frequencies of responses for comparative purposes.

The study, conducted with 147 teachers and 952 students from the school cluster of Águas Santas, regarding the use of AI, suggests that adherence to it is being established. Table 1 shows that students are ahead of teachers, with frequent AI use around 20% compared to teachers with values around 10%. One-fourth of the students assume using AI for studying purposes. About 40% of the students and teachers affirmed that they are not AI users at all.

Figure 1 presents a dissonance regarding AI classroom experiences, with 70% of teachers affirming that they never proposed teaching and learning activities with AI, even though only 46% of students affirm the same. 20% of the students reported involvement in at least three AI tasks in the classroom, two months after the school year began.

A more specific question regarding AI use is presented below. The use of AI for research, translations, generating presentations and images is more frequent among students, compared with teachers. The regular use of AI for solving exercises, writing texts, and building presentations highlights the need for formative interventions that develop a more critical use of generative AI tools. However, teachers are currently lagging behind students in terms of AI adherence, which could pose a challenge to the school’s pedagogical task force, particularly for the principal and middle leaders. Teachers are not familiar with AI, as they often have limited experience with AI tools for designing teaching and learning activities or didactical resources.

The next figure shows a difference regarding teachers’ and students’ mindset towards AI adherence. Most students exhibit positive feelings regarding the future use of AI, with 90% referring to at least a satisfactory perception. Almost 70% of the students reported at least level 4 confidence in using AI. Conversely, almost 50% of the teachers signalled level 1 of confidence regarding the use of AI and only 11% referred to at least level 4 of confidence. This gap between students and teachers has significant implications: teachers, lacking confidence and familiarity with AI tools, may be unable to adequately support students in developing the critical thinking skills necessary for responsible AI use. Without targeted professional development and structured guidance, this imbalance risks leaving students without the pedagogical scaffolding needed to navigate AI technologies ethically and effectively, potentially widening the digital competence divide within the school community. The data also outlines a conservative teachers’ community regarding technology, which demands capacity-building solutions transversally designed through the institution. This will require significant effort and creativity from educators but has the advantage of allowing for genuine solutions collectively developed to operate in an AI-enabled world (Corbin et al., 2025).

Globally, the results point to a way that the teachers must drive regarding a transition towards teaching and learning models that are more technology-centred, in which the teacher is the content provider and where the student is the user, with technology playing the role of information transmitter (Moreira et al., 2020). Additionally, personalised learning could provide a better opportunity with the support of AI and become a tool for building better pedagogical solutions for inclusion. Tailoring learning to each student’s strengths, needs, and interests and providing students with choice, voice, and flexibility in reaching learning outcomes (Gunawardena et al., 2024) is an area that stands to benefit significantly from the thoughtful integration of AI-driven educational tools.

From a practical perspective, the study findings underscore the urgent need to equip teachers with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to guide students in the critical and responsible use of AI in educational settings. Boosting AI critical use among students and AI use to promote inclusion at the School Cluster of Águas Santas imposes a strategic planning that includes (Fig. 3):

1. Fostering teaching and learning personalisation considering the need to adapt contents, levels of difficulty in tasks, different learning rhythms and styles of learning among students.
2. Supporting the implementation of pedagogical differentiation that allows for designing different approaches for teaching and learning aligned with the students’ needs.
3. Assuring students’ motivation due to their orientation with interactive interfaces, gamification, and tools that generate adaptive responses that can engage students in teaching and learning.
4. Promoting inclusion through AI tools to scaffold students’ specific learning difficulties.
5. Exploring AI permanent availability to students, supporting the students’ learning anytime and everywhere.
6. Supporting formative assessment that assures processes of monitoring the students’ learning continuity.

Practically, this exploratory study highlights the importance of targeted teachers’ professional development to close the confidence gap between students and teachers in AI adoption and generate a critical and ethical community.