Artificial Intelligence as a Technology Driving School Reform: Media Discourses in South Korea

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Fifteen
  In Roundtable Session: Issues of Technology, Access, Neoliberal Logic, and School Reform (Table 11)

Abstract

Challenging a technological determinist perspective, this study aimed to trace and critically examine how artificial intelligence (AI) has been translated into both entities and socio-material assemblages that inevitably drive certain directions of school reform via media discourses. Drawing on the actor-network theory’s cartographic sensibilities, we analyzed 80 articles (2016-2021) published on three national daily newspapers in South Korea. The study revealed AI as a driver of school reform (i.e., curricular reform or closing the educational gap) has emerged as multiple and ambivalent effects contingent on the relational distribution of human and nonhuman actors in which they are entangled. Finally, we discussed the possibilities of a post-critical approach to intervening in educational issues, especially regarding school reform in the AI era.

Authors

• Soohan Lee, Seoul National University
  Presenting Author

• Kyunghee So, Seoul National University
  Presenting Author