Emergent Technology, Emergent Critique: Students and Teachers Developing Critical AI Literacy through Participatory Design around Generative AI

TL;DR

This study explores how students and teachers collaboratively develop critical AI literacy through participatory design, focusing on negotiating AI use and understanding in educational settings.

Contribution

It introduces a participatory design approach involving youth and educators to foster critical engagement with generative AI in classrooms.

Findings

Emergence of practices to challenge AI assumptions

Mutual learning between students and teachers

Grounding AI critique in cultural and creative contexts

Abstract

Who gets to decide how generative AI tools enter students' classrooms? We report on a five-week participatory design program in which three 11th-grade Latinx students and three high school teachers in California negotiated how generative AI tools would be used and taught about in learning environments. Drawing on video recordings and designed artifacts, we ask: what critical AI literacy practices emerged as students and teachers jointly designed how generative AI tools would be used and taught about? Our analysis reveals three practices: collectively unsettling assumptions about AI, mutual learning through complementary expertise, and grounding AI critique in cultural knowledge and creative practice. Students and teachers developed these practices through the design work itself. This case contributes strategies for designing with youth around an emergent technology like generative AI toward critical AI literacy. It extends work on youth as protagonists by showing how this approach enables students to shape both the adoption and the interrogation of these tools in their learning environments.