Protecting and Promoting Human Agency in Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Human agency is crucial in education and increasingly challenged by the use of generative AI. This meeting report synthesizes interdisciplinary insights and conceptualizes four aspects that delineate human agency: human oversight, AI-human complementarity, AI competencies, and relational emergence. We explore practical dilemmas for protecting and promoting agency, focusing on normative constraints, transparency, and cognitive offloading, and highlight key tensions and implications to inform ethical and effective AI integration in education.

O.V., M.C., and R.F.K. organized the meeting and wrote the first version of the report. All authors contributed to the revision of the manuscript, and read and approved the final version