From stochastic parrots to electric sheep: Imagining the future of L1 education with generative AI
Submitted by:
Fleur Diamond
Abstract:
The advent of digital literacies, the platformisation of education and, more recently, large language models capable of composing human-quality text have posed significant challenges to how educators imagine L1 education. Practice histories of L1 education have emphasised student voice and agency, creativity and critical literacies. However, there are other narratives at play that shape policy, curriculum and assessment in L1 education. These narratives often focus on reductive and quantifiable understandings of literacy learning. In both visions of L1 education and its purposes, generative AI-driven digital technologies are imagined as promoting literacy learning. In this sense, technologies are not only scientific and technical developments, but intertwined with social, economic, historical and political narratives. Imagining the role of digital literacies in the futures of L1 education always involves forming “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun, 2015) – the impact of the past, futures thinking, and ideological struggles over preferred technologies and hoped-for societies. Critical scholarship of education and the digital have argued that technology needs to be understood as inseparable from power and the social (Selwyn, 2019; Wajcman, 2017). There is a need for critical scholarship that brings disciplinary perspectives to bear on developments in generative AI and education technology. How do policy and ‘ed-tech’ narratives of generative AI, platforms and personalised learning promote particular “sociotechnical imaginaries” of what it means to be literate? How are designs for AI and ed-tech imbued with “designs for social futures” (Cope & Kalantzis, 1999)? What forms of literate life are being conjured by the narratives and imaginings swirling around the design, implementation and uptake of generative AI and other digital technologies? This symposium offers papers from Australian and Swedish perspectives to engage with how practice histories and disciplinary knowledges intersect with generative AI and digital technology to reshape understandings of literacy education, the literary, and L1 teacher professionalism. Questions of the literary, making meaning, sociotechnical narratives, and developing literate identities are particular disciplinary perspectives the researchers bring to the connections to past practice, the disruptions of the present moment, and imaginings of possible futures for L1 education.
Keywords: AI; L1 education; imaginary; literary; futures
References:
Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.) (1999). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Routledge.
Jasanoff, S., Kim, Sang-Hyun. (2015). Dreamscapes of modernity : sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. University of Chicago Press.
Selwyn, N. (2019). Should robots replace teachers? : AI and the future of education. Polity Press.
Wajcman, J. (2017). Automation: is it really different this time? The British Journal of Sociology, 68(1), 119–127. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12239
Presenters: Fleur Diamond (Monash University): fleur.diamond@monash.edu; Anna-Lena Godhe (University of Jonkoping) anna-lena.godhe@ju.se; Lucinda McKnight (Deakin University) l.mcknight@deakin.edu.au; Larissa McLean-Davies (University of Melbourne) l.mcleandavies@unimelb.edu.au; Ylva Lindberg (University of Jonkoping)ylva.lindberg@ju.se
Fleur Diamond and Lucinda McKnight
The emperor’s new personalized learning: narratives of technical fixes to the complex and social process of learning in L1 English
This paper offers a critique of the term ‘digital personalized learning’ based on a research collaboration between two education academics interested in how the term interacts with notions of teacher professionalism and literacy learning. As L1 English/literacy educators, we draw on interpretative and textual-artefactual analysis strategies to offer a critical reading of the narratives promulgated by the ‘EdTech’ industry about the prospects for AI-driven personalised learning. Using the tools of discourse analysis developed by Gill (2018) we provide an analysis of the rhetorical devices employed by advocates of ‘EdTech’ and promises around the personalisation of learning driven by generative artificial intelligence. A gender-aware critical analysis of these narratives identifies four discursive repertoires on which the ‘professional’ teacher, exhorted to use digital personalized learning, may rely: standardisation/quality; assessment/datafication; digital/technology; inclusion/differentiation. We argue that these discursive repertoires position L1 education in specific ways that remake it in the image of digital content and data logics. Concomitantly, the L1 English teacher is framed as a facilitator, content deliverer and standardised technician. The rhetorical repertoire of the EdTech industry promotes an understanding of learning that proposes a technical fix for the complex and socially situated process of becoming literate. What kinds of literate identity are inscribed into the narratives about personalised learning? What kinds of literate futures are imagined by these rhetorical repertoires and how do they participate in a larger sociotechnical imaginary? These developments challenge the practice traditions and ‘knowledge project’ (Green, 2014) of L1 subject English. We propose, for policymakers, digital developers and teachers, that the term ‘personalized learning’ needs to be used with caution in digital contexts.
