At 17,000 feet above sea level, the air contains only half the oxygen you’re breathing right now. For most of us, every step would feel like trudging through mud. But Sherpas move through this thin air as if they’re strolling through a neighborhood park.
For over 25,000 years, they’ve survived in conditions that would overwhelm most humans. What makes this remarkable is that resilience doesn’t rest on individual toughness alone—it emerges from systems of cooperation that evolved alongside physiology. Communities, culture, and biology adapted together.
This offers a valuable lens for AI in education. Beneath the surface-level panic, we can see similar patterns of adaptation under pressure.
The Real Story Behind AI and Adaptation
Most headlines frame AI in education as a breakdown: teachers are exhausted by detection, students are tempted to cut corners, and institutions are struggling to respond. AI may be breaking some aspects of existing educational systems; the “what” of assignments and assessments is being destabilized. But it’s also revealing something about the “how” of teaching, the networks of collaboration that enable resilience, and AI pressures are making those systems more visible.
My recent research suggests that the pressures are real, but it also highlights something else happening beneath the surface. Educators, designers, students, and technology providers are not adapting in isolation. They’re negotiating roles, experimenting with practices, and building systems of support together. One participant put it this way:
“Quite a lot of educational innovation is…a collaboration, maybe even sometimes a negotiation.”
The Psychology of Collaborative Adaptation
Cognitive psychology has shown that under strain, people adjust strategies to reduce load and conserve effort. Sometimes that looks like individuals seeking efficiencies. At other times, it means distributing effort across a group—drawing on colleagues, peers, or tools. What my research surfaced is how these adaptive strategies are playing out across different educational roles:
- Teachers spot challenges in real time: “Teachers are the ones with their boots on the ground and using [technologies] every day. They decide what tools to use with their students and what not to use.”
- Course designers help translate and scaffold: “Faculty don’t know what they don’t know about course design…we figure out how that fits within backward design.”
- Students push expectations: “I feel like students are driving these innovations by coming in with higher expectations…especially as they’re accustomed to modern tools and flexible learning environments.”
- Technology providers respond to lived pressures: “The tools became much more important…because faculty are seeing the problem firsthand, then they started to incorporate some of these technologies.”
The Anatomy of Innovation: Educational innovation emerges where roles intersect, not where they work in isolation.
These patterns suggest that adaptation in education doesn’t have to happen in isolation. It can occur where connected roles work under shared pressures, and efforts are distributed. Which raises an important question: What pressures are making it most challenging for you or your students to thrive right now?
Thriving, Not Just Surviving
The environment has always been with its challenges. Every major technological shift—printing press, calculators, internet—created pressures that first looked destabilizing, then became part of the landscape. AI is the newest one.
If Sherpas teach us that thriving at altitude depends on intertwined adaptations, then educators show us that resilience with AI works through collaborative networks.
The psychology here isn’t about proving one fixed truth. It’s about noticing how humans tend to adapt under pressure, and how those adaptations might guide us as we navigate AI in classrooms.
This research involved interviews and surveys with 108 participants across diverse educational contexts. Read the complete study below for detailed insights and a fuller discussion of how resilience emerges under pressure.
