Debate around AI in education has focused largely on software, including models, tools, platforms, and policy frameworks. Less attention has been paid to a quieter development: a return to print as a primary instructional medium.

After moving heavily toward digital instruction in 2009, Sweden announced a policy reversal and committed more than $200 million between 2022 and 2025 to reintroduce printed textbooks in schools. The decision followed concerns about declining literacy, reduced concentration, and widening equity gaps.

Finland, long regarded as a technology-forward education system, also scaled back its classroom laptop use. From autumn 2024, schools shifted emphasis back to paper-based learning for younger students, alongside a national law restricting smartphone use in schools beginning August 2025

The OECD’s Trends Shaping Education 2025 frames this shift as a structural policy question: how should education systems balance digital integration with evidence-based pedagogy?

For educational publishers, this is not a symbolic shift. It is a practical one. Publishers sit at the intersection of three elements now being reconsidered together:

• printed instructional materials
• curriculum design and assessment
• AI-enabled digital systems

The question is no longer whether AI belongs in education. It is how it should be integrated without weakening foundational learning conditions.

The Nordic Reversal: A Structural Signal

In a 2024 policy announcement, Sweden reinstated printed textbooks, handwriting, and physical learning materials as the default for early grades and repositioned digital resources as complementary tools rather than primary instructional media. This shift followed measurable academic decline. The OECD’s PISA 2022 Country Note for Sweden reported the country’s lowest mathematics and reading scores in a decade, erasing gains made since 2012. In mathematics classes alone, nearly four in ten students reported being distracted by digital devices.

Comparable trends emerged in Finland. Teenagers were averaging roughly six hours of daily screen time, and national assessments recorded declines in reading proficiency between 2016 and 2021.

The policy response has not been limited to the Nordic region. By the end of 2024, UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report noted that seventy-nine education systems worldwide had introduced some form of smartphone restriction in schools. In the United States, more than thirty states and the District of Columbia had adopted measures limiting or banning phone use in K–12 classrooms by late 2025.

A growing number of education systems now acknowledge that unmanaged digital exposure during instruction can undermine the conditions required for sustained learning.

The Neuroscience Case for Print and Handwriting

Research in cognitive science draws a clear distinction between exposure to information and durable learning. Learning requires active encoding, motor engagement, and sustained attention. Not all instructional tools produce these effects equally.

A 2025 review of neuroimaging studies found that handwriting activates broader and more integrated brain networks than typing. Forming letters by hand engages motor, sensory, and cognitive regions simultaneously. Keyboard input, while efficient, involves more repetitive motor patterns and lower sensorimotor variation.

In a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology observed more complex neural connectivity when participants wrote by hand compared with typing. These connectivity patterns are associated with stronger encoding and memory formation.

The distinction is practical:

• handwriting supports deeper processing and recall
• printed text reduces multitasking and on-screen distraction
• physical materials reinforce spatial memory through layout and page position

Textbooks and workbooks are not outdated formats. They align with established findings about how attention, memory, and motor activity interact during learning. Digital tools and AI systems can support instruction, but the underlying cognitive work still depends on sustained engagement.

The Attention Economy and the Needed Antidote

Students do not enter classrooms with neutral cognitive baselines. Many arrive after hours of exposure to short-form video, social media feeds, and continuous notifications. This pattern shapes how long they can focus and how deeply they process information.

A 2025 longitudinal study from the Karolinska Institutet followed more than 8,300 children over four years and found that heavy social media use was associated with gradual declines in sustained attention. Additional research published in Frontiers in Public Health reported links between excessive screen time and delayed development of executive functions, including working memory and cognitive flexibility.

Even when classroom devices are offline, prior screen habits affect concentration. This context helps explain why many education systems have restricted smartphone use during school hours.

Printed materials change the learning environment in concrete ways:

• they remove notifications and background applications
• they limit task switching
• they require sustained visual tracking across fixed pages
• they slow the pace of response through handwriting

These constraints are functional. They support the conditions required for deep reading, problem solving, and retention. AI tools can assist with analysis and feedback, but attention remains a prerequisite for learning.