Keywords: personalised learning; adaptive learning; artificial intelligence; generative artificial intelligence; large language models; differentiation
References:
Gill, R. (2018). Discourse. In Kackman, M., & Kearney, M. C. (Eds.). (2018). The craft of criticism: Critical media studies in practice. (pp. 23 - 34). Taylor & Francis Group.
Green, B. (2014). A literacy project of our own? English in Australia, 49(2), 66–74.
Larissa McLean Davies
TBC
Anna-Lena Godhe & Ylva Lindberg
Composing future imaginaries in L1
This presentation builds on a learning adventure where students were involved in the ‘not-yetness’ (Ross, 2023) and uncertainty of sustainable AI developments. The initiative was motivated by teachers who expressed a need to learn about students’ imaginaries of the future with the aim of developing educational programs dealing with technology and sustainability. Issues of sustainability are urgent as datafication, increasing and diversified uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated processes will impact students’ futures. However, a sustainability perspective on technology in education has so far largely been avoided.
The learning adventure involved students at upper-secondary school level in Sweden in a Futures Day. Before the event, the students were prepared to engage with futures via different school subjects. In situ, they collaborated across classes in small groups to create a story about a future imaginary. At specific points in the collaboration, the students were prompted to use AI-tools like Chat-GPT and AI created images. In this presentation, we investigate the emerging reading and writing practices involving AI-literacy and how the changed conditions for compositions of multimodal stories affected the processes of reflecting, composing and the products.
Based on the analysis of observations and stories created during the Futures Day we discuss futures studies and ‘futuring’ activities with students and how they may support critical thinking regarding technology and sustainability (Buch, Lindberg, Pargman, forthcoming). As argued by Dindler et al. (2020), students “should be provided with the means for engaging critically with how technology is imbued with values, how it shapes our lives and how we may act to change it” (p.71). We argue that futures-oriented perspectives on AI literacy (Velander et al. 2023) and “computational empowerment” (Dindler et al. 2020) in education contribute to changed sociotechnical imaginaries and to bridging the enduring gap between engineering sciences and the humanities (Lindberg and Öberg 2023). Computational empowerment implies crossing established school subject borders and, in this case, allowing L1 education to engage with futures of technology from a language and literature perspective.
References
Dindler, C., Smith, R. and Iversen, O.S. (2020) ‘Computational empowerment: participatory design in education’, CoDesign, 16(1), pp. 66–80. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2020.1722173.
