Research Article
An Emancipatory Vision for Designing (Generative) AI for Learner Flourishing
Synthesis: Prieto and Dimitriadis argue that current generative AI educational design, oriented toward workforce productivity, pushes learners toward individualism, isolation, over-reliance, and dependence — driven by wider systemic factors and the human tendency to take the easiest path. They contend that human-centered design approaches like value-sensitive design are insufficient because they ignore these systemic drivers, and that Agency is effectively a zero-sum game: the more agency bestowed on tools, the less learners retain. The paper proposes an emancipatory vision oriented toward learner flourishing that considers the wider complex systems learners inhabit, offering tentative design principles and an overall design methodology, while acknowledging many open questions remain.
The Critique of Current GenAI Design
The paper identifies several "problematic assumptions" underlying most current AIED proposals:
- That we can build increasingly complex and agentic technologies without damaging learner Agency and flourishing, when agency may be a zero-sum game.
- That we can predict the outcomes of introducing complex, stochastic technology into education's hypercomplex system without unwanted side effects.
- That education's goal is mainly preparing learners for workforce participation, rather than socializing them into the knowledge, values, and democratic citizenship of their social groups and wider culture.
The authors draw on evidence of "over-reliance", "metacognitive laziness", social isolation, and lower Well Being linked to naturally-emerging uses of general-purpose GenAI, alongside the learning-performance paradox and environmental costs of adoption.
Toward Learner Flourishing
Rather than accepting the productivity framing, the paper advances an emancipatory vision oriented toward learner flourishing within the wider complex systems learners inhabit (classrooms nested in schools, nested in societies and environments). It offers tentative design principles and an overall design methodology, though it explicitly notes many open questions remain before the vision can be realized. This connects to critical perspectives on AI in education that question whether agentic tools serve learners or displace their development.
Connected Concepts
- Generative AI
- Agency
- Ethics
- Cognitive Offloading
- Critical Pedagogy
- Learning Theories
- Well Being
- Philosophy Of AI In Education
- Agentic AI
Connected Articles
- Reclaiming Epistemic Agency Co Agency 2026 — Reclaiming Epistemic Agency
- AI Intuition AI Literacy K12 2026 — From AI Intuition to AI Literacy
- Beyond Agent Label Agentic AI Governance 2026 — Beyond the Agent Label
Citation
Prieto, L. P., & Dimitriadis, Y. (2026). An Emancipatory Vision for Designing (Generative) AI for Learner Flourishing. International Workshop on Critical and More-than-human Perspectives on AI in Education (EC-TEL 2026). arXiv:2609.07715 [cs.CY].