AI and Executive Function: Teaching Students to Think With AI, Not For Them

Over the past few months, I have found myself thinking more about artificial intelligence than I ever expected. Like many educators, I have watched schools grapple with questions about academic integrity, appropriate use and the role AI should play in learning. At the same time, my work as an ADHD coach has led me to a very different set of questions. Rather than asking what AI can do, I have become increasingly interested in how students interact with it, particularly those who find planning, organising and getting started difficult.

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence is changing education. Students can now ask AI to explain difficult concepts, summarise information, generate practice questions and even draft essays within seconds. Unsurprisingly, much of the conversation has focused on whether these capabilities are helpful or harmful. Yet the more I work alongside young people, the more I wonder whether we are overlooking one of AI's most valuable contributions.

Many students with ADHD do not struggle because they lack ability or understanding. More often, they struggle because the process of getting started, organising their thinking or deciding what to do next requires enormous mental effort. By the time they finally begin the task, they are already mentally fatigued. Their difficulty is not always learning the content itself. It is managing everything that happens before the learning can begin.

This led me to an interesting realisation. We often hear that students need to learn how to write better prompts for AI. While I certainly agree that prompting is an important skill, I also think we have overlooked something fundamental.

Writing a good prompt is, in itself, an executive functioning task.

Before students can ask AI for help, they first need to work out what they are trying to achieve. They need to identify where they are becoming stuck, decide what information is relevant, organise their thoughts and communicate all of that clearly. These are not simply technological skills. They are the very executive functioning skills that many students with ADHD find most challenging.

The irony is difficult to ignore. We are encouraging students to use AI to support executive functioning while expecting them to demonstrate strong executive functioning in order to use AI effectively.

That realisation has changed the way I think about artificial intelligence in education.

Perhaps our goal should not simply be teaching students how to use AI. Perhaps our responsibility is to help students recognise their own thinking before they ask AI to become involved. In other words, the conversation may be less about prompt engineering and more about metacognition.

When I coach students, one of the first questions I ask is not, "What do you need to do?" Instead, I usually ask, "Where are you getting stuck?" The answer is rarely, "I don't know the content."

More often I hear things like:

"I don't know where to start."

"There are too many instructions."

"I have all these ideas but I can't organise them."

"I keep reading the question but nothing is going in."

These responses are incredibly important because they identify the barrier rather than the task. Once students understand what is actually getting in their way, the support they need becomes much clearer.

This has led me to begin developing a simple framework that helps students identify what they need from AI before they write a single prompt. Rather than beginning with a blank text box, students first reflect on questions such as: What am I trying to achieve? Where am I getting stuck? What kind of support would actually help me move forward?

The answers to those questions change the role of AI completely.

Instead of asking AI to complete an assignment, a student may realise they simply need help breaking the task into smaller steps. Another student may recognise that they understand the content but need help organising their ideas into a logical sequence. Someone else may need the assessment instructions rewritten in simpler language before they can even begin. In each case, AI is not replacing thinking. It is supporting the thinking that is already taking place.

I believe this distinction is becoming increasingly important as schools continue to explore the role of artificial intelligence. If we focus solely on teaching students how to produce better prompts, we risk overlooking the much more valuable skill of helping them understand their own learning processes. Technology will continue to evolve, and today's AI platforms will eventually be replaced by something more sophisticated. The ability to recognise when we are overwhelmed, identify why we are stuck and seek the right kind of support, however, will remain valuable regardless of which technology we use.

Perhaps that is where the real opportunity lies.

Artificial intelligence should not become a substitute for effort, persistence or critical thinking. Used thoughtfully, however, it has the potential to reduce unnecessary cognitive load so that students can devote more of their mental energy to learning itself. For many students with ADHD, that may be one of the most significant educational opportunities AI has to offer.

As educators, parents and allied health professionals, I think we should spend less time asking whether students should use AI and more time asking how we can help them use it well. The answer may not lie in teaching students to write better prompts. It may lie in helping them better understand their own thinking first.

References

Azevedo, R., & Aleven, V. (Eds.). (2013). International handbook of metacognition and learning technologies. Springer.

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.

Dawson, P., & Guare, R. (2018). Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

UNESCO. (2023). Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research.

Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (1998). Studying as self-regulated learning. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in Educational Theory and Practice (pp. 277–304). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.