Leading AI Adoption in Your Faculty

Session plans

1. 1

   The leader's mandate — why this is yours to lead

   ~45 min
   Session plan

   Open by asking the room, honestly and without judgement, where AI is already being used in their faculties — and whether any of it worries them. Collect answers on a board; the list is usually longer and riskier than people expect, which makes the case for leadership for you. Then put up the twin-failure-modes table and have each leader self-locate: are they currently closer to paralysis or to hype? Close by having everyone draft the one-paragraph mandate and read two or three aloud.

   Discussion prompts

   • Where is AI already being used in your faculty that you have never formally sanctioned — and what is the worst-case version of that?
   • Be honest: is your instinct to block or to push? What does that instinct cost you?
   • If your principal asked you today 'who decided AI was safe in your faculty?', what is your answer right now?
   Watch for

   Two camps appear — the evangelist who wants to mandate it tomorrow, and the sceptic who wants to ban it. Both are avoiding the harder middle. Name that the goal is deliberate, guard-railed adoption, not a verdict on AI. Watch too for the leader who wants to delegate the whole thing to a tech-savvy staff member — gently return the accountability to where the Framework puts it.

   Standards7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning
2. 2

   Setting faculty & school AI policy that people will actually follow

   ~60 min
   Session plan

   Show a deliberately bad example first: a long, vague AI policy paragraph full of hedging. Ask the room what a busy teacher would do with it (nothing). Then hand out the one-page skeleton and have leaders draft their 'Approved tools' and 'data line' clauses against their own context. Swap drafts with a partner and red-pen for clarity: 'could a relief teacher follow this?' Reconvene and collect the sharpest one or two clauses as models.

   Discussion prompts

   • What is the shortest, clearest way to state the student-data line so no one on your staff can misread it?
   • Which approved tools make sense for your faculty, and what is your rule for 'anything else'?
   • What disclosure norm would you be comfortable defending to a parent?
   Watch for

   Leaders default to length and legalese — they feel safer comprehensive. Push relentlessly for one page and plain English. Watch for the data line being softened into 'be careful with student information'; insist on a concrete, unmissable prohibition with the single NSWEduChat exception named explicitly.

   Standards7.2 Comply with legislative, administrative and organisational requirements7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities4.5 Use ICT safely, responsibly and ethically
3. 3

   Bringing staff with you — change leadership, not a memo

   ~55 min
   Session plan

   Have each leader privately map their real faculty into the three camps and put rough numbers to each — the exercise lands because it is specific. Discuss how the response differs per camp, with emphasis that the cautious majority, not the evangelists, is the priority. Then model the modelling: show (or have a leader show) a real AI-drafted artefact and the human edits made to it, narrating the ethical checks. Finish with everyone drafting the permission message to the cautious majority.

   Discussion prompts

   • Roughly what proportion of your staff is in each camp — and does that change where you spend your effort?
   • What is one thing you could visibly model next week that would show careful, teacher-in-the-loop use?
   • How do you separate 'AI PD' from performance management so people feel safe to experiment?
   Watch for

   Leaders over-invest in converting the resistant and neglect the cautious majority, where the real gains are. Redirect them. Also watch for the instinct to dismiss the deskilling fear as Luddism — insist it is treated as a legitimate risk to manage, because conceding it honestly is what earns the room's trust.

   Standards6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice6.2 Engage in professional learning6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning
4. 4

   Privacy, safety & compliance at the school level

   ~55 min
   Session plan

   Run this as a governance clinic. Put the three legal instruments on the wall and have leaders say, for each, one concrete AI behaviour it permits or forbids in their context. Then work the conflict-of-interest scenario as a group — deliberately use a de-identified 'a leader with a side venture' framing so it stays general — and have them articulate what disclosure and arm's-length actually look like. Finish by drafting the decision-record template, which they keep.

   Discussion prompts

   • Which of the three legal instruments are you least confident about, and what would you need to check?
   • What is your current process when a staff member wants to use a new AI tool — and is it defensible?
   • How would you handle a conflict of interest in a tool decision so that it 'stands up if read aloud'?
   Watch for

   Leaders treat compliance as someone else's department or assume 'the DoE handles privacy'. Anchor the accountability back to them. On conflicts of interest, keep the discussion principled and general — the point is the discipline (disclose, document, arm's-length), not anyone's personal circumstances.

   Standards7.2 Comply with legislative, administrative and organisational requirements4.5 Use ICT safely, responsibly and ethically7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities
5. 5

   Measuring impact & making it stick

   ~50 min
   Session plan

   Start by asking leaders how they would currently prove to their principal that AI adoption helped — most will not have an answer, which sets up the need. Build a shared shortlist of meaningful measures and red-line the vanity ones together. Spend real time on the time-protection trap: ask for shows of hands on whether saved time tends to get reclaimed in their schools (it does). Finish with each leader choosing three measures and drafting their time-protection sentence.

   Discussion prompts

   • How would you currently demonstrate to your executive that AI adoption is working — and is that the right thing to measure?
   • Be honest: in your school, does time saved get protected or quietly reclaimed? What would change that?
   • What review rhythm would keep your position alive rather than letting it gather dust?
   Watch for

   Leaders gravitate to easy-to-count usage metrics and skip the harder quality and wellbeing measures. Push them back to purpose. The time-protection point often surprises the room — give it space, because protecting reclaimed time is a genuine leadership decision many have never consciously made.

   Standards3.6 Evaluate and improve teaching programs6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning6.2 Engage in professional learning
6. 6

   Capstone — your faculty AI position & rollout plan

   ~60 min
   Session plan

   Make this a working session, not a lecture — leaders assemble their two artefacts from the parts they drafted in earlier modules. Circulate and coach. Then run a structured peer review in pairs against the two pressure-test questions (relief-head-teacher test; read-aloud test). Close by having each leader name their single next action and the named owner back at school, and confirm they have logged the PD in eTAMS.

   Discussion prompts

   • Read your position aloud to a partner — where did they hesitate or have to re-read? Fix those lines.
   • What is the one part of your rollout plan you are least confident you can actually deliver, and what would make it deliverable?
   • What is your first concrete step when you are back at school, and who owns it after the launch?
   Watch for

   Leaders try to gold-plate the position into a long document — hold them to one page. Watch for plans that are all policy and no people: if the rollout plan has no staff map, no message and no PD vehicle, it is a policy, not a rollout. Make sure each leader leaves with a genuine next step, not just a document.

   Standards7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice3.6 Evaluate and improve teaching programs

Standards-relevant professional learning, mapped to the APST · verified against national and NSW frameworks, June 2026.