A Technoskeptical Approach to Generative AI in Social Studies Education (Poster 1)

• In Event: AI in Social Studies Education: Tools for Thoughtful Practice With Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Social studies educators should draw on the approaches of our field to critically inquiry alongside students to understand and act on AI for a more just and humane technological world. Technoskepticism offers such an approach for critical inquiry. Too often, technologies in social studies curriculum and the larger media are only examined for their intended purposes (Krutka et al., 2022). Clocks tell precise time, railroads move people and goods, and television entertains. However, “innovations” do not just do what their inventors intended, they also undo and alter many other things. Clocks changed labor relations, railroads invaded Indigenous homelands, and television further remade news into entertainment. A technoskeptical citizen is thus concerned with the collateral, unintended, and disproportionate effects of Generative AI. How might teachers encourage students to examine the psychological and social dimensions of technologies from the past, present, and future? While social studies teachers are well prepared to examine the psychosocial and political dimensions of technologies, we’re not usually well prepared for the technical details (Pleasants et al., 2023). Social studies educators will have to learn enough about how technologies function to see through the panic. We contend that making AI a topic of inquiry in social studies and working toward technoskeptical orientations in citizenship, can help combat the hysteria of the current AI moment, while preparing students to critique and democratize whatever iterations of the technology come next.

Authors

• Marie K. Heath, Loyola University Maryland

• Daniel G. Krutka, University of North Texas