Abstract
Education data scientists, learning engineers and precision education specialists are new experts in knowledge production in educational research. By bringing together data science methodologies and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems with disciplinary expertise from the psychological, biological and brain sciences, they are building a new field of AI-based learning science. This article presents an examination of how education research is being remade as an experimental data-intensive science. AI is combining with learning science in new ‘digital laboratories’ where ownership over data, and power and authority over educational knowledge production, are being redistributed to research assemblages of computational machines and scientific expertise.
Highlights
Education data scientists, learning engineers and precision education specialists are new experts in knowledge production in educational research
Focusing on three key cases – the rise of learning engineering, molecular genetic analysis and neuroimaging – the analysis shows how education research is being remade as an experimental data-intensive science, where artificial intelligence (AI) combines with learning sciences in new digital laboratories that exist inside computer machinery
The following three sections focus on some key examples to illustrate the key implications of the shift to AI-based knowledge production in education: (1) a shift in expertise to the authority of data science exemplified by the elevation of the figure of the learning engineer; (2) the role of technical infrastructure in configuring educational knowledge, as shown by the rise of bioinformatics in new molecular genetics research in education; and (3) a shift in analytical focus from statistics to sensing, as illustrated by the uptake of neuroimaging as a source of educational knowledge production
Summary
How to cite this article Williamson, B. (2020) ‘New digital laboratories of experimental knowledge production: Artificial intelligence and education research’. How to cite this article Williamson, B. (2020) ‘New digital laboratories of experimental knowledge production: Artificial intelligence and education research’. Submission date: 17 October 2019 Acceptance date: 16 March 2020 Publication date: 21 July 2020. London Review of Education, 18 (2): 209–220.
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