Conference Agenda

In this paper, I investigate modes of action and conceptions of subjectivity implied in the literature on the pedagogical use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), and how these conceptions affect the space for judgment, imagination, and relational learning. My starting point is an emerging trend in educational research that promotes generative artificial intelligence as a tool for developing students’ metacognitive skills and awareness (see, for example, Albus & Seufert, 2024; Martin et al., 2025; Rokhsari, 2025; Tankelevitch et al., 2024; Xiao & Liu, 2025; Yin et al., 2025). Often marked by technological optimism and teleological, goal-driven assumptions, this discourse conceptualizes metacognition primarily as an individual capacity, in which students learn through trial and error to instruct GAI and thereby “boost” their learning.

I will show how such claims typically rest on three interrelated and problematic premises:

1. Metacognition is, from the outset, framed in an individualized manner (Flavell, 1979; Nelson, 1990), neglecting social, intersubjective, and communicative dimensions of learning emphasized by authors such as Gadamer (2000, 2001); Malloch and Trevarthen (2009); Vygotsky (1980).
2. The development of metacognition through GAI use is described as a linear process—both sequential and hierarchical. Drawing on cognitive load theory and arguing in favor of AI prompts that apply load reduction instruction, Martin et al. (2025), for instance, argue that “learning benefits from explicit (and structured) approaches and from independent problem-solving.” They also claim that “it is the order in which they are conducted that is critical for optimizing learning: explicit and structured approaches in the early stages of mastery development and then independent practice and problem-solving as automaticity and fluency develop” (p. 4). I will argue that this framing undermines a perspective in which learning and development are viewed as transformative processes, wherein the powers of judgment associated with independent understanding are present throughout and develop alongside social and communicative capacities, albeit in potential, messy, and non-linearizable ways (Finke & Solli, 2025; Gadamer, 2000, 2001).
3. The development of metacognition through GAI is described as a reactive process—responding to technological generativity—rather than as a human-generative, creative practice. In this logic, generativity is attributed to technology, while the human learner becomes a passive evaluator, curator, or overseer of GAI outputs, sidelining imagination, dialogue, and participatory sense-making.

In response, I develop a critical perspective that challenges this view by drawing on Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Kant’s reflective judgment and her notion of an “enlarged mentality”—the capacity to “think in the place of everybody else” (Arendt, 2006, p. 217)—situated within a broader theoretical framework in which judgment and understanding develop through action, embodied interaction, and dialogue (Di Paolo et al., 2018; Finke et al., 2023; Finke & Solli, 2025; Gadamer, 2000, 2001).

Education tends to be theorised using temporal categories of change. Apart from the semantic structure of words like learning, development, formation and emancipation, the reliance on change is implicit also in a range of theorisations, particularly ones that are interested in what makes education a unique practice (e.g., Noddings, 2013; Vlieghe & Stamojski, 2019; Biesta, 2021; Todd, 2023). To pick up one example from an ocean of variations, Biesta argues that ‘pointing’ is constitutive of the form of education as such (2021, Ch.6; see also Vlieghe & stamojski, 2019; Sedwick, 2003). The point of pointing is “redirecting someone’s attention” (Biesta, 2021, pp. 77-78), which indicates how change is present even when not explicitly mentioned.

Theories of education that rely on change are unavoidably founded on distinctions between the not yet full beings (children) and full beings (adults) – a critique that child/hood studies scholars have repeatedly directed against education (see Malone, Tesar & Arndt, 2020). However, scholars from this field similarly rely on the Change-image in their theorisations of education. For example, Karin Murris, who is one of the few to explicitly engage with literature both from childhood studies and educational theory, argues for the conception of the educator as a “pregnant stingray” (2016, pp. 181-186). Murris is careful to avoid the impression that it would be the educator that changes the child, advocating instead for a collective learning endeavour. Yet her focus on becoming as the metaphysics underlying education ties her conception tightly to change, which therefore risks reproducing the distinctions it tries to escape (see also Rautio, 2013; Hickey-Moody, 2009; Olsson, 2009).

