At The Glasgow Academy, a four-year partnership between researchers and educators has quietly solved one of teaching's most persistent problems: how to help teachers spot and act on the moments that matter most in a classroom. That solution is Deliberative Instructional Agents—DIAs—an AI-powered platform developed by the University of Glasgow that captures and analyzes evidence of teaching practice in real time, turning professional development from something teachers squeeze in after hours into something woven into the fabric of their actual work.
The problem DIAs tackles is simple but profound. Teachers know they should base their decisions on educational research, student data, and evidence of what's working. Yet between grading papers, managing classrooms, and endless other demands, most don't have the time or access to meaningfully engage with these sources when it matters—in the moment, when a student says something unexpected, when a lesson goes sideways, when a teaching decision could shift a child's learning trajectory. As a result, instruction is shaped largely by experience and intuition, missing what Dr. Thomas Cowhitt, the teacher-educator and researcher leading this work, calls "critical moments"—pivotal instances that could transform learning if a teacher had the tools to recognize and act on them.
DIAs changes this equation by positioning the evidence within the flow of teaching itself. The platform helps teachers interpret those critical moments through structured reflection and even allows them to rehearse alternative instructional approaches through simulation, all without adding to their workload. It's technology solving a problem teachers actually face, rather than the other way around. As Dr. Matt Gibson, Rector of The Glasgow Academy and Cowhitt's research partner, points out, this represents something rare in education technology: educators identifying an existing problem and designing a solution to address it, rather than tech companies selling solutions in search of problems.
The stakes for this work are high. Teachers' ongoing professional development directly affects school quality, teacher satisfaction, retention, and—most importantly—student learning outcomes. Yet workload pressures have made it increasingly difficult for teachers to dedicate meaningful time to learning, despite genuine commitment. By embedding professional development directly into teaching practice, DIAs has the potential to reconfigure both when and how teachers grow from their own work.
The platform is currently being trialed in secondary and primary schools across Scotland and England, with plans for broader UK and global expansion. But success will depend on how carefully the system is designed. Researchers emphasize that DIAs must preserve teacher agency, maintain transparency about how evidence and research are used, and remain responsive to the real complexities of classroom life. The technology is only as good as its ability to genuinely support teachers' professional judgment—not replace it.
What makes this work distinctive is its grounding in a simple truth: improving teaching isn't about flooding teachers with more information or research. It's about creating the conditions for teachers to meaningfully engage with evidence of their own practice, alongside educational research and their own expertise, in ways that actually inform their decisions. For teachers drowning in administrative demands, that might be the most transformative technology of all.