February 2025

Since the release of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in November of 2022, the teaching world has been abuzz with the promises and perils of AI in the classroom. So far, EducationWeek, an online magazine for K–12 education news, has published around 400 articles on the topic in the last two years! Titles range from optimistic to doomsday; for example: “Can Artificial Intelligence Bring Greater Equity to STEM?,” “Will Artificial Intelligence Help Teachers—or Replace Them?,” “Artificial Intelligence and Social-Emotional Learning Are on a Collision Course.” Despite this high interest, there is still a dearth of information about productive ways that teachers and students can use AI in the math classroom. 

Using AI to Support Teaching and Learning

Concerns about using AI in classrooms—including cheating, lowering of cognitive demand, and disconnecting teachers from their responsibility for student learning—are valid. However, AI also holds promise for mathematics education. We might go so far as to say that we could find ways to use AI that are highly aligned with CPM’s vision to support students in viewing mathematics as intriguing and useful and viewing themselves as capable of engaging in powerful mathematical thinking. For example, a recent study by Stroup (2025) highlights the potential role of generative AI in mathematics education, particularly how AI ‘hallucinations’ (incorrect or logically flawed outputs) can reveal areas where human learners excel. The study emphasizes AI’s limitations in handling complex concepts about complex concepts and how these limitations can inspire a focus on fostering uniquely human capacities, such as critical thinking, creativity, and modeling real-world problems. This perspective aligns closely with CPM’s mission to support students in viewing mathematics as intriguing and useful while promoting meaningful engagement in mathematical thinking. And while we’ve seen studies of ways to get AI to produce innovative and challenging problems (Shah et al., 2024), it still seems to be true that AI-generated tasks in general are not as high quality or any more interesting than lessons created by a group of really creative teachers—e.g., CPM’s writing team! 

How Are Teachers and Students Using AI in Classrooms?

Still, we think there are many ways that AI can improve students’ and teachers’ experiences with mathematics teaching and learning. We want to know: How do you and students use AI in mathematics classrooms? What technological tools (AI or not) do you wish you had integrated with the mathematics curriculum? While we have not considered all of the ways that you use AI and all the wish-list items you could dream up, here are some topics that we have considered and would be interested in learning from you: 

• Ethics. How have you approached co-crafting a Class Code of Ethics about AI or technology use? What is in that code of ethics? 
• Student thinking. How have you used AI or technology to support critical mathematical thinking and reflection? 
• Collaboration and problem solving. How do you ensure that technology in the classroom enhances rather than impedes students’ opportunities to collaborate and authentically problem solve? 
• Checking for understanding. How have you used AI to generate pocket or assessment questions, or to change the types and forms of questions?
• Formative and summative assessment. What parts of the assessment process can be off-loaded to technology without obstructing teachers’ opportunities to make sense of student thinking? How can technology actually enhance teachers’ ability to make sense of student thinking? 
• Independent practice. How do you use AI to support students’ independent practice in ways that align with mixed, spaced practice rather than blocked practice (a series of the same kind of questions—the opposite of mixed) or massed practice (several of the same questions at one time—the opposite of spaced)? 
• Administrative responsibilities. How have you used AI to offload some of the administrative and logistical dimensions of mathematics teaching so that you have more time to focus on supporting student learning? 
• Challenges for teachers. What challenges have you encountered in your efforts to use AI in your teaching practice? 
• Challenges for students. What challenges have you encountered as students attempt to use AI in relation to their mathematics learning? 
• Professional development. Would you like professional development on using AI in your teaching? Why or why not? If yes, what topics or strategies are you most interested in learning about? 
• Future directions. What are your hopes and fears for AI in mathematics education? Are there current challenges you think AI could solve? 

This is not an exhaustive list! CPM’s mission is to empower mathematics students and teachers through exemplary curriculum, professional development, and leadership—CPM was and is by teachers, for teachers. We value your expertise and experiences and look forward to your input as we further develop our ever-evolving roadmap for supporting students in learning mathematics through problem solving, reasoning, and collaboration.

We invite you to join the conversation by sending in a newsletter article about your experiences using AI in secondary mathematics classrooms to cpmnewsletter@cpm.org. Alternatively, consider entering your thoughts into this Google Form (anonymity optional; follow this link to submit) for us to synthesize for internal development discussions at CPM and, given we receive enough responses, a future newsletter to share the results of your submissions with the CPM community! In the meantime, consider supporting students’ understanding of AI through mathematical investigations, such as Inspiring Connections Course 3 Chapter 3 Considering Perspectives (login required).

References

Shah, V., Yu, D., Lyu, K., Park, S., Yu, J., He, Y., Lyu, K., Ke, N. R., Arora, S., Park, S., Mozer, M., & Goyal, A. (2024). AI-assisted generation of difficult math questions. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.21009  

Stroup, W. M. (2024). Using hallucination to envision the future of mathematics education. In Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the PME North American Chapter (pp. 106–109). Retrieved from http://www.pmena.org/pmenaproceedings/PMENA%2046%202024%20Proceedings.pdf