On 8 June 2026, the TUM Center for Educational Technologies and relAI hosted the
International Symposium on the Future of Learning at Marsstr. 20. Under the theme Future Learning: Global Perspectives, European Pathways, the half-day event brought together leading voices from academia, government, industry, and educational organizations to discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping education as well as how universities, schools, policymakers, and technology companies can respond responsibly.

Opening & Spotlight Talks

The symposium opened with a welcome by Prof. Enkeljeida Kasneci, Director of the TUM Center for Educational Technologies. The program then moved into spotlight talks by Amanda Bickerstaff,
Co-Founder and CEO of AI for Education in the United States, and Dr. Teo Chew Lee from the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. These unfolded the symposium’s international perspective by presenting two complementary views on the future of learning. Amanda Bickerstaff offered insights from the United States, focusing on GenAI adoption in schools, the risks of bans or uncoordinated self-guided use, the need for institutional guardrails and the importance of AI Literacy. To underline the urgency of this issue, she pointed to a striking imbalance in current AI preparation: while 74% of districts were projected to provide teachers with training on AI by fall 2025,
only 35% had provided students with such training, leaving learners themselves comparatively underprepared. Against this backdrop, Bickerstaff defined GenAI literacy as the knowledge, mindsets,
and practices that enable individuals to use AI safely, ethically, and effectively, before introducing AI for Education’s SEE Framework as a practical guide for building such literacy.

Dr. Teo Chew Lee then introduced the Singaporean perspective, showing how AI can be embedded systematically across teacher education, professional development, research, and classroom practice through frameworks such as The 4 Learn Framework by Tan (2024), which emphasises learning about, from, with, and beyond AI. She then made this framework tangible through three stories spanning teacher education, teacher professional development, and research on adolescents. One student-facing example she highlighted was an AI-coding hackathon designed to foster future-oriented AI literacy through real-world problem solving. Rather than positioning learners as passive users of AI, this example showed how students can move from learning from AI as a source of information to learning with AI as a scaffold for inquiry and problem-solving. Ultimately, it pointed toward learning beyond AI, where AI-supported activities help learners develop two key capacities: epistemic agency and knowledge-building discourse. While epistemic agency refers to students’ capacity to take responsibility for developing, improving, and directing their own ideas, knowledge-building discourse describes the collaborative dialogue through which learners question, connect, and refine ideas to advance shared understanding.

Together, these contributions moved the discussion beyond a general recognition that AI is transforming education and toward concrete questions of leadership, capacity-building, pedagogy, governance, and responsible implementation, thereby preparing the ground for the panel discussions that followed.

Panel 1

The first panel, Leading Education in the Age of AI, brought together Prof. Thomas Hofmann, President of the Technical University of Munich; Amanda Bickerstaff; Dr. Teo Chew Lee; and Prof. Dominik Petko from the University of Zurich. Moderated by Dr. Babette Bühler from TUM, the panel focused on leadership, institutional transformation, and the practical responsibilities of schools and universities in the AI era.

A central concern was that AI can make student work appear more polished while also encouraging cognitive offloading, overreliance, and average or superficial outputs. The panel therefore emphasized the need to teach students to go beyond generic AI-generated responses and develop original, meaningful ideas. Amanda Bickerstaff stressed that institutions cannot simply wait, because inaction itself shapes educational outcomes. Prof. Hofmann connected this to university leadership, arguing that universities must remain adaptive and entrepreneurial, since AI is only one of many transformations education will face. Dr. Teo Chew Lee added that AI increases the complexity of learning environments and makes it even more important to develop students’ capacity for deeper thinking and critical judgment. Prof. Petko further underlined that schools and universities need to make careful pedagogical choices about when to use AI, when to turn it off, and how to preserve the human dimensions of education, especially relationships, resilience, creativity, and responsibility.

Panel 2

After a break, the second panel shifted the focus to Responsible AI for Education: Challenges in Europe. Moderated by Prof. Jeanne Rubner, TUM’s First Vice-President for Global Communication and Public Engagement, the panel featured Daniele Esposito from Google for Education, Prof. Gjergji Kasneci from TUM, and Andrea Martin from IBM. The discussion addressed the European context for educational AI, including fairness, privacy, governance, digital sovereignty, access and educational equity. The panelists particularly emphasized that decisions about AI in education should not be made only by technology companies or policymakers, but must involve educators and students who experience these tools in practice. The discussion also addressed global inequities in access to AI tools and AI literacy, the concentration of power among a small number of companies developing powerful technologies, and the question of how European values can be reflected in AI systems when Europe still faces challenges around investment, infrastructure, data sharing, and coordinated governance. Andrea Martin cautioned against simplistic answers, arguing that the complexity of these issues must be acknowledged without settling for easy solutions. Daniele Esposito further emphasized a pragmatic perspective: AI is not going away, so Europe needs to embrace it while building the skills and regulatory frameworks. 

Across the spotlight talks and both panels, one message became especially clear: the question is no longer whether AI belongs in education, but how institutions can shape its use in ways that strengthen learning rather than weaken it. Avoiding AI altogether may seem safe, yet it risks leaving schools, universities, teachers, and learners unprepared for realities that are already unfolding. At the same time, rapid or uncoordinated adoption can lead to overreliance, cognitive offloading, inequity, privacy risks, and shallow learning. The symposium therefore called for a proactive but reflective path: one that combines AI literacy with institutional guidance, experimentation with responsibility, and technological innovation with human judgment.

Poster Session & Networking

The event concluded with a poster session and networking opportunity, giving participants the chance to continue the conversation, exchange ideas, and explore current research and practice around AI-enhanced learning. By bringing together perspectives from Europe, North America, and Asia, the International Symposium on the Future of Learning created a space not only for critical reflection, but also for a shared commitment to shaping AI-enabled learning in ways that remain human-centered, responsible, and future-oriented.

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by S E B A S T I A N    K I S S E L
w: www.sebastiankissel.net