In the era of rapid digital and AI development, teachers' AI and digital competence is key to helping students adapt to the future society. Professor Lim Cheol-il, Director of the Center for Future Education Innovation at Seoul National University, Republic of Korea, delivered a keynote speech on "Teacher AI and Digital Capacity Building" at the parallel session on "AI Education Development and Evaluation" during the 2026 World Digital Education Conference. 

He explained that the AIEDAP (AI Education Alliance & Policy Lab) project aims to enable teachers to guide students to thrive during the digital transformation wave, through education based on AI and digital technologies. The project advocates achieving educational goals centred on AI and digital competence by enhancing teachers' capabilities. 

He further emphasised that students' AI competence cannot be separated from teachers’ AI competence. Therefore, AIEDAP not only focuses on introducing AI tools, but also works to build a teacher professional development system, helping teachers design, implement, evaluate and share AI-integrated teaching practices. 

AIEDAP's development has gone through four stages. 2022 was the direction-setting stage: an implementation plan was developed, and about 100 core teachers received pilot training. 2023 was the modelling stage: full-scale implementation was promoted, and a teacher AI and digital competence framework was developed. In 2024, the project was expanded and institutionalised, aligning with South Korea's national digital education innovation support initiative. 2025 is the expansion and leap stage: the project continues in its fourth phase, and by the end of this year it will have trained 7,000 core teachers. This four-stage development shows that AIEDAP is a long-term, national teacher professional development system, not a one-year training programme.

AIEDAP is built on three design principles. First, the alliance principle: the project is not run by a single institution, but relies on a public-private-school alliance, five regional collaborations, and regional-provincial alliances. Second, the AI and digital competence framework: it includes a teacher competence framework, a competence assessment system, and a competence-based training system and activities. Third, continuous professional development: it aims to build a system that connects practice, dissemination and innovation, provides growth pathways for core teachers, and establishes an accreditation system for professional development activities. Thus, AIEDAP is a multi-stakeholder, competence-driven, sustainably advanced national education development project.