New! Education AI Fellowship Opportunity–Math Readiness-to-Learn

Application Priority Deadline is January 6th, 2025. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Many popular tools today produce learning in middle school mathematics significantly above the status quo, but only for a small portion of students, in some cases as low as 5%. A tool that can produce learning for students at scale has been elusive. We hypothesize that a major obstacle to learning is the degree to which students are “ready to learn”—available, prepared, motivated.

Existing tools are built based on evidence that increasing a student’s time spent in a “favorable learning environment” generates learning. However, user persistence and adoption are often low, especially for students most in need of support. Many hypothesize that this is due to a lack of motivation to learn on the part of the student. A Raytheon survey from 2012 found that “over half of middle school students said they would rather eat broccoli than do their math homework; 44% would rather take out the trash.” 

We believe it is “readiness,” rather than solely lack of motivation that keeps many students from succeeding even in a favorable learning environment. We believe students do want to learn, but other factors may be keeping them from doing so. “Readiness” is intended to encompass characteristics of the student, the environment, the task, how it is presented, peer attitudes, etc.  

To this end, we seek an extraordinary Fellow to explore a generative AI-enabled approach to driving student readiness-to-learn math. We anticipate the Fellow may approach the challenge with a set of possible solutions including: 

  • Gamification or real games

  • Wise interventions such as mindset change and purpose for learning

  • Financial incentives

  • Other extrinsic incentives such as college or career goals

  • Behavioral science/economics

  • Human-in-the-loop accountability

  • Social/peer examples

  • Machine-augmented relationships

  • Interest

  • And others! 

There is likely no one silver bullet and we may need several strategies working in tandem. In order to test a number of strategies within 12 months, we believe a Fellow would need to create a sandbox for testing and a quick, iterative approach. We do not want to restrict our explorations to a school environment. A Fellow would be welcome and encouraged to test in and out of school settings.

What is Teaching Lab Studio?

Teaching Lab Studio is the AI R&D department of Teaching Lab, a leading provider of educator coaching and professional learning across the U.S. We created the Studio to incubate high-impact ideas made possible by the dramatic progress in generative AI. We believe that AI-enabled supports and tools can unlock the potential of both educators and learners in ways that haven't been imagined, especially for those furthest from opportunity.


Why We Exist

Many of the AI tools introduced in the last several months produce low-quality resources, ignore learning science, or fail to understand the learning environment in and out-of-school. Furthermore, many funders don’t provide innovators with the guidance and wrap-around support to find out what really works. We solve the problem by strategically supporting innovators. This way, you can create usable tools that improve instructional coherence and employ what we know about what works in teaching and learning. 


What We Provide

  • Funding: Initial support (up to $1M) for up to 12 months of applied R&D, with potential for extensions and follow-on funding. Resources will enable the Fellow to focus on team formation, building, experimenting, and learning.

  • Expertise in learning science: Leverage Teaching Lab’s deep understanding of learning science and student engagement to accelerate prototyping and launch.

  • Strategic planning: Get world-class expert advice in areas of pedagogy, product design, machine learning, education policy and research, go-to-market strategy, fundraising, and more.

  • Team bonding and idea-sharing: In-person retreats that bring together Teaching Lab staff for innovation cross-pollination.


What You’ll Do

As a Fellow, you’ll design experiments to determine what innovative UX + AI features increase student engagement and learning in a beyond-school context.

Examples of your activities include:

  • Identify the needs, preferences, and pain points of students via research, interviews, or observations;

  • Engage in ideation, resulting in several well-formed hypotheses around improving student engagement;

  • Design experiments to gather user feedback and measure learning;

  • Recruit the talent you need to pursue our thesis;

  • Oversee the development of one or more product prototypes;

  • Test your prototype with students including other end-users you identify;

  • Continuously iterate your prototype based on the feedback you collect during your experiments;

  • Unlock follow-on capital based on your progress; and

  • Most importantly, gather learnings that will inform future hypotheses and the roadmap of your prototype(s).

Who You Are

  • You bring many ideas aligned to the initial provocation to improve student engagement and learning and have experience bringing projects to a testing and implementation phase;

  • You have a strong interest in AI and the literature on learning science;

  • You’re a self-starter with a track record of driving change;

  • You’re excited to learn from testing and can iterate quickly.

  • You have a research mindset, math expertise, and like to be in schools and around adolescent children.

  • You may have a Ph.D., a research background, and/or experience in quantitative methods.

If the above sounds like you, we strongly encourage you to apply. Teaching Lab is an equal-opportunity employer committed to reflecting the diversity of the students we serve. We pursue equity as both a means and an end and enthusiastically welcome candidates of all backgrounds to apply for this role. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.  Applicants must reside in the continental United States.

Commitment

Work is remote with an expectation of several week-long in-person retreats throughout the Fellowship to allow for innovation cross-pollination with team members.

Salary

The salary range for a Fellow is $125,000-$222,351. Teaching Lab offers a comprehensive benefits package for fellows, including: 100% organizational contribution for employee costs and 50% organizational contribution for dependent (spouse and children under 26) costs for the Teaching Lab reference medical, dental, and vision plans; flexible health spending accounts; generous time off, and additional perks.