A Five-Step Progression to AI Fluency (For Adults and for Students)
This is a follow-up post to my original article: Let’s focus on AI-Fluency, not AI-Literacy.
If you’re a school leader trying to help your teachers, staff, and students meaningfully integrate AI into learning, there is no one and done professional learning experience that will get you there.
But, I think you already knew that. I believe AI fluency is a progression.
Just like reading fluency or mathematical fluency, it builds over time through repeated, authentic use…not through one professional development session labeled “AI 101.”
The good news?
We’re beginning to understand the staged journey people follow as they move from AI novices to confident, discerning (this is my favorite word around AI right now), and creative AI users. This applies to both adults and the students we serve.
Below is a five-step progression to AI Fluency, what it looks like for educators, and what it looks like for students in a K-12 system. Use this progression to guide PD, curriculum design, and your long-term AI vision.
The Five Stages of AI Fluency
These stages are drawn from research on digital fluency, emerging AI frameworks from higher ed and workforce development, and the core idea from Harvard Business“AI-Fluent Employee” work which you can read here.
People learn AI through situated, iterative use (not by memorizing how AI works).
Here’s the progression.
Stage 1: Exposure
(“I’ve Seen It. I Know It Exists.”)
Adults
At this level, educators are simply aware that generative AI exists. They may have heard about ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Magic School, or School AI. Some probably watched a video or saw a demo. Many have already tried typing one or two simple prompts. This normally leads to some curiosity mixed with skepticism
There is no sustained use yet. Just recognition and initial experimentation.
What this looks like in PD:
Intro sessions, basic demonstrations, and low-stakes exploration time.
Students
For students, this is equivalent to early “digital exposure”: Seeing AI used by a teacher to generate examples, or watching a classmate use AI for brainstorming. This could be using a simple AI feature embedded in an app, but there is no real independence. Just curiosity and recognition.
Stage 2: Assisted Use
(“AI Helps Me With Something I Already Do.”)
Adults
This is where teachers start to actually use AI to support existing tasks. These are also the tasks that many folks try to “trojan horse” AI into school with as an effort to save adults time, energy, and mental space.
Drafting emails
Rewriting or creating rubrics
Analyzing data
Generating exit tickets or bell ringers
Getting ideas for lessons
Using AI to differentiate materials (Lexile, background knowledge, sentence frames)
The key is that AI is assisting, but the teacher is still doing most of the decision-making and creating.
This aligns with early SAMR “Substitution/Augmentation,” and it’s a perfectly normal starting point.
Students
Students use AI for help here as well.
Vocabulary help
Summaries of complex texts
Brainstorming topic ideas
Checking their work for clarity
Rewriting their own sentences more clearly
Again, AI is helping, not leading.
This stage strengthens fluency when used transparently and intentionally. The big issue with this stage is if AI takes over the task completely, what are we missing in it’s place?
Stage 3: Co-Creation
(“AI and I Work Together to Make Something Better.”)
Adults
This is the turning point where educators start to see AI as a thinking and planning partner, not a shortcut. Many different examples at this stage.
Teachers draft something, AI revises, teacher edits again
Teachers ask AI to produce three variations and choose the strongest (like I use Magic School “Make It Relevant” prompt for)
AI helps create multiple solution paths, examples, or analogies
Teachers use AI to refine instructions to students
AI becomes a partner in ideation, revision, and productive struggle
Educators who reach this stage begin advocating for colleagues to use AI because they feel the time savings and quality lift in daily practice.
Students
Students at this stage:
Compare their writing to AI’s and defend their choices
Use AI to get feedback on thesis statements
Ask AI to explain concepts in multiple ways
Generate “wrong answers” with AI and explain the misconceptions
Co-create lab reports, essays, stories, or problem sets with teacher-designed guardrails
This is where real critical thinking shows up, because students are evaluating AI rather than accepting it. When they accept it just “as is” then they are not a partner, but a consumer.
Stage 4: Judgment & Discernment
(“I Know When to Use AI, and When Not To.”)
Adults
Fluent educators are constantly evaluating whether or not AI would be useful, and what some of the downfalls might be. At this stage they can recognize hallucinations, bias, and shallow reasoning. They’ll take time to fact-check AI outputs, look at linked sources.
Here we can compare AI-generated solutions and choose between tools based on privacy, accuracy, and purpose.
This stage often explains limitations to students and designs assignments where students must critique AI’s work (or defend their use).
This aligns with the research showing that AI fluency = critical use + applied use, not just theoretical understanding.
Students
Students begin to demonstrate awareness of AI errors and biases. They’ll have the ability to justify why AI might misunderstand a prompt, as well as skill in prompting with clarity and purpose (with intention).
Most importantly, students at this stage show ethical decision-making, specifically when not to use AI.
This stage is essential for college and career readiness, and I would argue has major civic life implications as well.
Stage 5: Transfer & Innovation
(“I Can Use AI Creatively Across Contexts.”)
This is the ultimate goal of AI fluency. And, is the main reason I like to focus on fluency, not literacy.
Adults
The educators at this stage use AI to support instructional design, not just tasks. They build AI-supported performance tasks, create multimodal learning materials (text, audio, video), and draft curriculum maps or unit plans collaboratively with AI.
This stage has adults that teach students how to use AI, because they’ve internalized thoughtful, ethical practice themselves. They’ve become AI-fluent instructional leaders.
Students
AI-fluent K-12 graduates will be able to all of the following.
Integrate AI into research, writing, math reasoning, and design
Use AI as a collaborator on complex projects
Create original, high-quality work with transparent process
Adapt their use of AI to new subjects, tasks, and tools
Think critically and ethically about AI’s role
Transfer skills to new tools and situations (the heart of fluency)
This is where you see true “Profile of a Graduate” alignment that connects to skills all of us will need like adaptability, critical thinking, creativity, communication, and agency.
Discussion Questions for the Five Stages of AI Fluency
Stage 1: Exposure
Question 1:
“What emotions come up for you when you hear the term AI in education and why do you think that is?”
Stage 2: Assisted Use
Question 2:
“Where are you already using AI to save time or simplify a task, and what’s one small but meaningful way AI could assist you further without changing your core practice?”
Stage 3: Co-Creation
Question 3:
“Can you think of a lesson, unit, or routine where partnering with AI (brainstorming → drafting → revising together) could raise the quality of what you produce for students?”
Stage 4: Judgment & Discernment
Question 4:
“What guardrails or questioning strategies do you use (or would you use) to evaluate whether an AI output is accurate, appropriate, unbiased, or useful?”
Stage 5: Transfer & Innovation
Question 5:
“If you had no fear, no constraints, and the support to experiment, how might you use AI in your class or role to create a new kind of learning experience we’ve never tried before?”
And here is an infographic to use! If you want to see how we can partner together in this work, reach out any time.
