From Competency to Agency: Teachers' Views of the Purposes of AI Education

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes an increasingly prominent societal and educational phenomenon, teachers are required to determine not only how but also why students are educated about it in the classroom. Understanding teachers' thinking about the purposes of AI education is crucial, as they guide day‐to‐day choices about classroom uses of AI. This qualitative study investigates the purposes that teachers associate with AI education in primary and early childhood contexts and how AI has been taken up in teaching and learning. Drawing on Gert Biesta's three‐dimensional framework of well‐rounded educational purpose, which emphasises students' holistic growth through the domains of qualification, socialisation, and subjectification, this study presents an abductive analysis of interview data from 13 Finnish teachers involved in national AI education development projects. The teachers' views reflected an exploratory phase of AI education, characterised by an emphasis on skill development (qualification); a focus that risks overlooking students' critical and personal engagement with these prominent technologies. It also triggers diverse interpretations and teaching practices, ranging from an instrumental approach, where education is guided by goals such as future employability, to an orientation that foregrounds emancipation and self‐expression in the present. While the teachers acknowledged the importance of fostering AI agency (subjectification), their approaches lacked robust strategies to support it. This study foregrounds such gaps and conceptualises a potential synergy between the domains where students' self‐determined, informed engagement with AI is placed at the centre of educational efforts in AI education.