Conference Program

This panel explores poetry therapy as a form of convivial and non-directive pedagogy capable of sustaining autonomy, ethical self-formation, and democratic plurality in educational contexts increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. Drawing on Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Autonomy, the panel frames poetic and expressive practices as counter-hegemonic educational tools that resist epistemic homogenization, affective standardization, and predictive normalization.

The panel challenges the assumption that AI is a neutral educational tool. Instead, it conceptualizes AI as a socio-technical agency whose computational logics shape language, cognition, and emotional expression. In educational settings, the integration of generative AI raises critical questions about linguistic autonomy, authorship, and the automation of meaning-making. Poetry therapy is proposed as a pedagogical and ethical response to these challenges, offering a way to preserve human agency and creative plurality in learning.

Poetry therapy involves non-directive practices such as free writing, reflective reading, collective poem-making, and dialogical interpretation. These activities encourage learners to explore personal and collective meanings through language that resists quantification and algorithmic optimization. For example, a classroom exercise might invite students to write a poem about their experience of AI in daily life, then discuss how different metaphors reveal diverse perspectives. Another practice could involve co-creating a poem as a group, emphasizing listening, negotiation, and shared authorship rather than standardized outcomes. In university settings, reflective poetry journals can support students in articulating ethical dilemmas related to AI, data privacy, and digital surveillance.

These practices privilege ambiguity, metaphor, and narrative plurality, fostering critical awareness of both cognitive and algorithmic bias. They also strengthen learners’ capacity for reflective judgment and dialogical responsibility, as students are encouraged to interpret, challenge, and respond to each other’s expressions rather than merely producing correct answers. This aligns with Freirean notions of conscientização, where education becomes a process of critical consciousness and moral agency.

The panel further considers poetry therapy as an ethical-political pedagogy that can be integrated into institutional curricula. It discusses how schools and universities might implement poetry-based modules to support emotional literacy, resilience, and democratic participation, countering educational models focused primarily on efficiency, prediction, and control. For instance, poetry therapy can be used in teacher education programs to develop reflective practice, or in digital literacy courses to foster critical engagement with AI-generated content.

Interdisciplinary in scope, the panel brings together perspectives from philosophy of education, expressive arts therapy, critical AI studies, and media ethics. Ultimately, it asks how poetry-based pedagogies might contribute to reconfiguring AI from an apparatus of normalization into a convivial partner, capable of sustaining autonomy, plural reasoning, and non-homogenized educational experience.