What is the machine? Teachers’ professional learning about generative artificial intelligence as tutors for children

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly Generative AI (GenAI) to school settings, teachers are likely to be drawn into professional learning scenarios where they will be expected to learn how to use programs and applications for remediation and tutoring of children. Previous research highlights how professional learning for teachers about GenAI has been focused on gaining their acquiescence to using GenAI by arguing that it is both superior and inescapable. This critical posthuman work uses a professional learning scenario to ask questions about the historically present challenges of asking teachers to use GenAI as a universal good when this discourse has been used to colonise and imperialise in schools, particularly with technologies. Our critical posthuman diffractive reading revealed alternative encounters that teachers and students could have with GenAI and reasonable pathways for avoiding it. Implications of this work include a need to draw on the diffractive encounters presented here to understand and address who and what the machine is when it comes to adopting advanced technologies for various purposes in schools.