My paper is motivated by a commitment to re-think education in line with childhood studies’ conception of the child and the associated critique of educational theories. To do so, I re-frame educational theory in spatial rather than temporal terms, moving away from change. My argument connects with ongoing discussion about what is educational in education (e.g., Vlieghe & Stamojski, 2019; Biesta, 2021; Todd, 2023) or, in other words, what is the essence of education. This is to some extent a prescriptive effort concerned with the essence of good education. The critique put forward by childhood studies has to date remained somewhat limited in its impact on educational theorising, in part because few scholars from that field have engaged with this more prescriptive dimension and related literature (although see Murris, 2016). My work seeks to remedy that but also extends earlier spatialities of education where the focus has more often been explanatory and descriptive (see Kraftl et al., 2022 for a recent review).

I start from my previous work on hospitality as a possible understanding of education as a welcoming of the newcomers of our world (Varpanen, 2025; cf. Ruitenberg, 2015). I then push the notion of hospitality further by focusing on the implied connection to place. Shifting the question from what is educational in education to what it means for education to take place, I put forward a view of education as a place and the educator’s work as cultivation and nurturing of this place. I develop this view in more detail with the help of Martin Heidegger’s understanding of human existence as a gathering of earth, sky, mortals and divinities. I interpret Heidegger through Tim Ingold’s work on generations and their correspondence, with a particular view on the place of children and childhood in this correspondence. With Heidegger and Ingold I create a tentative understanding of education as a rooted and open space – a space between earth and sky – where different generations correspond with each other.

In this contribution we analyse two – seemingly unconnected – phenomena that mutually reinforce one another posing a threat at an ontological level to education and politics, namely: the emergence of the digital and the currently dominant form of social justice discourse. With this we refer to our previous research concerning the relation between education and politics (Authors) where we have – following Arendt (1958; 1961) – conceptualised both as distinct, autonomous spheres of life, governed by different logics, but at the same time fundamentally connected. In the following analysis we focus on the commonalities between these spheres, as the very existence of both is at stake. Ontologically speaking, education and politics share particular arrangements, gestures, and practices: different people gather around a thing that is a part of the common world that they share and that requires strangers to meet and talk with each other, i.e. to think together. The gathering around this thing comes about thanks to teacherly gestures: someone points to a thing, names it, focuses everyone’s attention on the matter, sketches a preliminary account of it, etc. Teacherly gestures are thus necessary for enacting study practices: people gather around the matter they find important and examine it together – helping each other in going beyond one’s particular view. In politics the aim is getting at a common decision about the matter that is a maximally informed one. In education the aim is studying the world and engendering a bond with what exists.

These arrangements, gestures and practices are threatened today firstly by the emergence of the digital. While at the brink of proliferation of the Internet there was for the hope that it might bring about a milieu of permanent, unlimited and free access to information and knowledge, as well as an advanced environment of instant communication and unbound creativity, today we are faced with a feudal-oligarchical digital “sphere” that encompasses our lives on a massive scale. With the rise of the digital practices (e.g. scrolling, browsing, texting,) have been established and phenomena (e.g. virality, #tags) came about that are so pervasive that even offline daily practices are shaped or mediated by the digital. The digital frames our relation with the world, with others and with ourselves, and – therefore – is responsible for the emergence of a particular Umgang – a term Martin Heidegger (1962) used to name our daily way or dealing with, or getting about things. In other words, the digital is not some external threat we could simply analyse, assess, criticize and resist, but it is deeply ingrained into our existential structures: in the way we perceive, understand, interact, communicate, and go about everything that exists.

The emergence of the digital Umgang can be – therefore – conceived of as a gargantuan pedagogical apparatus imposing relentless training in attention redirection (Gazzaley & Rosen 2016) leading to a profound existential jittering – a convulsive oscillation between multiple poles of attention that cannot be stopped, a kind of sustained agitation that renders study practices impossible. The digital mediates our relation with the world, other people and ourselves: the way we perceive ourselves and other people becomes textualized (Illouz 2007) and similarly, things and the world as a whole lose their materiality (Han 2022). Following Zuboff’s (2019) analysis of the strategies of personalised persuasion serving a large-scale behaviour management, it can be argued that the disappearance of the common world is the key feature of digital Umgang. The ever growing personalisation of contents makes the world appear tailored to individual interests and preferences and hence we end up living in so many filter bubbles.