Breaking the Magic of Automation and Augmentation in Swedish Classrooms

Abstract

This paper provides a critical examination of the domain of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, with a focus on the expectations and practical implications accompanying its integration into teaching. The expectations have been propelled by two interconnected concepts: (1) the potential for AI to automate pedagogical processes, replacing teachers in certain scenarios; and (2) the notion that teachers’ insights can be augmented through AI-based analysis. Drawing on two ethnographic studies in Swedish primary and secondary schools, this paper explores the enactments of pupils, teachers and two AI-based educational technologies. The aim is to demonstrate how automation and augmentation can emerge in teachers’ practice. Utilizing inspiration from a relational epistemological problematisation of socio-technical phenomena, the paper demonstrates how rather than automation and augmentation, AI in education is an act of symmation in which automation and augmentation is co-produced by the technology and teachers’ different hidden work, in this paper conceptualised as adaptations, experimentations, compensations and confirmations. The paper suggests that the study of symmation in relation to the teaching profession can be productive in further exploring the yet limited understanding of AI in educational practice.