Lindberg Y and Öberg L-M (2023) The future scribe: Learning to write the world. Frontiers in Education, 8:993268. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.993268
Ross, J. (2023). Digital futures for learning: speculative methods and pedagogies. New York: Routledge
Velander, J., Taiye, M.A., Otero, N. et al. Artificial Intelligence in K-12 Education: eliciting and reflecting on Swedish teachers' understanding of AI and its implications for teaching & learning. Educ Inf Technol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11990-4
- Fleur Diamond & Lucinda J McKnight
This paper offers a critique of the term ‘digital personalized learning’ based on a research collaboration between two education academics interested in how the term interacts with notions of teacher professionalism and literacy learning. As L1 English/literacy educators, we draw on interpretative and textual-artefactual analysis strategies to offer a critical reading of the narratives promulgated by the ‘EdTech’ industry about the prospects for AI-driven personalised learning. Using the tools of discourse analysis developed by Gill (2018) we provide an analysis of the rhetorical devices employed by advocates of ‘EdTech’ and promises around the personalisation of learning driven by generative artificial intelligence. A gender-aware critical analysis of these narratives identifies four discursive repertoires on which the ‘professional’ teacher, exhorted to use digital personalized learning, may rely: standardisation/quality; assessment/datafication; digital/technology; inclusion/differentiation. We argue that these discursive repertoires position L1 education in specific ways that remake it in the image of digital content and data logics. Concomitantly, the L1 English teacher is framed as a facilitator, content deliverer and standardised technician. The rhetorical repertoire of the EdTech industry promotes an understanding of learning that proposes a technical fix for the complex and socially situated process of becoming literate. What kinds of literate identity are inscribed into the narratives about personalised learning? What kinds of literate futures are imagined by these rhetorical repertoires and how do they participate in a larger sociotechnical imaginary? These developments challenge the practice traditions and ‘knowledge project’ (Green, 2014) of L1 subject English. We propose, for policymakers, digital developers and teachers, that the term ‘personalized learning’ needs to be used with caution in digital contexts.
Keywords: personalised learning; adaptive learning; artificial intelligence; generative artificial intelligence; large language models; differentiation
References:
Gill, R. (2018). Discourse. In Kackman, M., & Kearney, M. C. (Eds.). (2018). The craft of criticism: Critical media studies in practice. (pp. 23 - 34). Taylor & Francis Group.
Green, B. (2014). A literacy project of our own? English in Australia, 49(2), 66–74.
- Larissa McLean Davies
TBC
- Anna-Lena Godhe & Ylva Lindberg
This presentation builds on a learning adventure where students were involved in the ‘not-yetness’ (Ross, 2023) and uncertainty of sustainable AI developments. The initiative was motivated by teachers who expressed a need to learn about students’ imaginaries of the future with the aim of developing educational programs dealing with technology and sustainability. Issues of sustainability are urgent as datafication, increasing and diversified uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated processes will impact students’ futures. However, a sustainability perspective on technology in education has so far largely been avoided.
The learning adventure involved students at upper-secondary school level in Sweden in a Futures Day. Before the event, the students were prepared to engage with futures via different school subjects. In situ, they collaborated across classes in small groups to create a story about a future imaginary. At specific points in the collaboration, the students were prompted to use AI-tools like Chat-GPT and AI created images. In this presentation, we investigate the emerging reading and writing practices involving AI-literacy and how the changed conditions for compositions of multimodal stories affected the processes of reflecting, composing and the products.
Based on the analysis of observations and stories created during the Futures Day we discuss futures studies and ‘futuring’ activities with students and how they may support critical thinking regarding technology and sustainability (Buch, Lindberg, Pargman, forthcoming). As argued by Dindler et al. (2020), students “should be provided with the means for engaging critically with how technology is imbued with values, how it shapes our lives and how we may act to change it” (p.71). We argue that futures-oriented perspectives on AI literacy (Velander et al. 2023) and “computational empowerment” (Dindler et al. 2020) in education contribute to changed sociotechnical imaginaries and to bridging the enduring gap between engineering sciences and the humanities (Lindberg and Öberg 2023). Computational empowerment implies crossing established school subject borders and, in this case, allowing L1 education to engage with futures of technology from a language and literature perspective.
References
Dindler, C., Smith, R. and Iversen, O.S. (2020) ‘Computational empowerment: participatory design in education’, CoDesign, 16(1), pp. 66–80. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2020.1722173.
Lindberg Y and Öberg L-M (2023) The future scribe: Learning to write the world. Frontiers in Education, 8:993268. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.993268
Ross, J. (2023). Digital futures for learning: speculative methods and pedagogies. New York: Routledge
Velander, J., Taiye, M.A., Otero, N. et al. Artificial Intelligence in K-12 Education: eliciting and reflecting on Swedish teachers' understanding of AI and its implications for teaching & learning. Educ Inf Technol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11990-4