Figuring GenAI: Toward a Technocurious Framework in History Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Generative AI, Identity, and Cognitive Partnership

Abstract

This paper introduces technocuriosity, a conceptual and methodological framework for working with generative AI (GenAI) in education. In contrast to technoromanticism and technoskepticism, technocuriosity invites recursive, speculative, and participatory inquiry into how GenAI is configured and how it might be configured otherwise. Drawing from Lury, Mollick, de Certeau, McLuhan, and Postman, we approach GenAI as a figural, unstable medium that co-produces meaning in educational contexts. We outline a methodological stance grounded in inventive methods, speculative ethnography, and live inquiry. Through practical examples from history education, including custom GPT design and recursive prompting, we demonstrate how technocuriosity enables educators and researchers to critically inhabit emerging technologies, not to decide what GenAI is, but to figure what it might become together.

Authors

• Amy E. Allen, Virginia Tech

• David Hicks, Virginia Tech