Conference Program

Emotional intelligence constitutes a key educational and civic competence in contemporary learning environments marked by complexity, uncertainty, and intensified relational interdependence. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence is increasingly embedded in educational systems through learning analytics, adaptive platforms, automated assessment, and decision-support tools, profoundly reshaping pedagogical practices, institutional governance, and conceptions of learning itself. These developments raise critical questions regarding autonomy, agency, and the democratic purposes of education.

Drawing on non-directive and critical pedagogical traditions—particularly Ivan Illich’s notion of convivial tools and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of autonomy—this contribution examines the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, and education as a crucial site for rethinking democratic learning in the age of algorithmic mediation. Rather than approaching AI as a neutral educational technology, the paper conceptualizes it as an emerging form of agency whose computational logics may privilege prediction, optimization, and standardization, potentially fostering dependency, epistemic homogenization, and the erosion of ethical self-formation when uncritically adopted in educational contexts.

Through a critical review of interdisciplinary literature in AI and Education, philosophy of education, and complexity studies, complemented by illustrative examples of AI-based educational applications, the study explores how Emotional Intelligence can function as a countervailing pedagogical resource. Specifically, it argues that emotional awareness, dialogical responsibility, and relational reflexivity are essential for enabling learners and educators to critically engage with AI-mediated learning environments rather than passively adapting to them.

Furthermore, recent theoretical work calls for reconceptualizing AI in education beyond tools—toward hybrid human-AI systems that extend human cognition while foregrounding agency, motivation, and emotion. Particular attention is devoted to Illich’s concept of thresholds of mutation, highlighting the point at which educational technologies cease to support learning autonomy and begin to reorganize educational experience around control, surveillance, and behavioral normalization. From a Freirean perspective, the paper emphasizes that Emotional Intelligence in education should not be reduced to a measurable or optimizable variable within AI-driven systems, but understood as a dialogical, ethical, and political practice cultivated through participatory and critical pedagogical relationships.

A concrete and hitherto under-theorized instantiation of this surveillance threshold is examined through an original empirical investigation of eye-tracking technology integrated within Moodle-based assessments delivered via Safe Exam Browser (SEB). Drawing on the convivial and Freirean frameworks developed in this study, the paper critically interrogates how the deployment of eye-tracking in lockdown examination contexts risks crossing Illich’s threshold of mutation—transforming assessment from a site of authentic demonstration of learning into a normalized apparatus of biometric surveillance that may induce learner anxiety, self-censorship, and performative compliance rather than genuine cognitive engagement and critical sense-making.

The contribution ultimately proposes a convivial framework for AI and Education, in which Artificial Intelligence is reconfigured from an apparatus of pedagogical automation into a reflective partner supporting critical inquiry, collective sense-making, and democratic participation. By aligning human-centered AI with pedagogies of conviviality, the study offers theoretical and practical insights for designing educational environments that resist technocratic reductionism and promote autonomy, plural reasoning, and democratic agency in complex learning systems.