Mind the Trust Gap: Identifying (Mis)alignments in Teacher-Student Views Toward Control and Agency in K-12 Classroom AI

Abstract

As Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies have been integrated into school classrooms where multiple stakeholders (with different roles) interact with each other, it is critical to deeply understand stakeholder views in the classroom. In particular, prior work has not fully uncovered how teachers’ and school students’ views might or might not align well with each other, especially in K-12 classrooms. We conducted a speed-dating study using storyboards with 16 school students and 15 school teachers in Germany to investigate alignments and misalignments between their views on student-AI decision-making control in K-12 classroom. Through an explicit pair-matching analysis, we found that students and teachers had misaligned views on several key topics, including how much they trust AI and social and emotional aspects of student learning with AI. Findings also revealed the importance of teacher-student relationships outside of AI use that shape stakeholders’ views and interactions. We discuss potential reasons for the observed misaligned views and strategies to fill the perspective gaps. This study illustrates the complexities of preferences in teacher-student-AI interactions that depend on the dynamic relations among the stakeholders.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2026 · DOI ↗