AI Education through Somatic Curriculum, Affective Pedagogy, and Speculative Design

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Four
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT006 (Saturday)

Abstract

This two-part study investigates the felt experience of how educational practices can position youth as agentic actors in AI-educational futures. Addressing gaps in cognitive and computational approaches, this research engages somadesign, Imaginative Education, and Affect Theory to center corporeality as elemental to AI education. In phase one, nine youth (ages 10–14) participated in a seven-week program integrating sensing, moving speculative practices with generative AI. Findings suggest that somatic engagement concretized abstraction, affective scaffolding attuned collective feeling, and learning unfolded cyclically and nonlinearly through recursive loops. Phase Two will extend this work with older youth, centering computer vision, physical computing, and sustained futures projects to deepen somatic, affective, and speculative approaches to AI education.

Author

• Mackayla Kelsey