An ethical curriculum in the context of GenAI

By Dr. Greg Sutherland (he/him), lecturer in Indigenous pedagogies and practice, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University

How do you view GenAI?

Earlier this year, I published a short article, “Understanding GenAI through Indigenous ways of knowing,” in Teacher. (1) Since this time, many colleagues have reached out to share their thoughts on how they are working to reorient their classrooms to foreground values of ethicality, observe appropriate scholarly protocols, and guard against appropriation in the face of GenAI (generative artificial intelligence). I was deeply heartened to hear that so many educators throughout the province were asking the same kinds of questions that were near to my heart as we all explore productive ways forward in the context of this seemingly game-changing technology. One idea offered by Brianna Stusiak, a science and technology teacher in the Surrey School District, is that the advent of GenAI can be seen as a gift that invites us to move beyond teaching practices that we know to be ineffective so that we may seek out new approaches that better align with the needs of students. (As will become clear through the course of this article, it is important to acknowledge that Brianna gave me her explicit consent to share her idea in this article.)

These conversations about the place that GenAI will hold in teachers’ classrooms have revealed a profound collective ambivalence in the teaching community ranging from optimism, to distrust, to excitement, to despair. What has become increasingly clear to me is that—regardless of whether we see GenAI as an agent of pedagogical change, as an unavoidable fait accompli, as a powerful means of supporting student achievement, or as a troublesome plagiarism machine—educative approaches to how this technology enters the classroom seem the best way forward.

... regardless of whether we see GenAI as an agent of pedagogical change, as an unavoidable fait accompli, as a powerful means of supporting student achievement, or as a troublesome plagiarism machine—educative approaches to how this technology enters the classroom seem the best way forward.

What’s at stake

As a Métis educator, I am particularly invested in purposeful educative approaches to this work. I believe that the careless implementation of GenAI can have dire consequences for the work of healing and reconciliation as outlined by Standard 9 of the Professional Standards for BC Educators, which asks all educators to “integrate First Nations, Inuit, and Métis worldviews and perspectives into learning environments." (2) Without careful consideration of how GenAI is being used by teachers and students, we run the risk of undermining our commitments to healing and reconciliation. Careless implementation of GenAI can result in modelling appropriation, undermining Indigenous scholarly protocols rooted in permissions and acknowledgments, damaging relationships with students, and distancing students from an understanding of their own identities as learners and of their relationships with the lands upon which they reside (see my previous article for more on this).

Three questions for educators

Teachers in all subjects and grade levels must decide how we can best equip students with the critical, ethical, and technical know-how to be successful learners when GenAI is only a click away. Accordingly, I would offer the following three questions to teachers for consideration in aligning their GenAI policies with the tenets of Indigenous scholarly ethics.

1. If GenAI was trained on materials without consent, can we use it without modelling disregard for ethics?

Numerous lawsuits have been launched by media outlets such as The New York Times, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and the CBC against GenAI companies, such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and ChatGPT, for illegally accessing years of hard work by journalists and editors. This being the case, we teachers should be concerned about using GenAI in classrooms, given the incommensurability of GenAI’s genesis and the aims of teaching about Indigenous scholarly protocols, permissions, and consent. Students have a right to learn about the long history of the appropriation of Indigenous knowledges, cultures, and technologies but deserve to do so through pedagogies that do not mirror the very approaches that they are meant to be learning about. These understandings of respect are supported by Article 31 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states, “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions," (3) and these understandings of respect are foundational to the First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) First Peoples Principles of Learning, which state, “Learning involves recognizing that some knowledge is sacred and only shared with permission and/or in certain situations." (4)

2. If GenAI creates text and images through statistical probability, does it really know what it is saying and, if not, who is responsible for what it says?

Many models of Indigenous teaching and learning foreground the importance of students learning that they have responsibilities to the world around them and that they must learn how to live up to these duties to their ecologies. The FNESC First Peoples Principles of Learning, for instance, state, “Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions." (5) Understanding the implications of our actions includes being responsible for what we say, what we write, and what we create. Given that GenAI isn’t really an “artificial intelligence” but rather an algorithm that creates through predictive probability modelling, it is fair to say that it is both authorless and unaware of what it is saying. As such, it cannot be responsible for what it says or creates. Since this is the case, we teachers should be asking ourselves how we can teach about ethical accountability if GenAI muddies foundational concepts such as authorship and responsibility.

3. If GenAI can create stories, images, and ideas that are always available for the taking, how do we use it to teach the spirit of reciprocity? 

