Conference Program

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence into educational contexts often outpaces shared, critical pedagogical reflection. Dominant approaches to AI literacy tend to prioritize technical and operational skills; however, when everyday AI use is not supported by intentional and reflective practices, it risks fostering forms of cognitive delegation (cognitive offloading). This, in turn, can weaken students’ metacognitive reflection, sense of responsibility, and agency within democratic learning environments.

This contribution draws on a situated educational experience in upper secondary education (grades 10–12) and is based on participant observation of a cycle of workshops in which AI is not introduced as a tool for providing answers or optimizing learning outcomes, but as an object and interlocutor of critical dialogue. Through structured activities comparing human-produced and AI-generated texts, collective discussion, and guided reflection, students are invited to interrogate not only the correctness or plausibility of responses, but also the cognitive and emotional processes activated in their interactions with AI systems.

Across the activities, AI use emerges as responding not exclusively to cognitive needs, but also as a source of immediate reassurance and emotional containment. Especially during adolescence—when identity formation, performance anxiety, and emotional uncertainty tend to intensify—AI often becomes a first interlocutor to whom questions, doubts, and decisions are delegated. While this immediacy may reduce uncertainty, it can also limit students’ engagement with doubt, error, and the inherent complexity of autonomous thinking. From this perspective, AI can be understood as a mediating object that, if not made explicit and critically examined, risks shifting from a transitional support to a stable substitute for reflective processes.

The pedagogical approach adopted is grounded in a sociocultural and dialogical perspective, in which AI is framed as a potential mediator of learning rather than a replacement for educational mediation and pedagogical judgment. Within this framework, metacognition plays a central role: students are supported in making their thinking processes explicit, distinguishing between automatic reliance and deliberate choice, and developing reflective responsibility in the use of AI as a support for thinking and decision-making.

The observations collected consistently indicate that dialogical practices of this kind foster active participation, critical awareness, and student agency. Rather than limiting learning to the acquisition of technical competencies, such practices sustain processes of deliberation, dialogue, and positioning. In this light, AI is not framed as a threat to autonomy, but as a pedagogical opportunity to rethink and strengthen dialogical practices oriented toward conscious participation and democratic learning.

This contribution engages with the panel Critical Dialogue with AI in Schools by foregrounding critical dialogue and metacognition as essential safeguards for nurturing agency, reflective responsibility, and democratic participation amid AI’s growing presence in schools.