Zdravkov, Nikolay (2025) Shaping Minds, Shaping Machines: The Quiet Revolution of AI in UNESCO's Educational Dream. Master thesis, Pedagogical and Educational Sciences.
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Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly become an essential and imminent component of educational governance and policy formulation with internationally influential organizations such as UNESCO who play a pivotal role in shaping the global discourse on its integration. This thesis critically examines the way that UNESCO’s educational guidelines of AI in education construct sociotechnical imaginaries of the future of the educational system by specifically focusing on how these imaginaries envision critical pedagogy and critical thought, human agency, and datafication. Through an abductive document analysis, this research investigates seven of UNESCO’s most prominent policy documents published between 2021 and 2024. This study employed the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries proposed by Sheila Jasanoff (2015) and deconstructed them through Bacchi’s problematizations approach revealing implicitly embedded underlying assumptions of AI’s role in the future of education. The findings exposed three dominant imaginaries around the main themes of this research, namely, AI as a tool for critical pedagogy and critical thought, AI as a mediator of human agency, and AI as a data-driven governance tool. The presented imaginaries portray AI as an inevitable and transformative force within the educational system while also acknowledging persistent tensions with regard to automation, teacher autonomy, and algorithmic decision making. As UNESCO’s policy guidelines frame AI as a beneficial mechanism for fostering inclusivity and personalized learning there is a determined conception that its effectiveness is contingent upon digital access, infrastructure, and governance design which still remain unevenly distributed throughout the global educational domain. Through the critical investigation of these imaginaries, this thesis underlined the way AI is framed as a technological solution to existing systemic challenges which oversighted structural inequalities and ethical considerations. This research contributed to the growing understanding and discourse on AI and the future of education by offering a nuanced critique of the manner in which policy frameworks shape expectations. Ultimately, this thesis highlights the necessity for a more context-sensitive and critical approach to the policy formulation of AI in education. One which is capable of addressing the complex socio-political realities which essentially define the global educational system without being blinded by the deterministic vision of technological progress.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Westberg, B.A.J. |
| Degree programme: | Pedagogical and Educational Sciences |
| Differentiation route: | Ethics and Education: philosophy, history and law [Master Pedagogical and Educational Sciences] |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Apr 2025 09:15 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Apr 2025 09:15 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4800 |
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