Recognition of our responsibilities to give back to our communities and ecologies is central to Indigenous worldviews. In this understanding of ethical duty, it is the gifts with which we are endowed that define our obligations to the world that we inhabit. The Potawatomi scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer teaches us that “Enumerating the gifts you’ve received creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you already have what you need. Recognizing ‘enoughness’ is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more." (6) In a time when we are increasingly experiencing the environmental impacts of economies that are driven by resource extraction, consumerism, and disposability, the need to teach our students gratitude and reciprocity is paramount. When GenAI produces text, images, and ideas without asking anything in return, how can teachers help young people to understand gratitude and reciprocity? When students use GenAI for their learning, they are also learning to take without giving anything in return. The relationship between concepts of reciprocity and GenAI are further problematized when we consider the deleterious impacts on the natural world resulting from the energy required to sustain the operation of GenAI.

When students use GenAI for their learning, they are also learning to take without giving anything in return.

An ethical curriculum: A different way forward

I would like to conclude this article by circling back to the idea that Brianna Stusiak offers us: that the advent of GenAI can be understood as an invitation to approach teaching and learning differently. In my own teaching, I have come to understand the emergence of GenAI as the ideal occasion to move toward what can be called an ethical curriculum. This curriculum includes learning about the benefits and limitations of GenAI by directly addressing questions of respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. An ethical curriculum means creating opportunities for students to learn about local scholarly protocols around the sharing of traditional stories, the gifting of songs, the appropriate expectations for participating in cultural activities, and the many manifestations of appropriation.

My current teaching context is in post-secondary education, but curriculum in support of this kind of teaching and learning can be found throughout the K–12 BC curriculum documents. For instance, the Mathematics 10–12 curriculum includes the competency elaboration of “Incorporate First Peoples worldviews, perspectives, knowledge [local knowledge and cultural practices that are appropriate to share and that are non-appropriated], and practices to make connections with mathematical concepts." (7) Truly teaching to this competency necessitates that students develop an understanding of what it means to be in keeping with local ethical protocols in order to begin to address concepts like appropriation and permission. Similarly, the English Language Arts 10–12 curriculum includes the curricular content item “protocols related to the ownership of First Peoples oral texts." (8) Again, it would be difficult to address this curriculum without exploring ideas of scholarly ethicality. For subject teachers who cannot find a curriculum that addresses these kinds of ethical concerns, teaching your students about protocols, permissions, consent, and appropriation is broadly supported by Standard 9 of the Professional Standards for BC Educators.

An ethical curriculum means that in their daily work, my students learn to handle the ideas of others with care and respect. This ethicality includes assiduous attention to permissions and issues of copyright, such as citing permissions for sharing stories that are not their own, using only public domain images or images that they have created, and spending the time to trace ideas back to their source so proper attribution can occur. I encourage students to reach out to the creators of content, friends, classmates, and teachers to ask for permission to use ideas and images rather than assuming tacit permission simply because it appears on the internet. An ethical curriculum also requires students to take the time to learn about the identities of authors and assess the appropriateness of the resource. (The Haida/Settler scholar Sara Florence Davidson offers an excellent framework for scaffolding this kind of exploration.) (9)

In my teaching, I am careful to model my deep regard for the work of others, as I do not use any images, frameworks, lesson ideas, or assignments without careful and respectful attribution. In my current classroom resources, I take the time to make direct reference to the material from where it was originally adapted. I also uphold this care for the intellectual property of others by making a public promise to my students that I will not put their work into GenAI for purposes of assessment or for authenticating it for academic honesty. I explain to them that my ethical duty to them and their scholarship prohibits me from sharing their work with others or with the GenAI algorithm without their express consent. In these small but important ways, I am modelling the ethicality that I hope my students apply to their own work and the work of others. In a time when GenAI can write an essay, solve a math equation, or create a historical timeline in moments, I wonder if shifting toward an ethical curriculum, where students consider questions of appropriation, respect, and consent, might be the most productive way to prepare students for what is yet to come.

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1 Greg Sutherland, “Understanding GenAI through Indigenous ways of knowing,” Teacher, January/February 2025, p. 26–27. 

2 British Columbia Ministry of Education and Child Care, “Professional Standards for BC Educators,” Government of British Columbia, 2019.

3 United Nations General Assembly, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, United Nations, 2007.

4 First Nations Education Steering Committee, “First Peoples Principles of Learning,” 2008.

5 ibid.

6 Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Scribner, 2024, p.12.

7 British Columbia Ministry of Education and Child Care, “Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives: Mathematics K–12,” Government of British Columbia, n.d.

8 British Columbia Ministry of Education and Child Care, “Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives: English Language Arts K–12,” Government of British Columbia, n.d.

9 Sara Florence Davidson, “Evaluating Indigenous education resources for classroom use,” Teacher, May/June 2020, p. 22–23.