AI as Instructional Support, Not Substitution

This evidence does not argue against AI in education. It clarifies its proper role. While AI systems excel at creating operational efficiency, efficiency alone does not equate to improved learning outcomes. The critical distinction lies between augmentation and automation. Technology should extend the capacity of both teachers and students rather than replace the cognitive friction required to build foundational skills.

In a balanced instructional model, effective AI augmentation includes:

• Adaptive assessment systems that analyze student performance data and recommend targeted practice pulled directly from verified curriculum materials.
• Structured personalization that adjusts the pacing of learning while remaining strictly within a defined scope and sequence.
• Educator enablement tools that assist teachers with grading, lesson differentiation, and real-time classroom analytics.

Content companions that synthesize core textbook material into alternative study formats, such as structured quizzes, leveled summaries, or visual organizers.

In every one of these use cases, the verified textbook or core curriculum remains the primary source of truth. AI systems are utilized to process, navigate, and reorganize that content. They are the scaffolding; they do not replace the foundation.

Education Publishing’s Strategic Position

The educational publishing market is changing in structure, not contracting. Recent market intelligence projects the global educational publishing sector will grow from approximately $26.8 billion in 2025 to nearly $92 billion by 2035. K-12 textbooks and courseware account for a substantial share. At the same time, digital educational publishing is projected to expand significantly between 2025 and 2030.

Print and digital growth are not mutually exclusive. They indicate a blended demand model.

Industry leaders have framed this shift in practical terms. In a recent white paper on the future of pedagogy, technology philosopher Tom Chatfield articulated the design principle that should guide this integration: “AI is not a shortcut to learning—it’s a context and catalyst for deeper engagement.” He notes that true pedagogy depends on teaching for humans and with machines, requiring foundational ideas to be clarified before technology can intervene effectively.

In a 2025 briefing, Cengage Group CEO Michael Hansen noted that recent growth has been tied to deploying generative AI in ways that deepen engagement with verified, high-quality content. The emphasis remains on competency development, not automation for its own sake.

In a market increasingly saturated with unverified AI-generated material, publishers retain structural advantages:

• established editorial review and peer validation processes
• curriculum design aligned to standards and developmental research
• assessment systems embedded within scope and sequence frameworks
• printed materials that support sustained reading and written practice

These assets position publishers to integrate AI within defined pedagogical boundaries. By providing the structural foundation of print and carefully layering in the efficiency of AI, publishers are uniquely positioned to protect the core purpose of education while delivering the innovations of the future.

The Ecosystem of the Future

Policy shifts, cognitive research, and classroom experience point in the same direction. Education systems are moving toward structured integration rather than full digital substitution.

Print supports depth. It stabilizes attention, reinforces spatial memory, and slows the pace of interaction. Handwriting strengthens encoding and recall. These are mechanical properties of the medium, not nostalgic preferences.

AI contributes differently. AI systems can process performance data, identify patterns across assessments, and generate structured study supports. They extend analysis and reduce administrative load. Their value depends on the quality of the underlying curriculum and the boundaries set for use.

The emerging model is blended by design:

• printed textbooks and workbooks as the primary instructional core
• curriculum-aligned digital systems for assessment analysis and feedback
• AI tools constrained to verified content and defined learning objectives
• teacher oversight at each stage of interpretation and decision-making

Foundational knowledge is built through sustained reading, writing, and guided instruction. Digital systems can assist once those structures are in place.

Publishers already control the curriculum frameworks, editorial standards, and physical materials required for this integration. The next phase depends on disciplined implementation rather than technological novelty.

---

At Integra, we support publishers across the full content lifecycle, from print programs and digital platforms to AI-supported solutions built on verified curriculum. Our focus is disciplined integration, ensuring technology strengthens, rather than replaces, structured pedagogy.