Interview with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lachezar Afrikanov, lecturer at New Bulgarian University (NBU) and member of the Social Innovators Bulgaria team.
Nearly 95% of Bulgarian students are already using artificial intelligence (AI) in the learning process, but schools still lack a unified approach to its implementation. This is shown by the first national study on the readiness of the Bulgarian education system for the adoption of AI, conducted by BASCOM and the Ministry of Education and Science, with the participation of students, teachers, and school principals.
The study examines not only the use of artificial intelligence, but also the technological, pedagogical, organisational, and ethical readiness of schools. The conclusion is clear – AI is already part of students’ everyday lives and is gradually entering teachers’ professional practice, but consistent policies, clear rules, and sufficient support are still needed to ensure its effective and responsible use.
What do the findings reveal? How are students and teachers using AI? Why is students’ everyday practice moving faster than the education system, and what changes are needed for artificial intelligence to become a meaningful tool for improving education? These questions are answered in the following interview by one of the study’s authors – Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lachezar Afrikanov, lecturer at NBU and member of the Social Innovators Bulgaria team.
What was the main goal of the study?
The goal was to understand to what extent the Bulgarian school system is prepared for the adoption of artificial intelligence by looking at readiness in a broader sense. We were interested not only in access to technologies and the skills needed to use them, but also in pedagogical practices, management decisions, ethical issues, student participation, and the attitudes of the school community.
The study included students, teachers, and school principals. The quantitative data was complemented by qualitative information from focus groups and an analysis of existing policies and practices. This allowed us to compare different perspectives and identify where they align and where gaps appear.
What overall picture do the results reveal?
Bulgarian schools are currently in a state of partial and uneven readiness. Artificial intelligence is already present in students’ daily lives and in the professional work of some teachers, but it is still rarely included in a comprehensive school-wide policy.
Some schools have active leadership teams, teacher collaboration, and initial agreements on acceptable AI use. In others, the topic remains the personal initiative of individual teachers. This creates significant differences between schools, classes, and even subjects within the same school.
The data shows that technological readiness is gradually increasing, while the pedagogical, organisational, and ethical frameworks are developing more slowly. Connecting these areas is the next major challenge for our education system.
How are students using artificial intelligence?
Students use AI to receive clearer explanations, summarise texts, translate words or concepts, find project ideas, prepare plans, check solutions, or create presentations.
Some students mainly use AI to save time and effort. Artificial intelligence can also be used to generate entire texts, solve tasks, or create finished products. In such cases, students may receive a result without necessarily going through the process of understanding, reasoning, and developing their own arguments.
How and for what purposes do teachers use artificial intelligence?
Among teachers, AI use is more strongly focused on lesson preparation. It is used for generating ideas, developing educational materials, adapting texts, creating questions, examples, exercises, and different versions of assignments.
The direct use of AI during classroom activities with students remains more limited. This raises additional questions: how activities should be organised, how equal access can be ensured, how student work should be assessed, what data can be entered into AI systems, and how to respond to excessive reliance on the technology.
Were these results expected?
To a large extent, we expected students to use AI more actively and freely than the education system itself. What stood out more clearly was the gap between students’ everyday practices and organised learning in schools.
Only 6.5% of students identify school as the place where they learned to use AI. Most students learn independently, through friends, social media, and various digital platforms.
This accelerates the development of practical skills but does not necessarily ensure an understanding of information reliability, authorship, data protection, and the need for verification.
Is students’ use of AI moving faster than the education system’s readiness?
Yes. At the moment, students are moving faster than formal rules and pedagogical practices. They are already using artificial intelligence, regardless of whether their school has developed a position on the topic.
This does not mean that students are necessarily better prepared. They often know the tools better at a practical level, but they lack a framework for evaluation.
The ability to get a quick answer is different from the ability to understand whether that answer is correct, sufficiently justified, and appropriate for a specific task.
How should the conversation about artificial intelligence in education change?
The conversation should gradually move away from the general question of whether AI should be allowed and towards more specific questions about the purpose, conditions, and quality of its use.
For every task, it is useful to clarify what role AI is expected to play. It can explain concepts, provide examples, ask questions, support editing, generate counterarguments, or assist with verification.
When its role is unclear, it can easily lead to the creation of a finished product that looks convincing but does not demonstrate the student’s actual understanding.
A more mature discussion also includes the question of when AI is not needed. Not every short task requires technological assistance. Students need to maintain the ability to read carefully, write independently, solve problems, deal with challenges, and develop their own perspectives.
What are the main risks and how can balance be achieved?
The main risks include excessive reliance on ready-made answers, weakening writing and argumentation skills, accepting inaccurate information without critical evaluation, unclear authorship, and entering personal or sensitive data into public AI systems.
There is also a risk of increasing inequalities. Not all students have equal access to devices, paid versions of applications, reliable internet connections, or support from adults. Without coordinated solutions, some students may gain significantly greater advantages than others.
Balance cannot be achieved through either a complete ban or unconditional encouragement. Clear rules, appropriate assignments, and assessment methods that follow the learning process are needed.
What needs to change at a systemic level?
First, clear and up-to-date national guidelines are needed to provide a common direction without limiting the professional judgement of schools and teachers. School teams need to understand minimum requirements related to data protection, transparency, authorship, assessment, and acceptable use.
Practical professional development for teachers is also essential. Short trainings focused mainly on presenting tools have limited impact. More valuable approaches include working with real educational tasks, peer exchange, classroom observation, and creating accessible collections of tested examples.
Assessment practices also need to be reconsidered. Tasks that require only collecting and reproducing information can easily be completed automatically. More valuable are tasks where students compare, verify, justify, apply knowledge in specific situations, and explain how they reached their conclusions.
The full results and conclusions of the study are available here.
