Enhancing Student and Teacher Agency in Knowledge Building with AI

Knowledge Building

A constellation of perspectives involving students working as a community to continually improve ideas

Agents with epistemic agency
Artifacts created & refined
Practices for idea improvement

Technology for Knowledge Building

Knowledge Forum
Digital environment for continual idea improvement

KB Wall
Physical manifestation of collaborative knowledge work

Essential KB Principles

Epistemic Agency: Students have high-level agency over what they want to know and how they arrive at knowledge
Knowledge-Creating Dialogue: Carried out through dialogues that differ from teacher-centered discourse
Transformative Assessment: Assess state of the art and feed-forward to potential progress—like people working at the knowledge frontier

How can AI uphold these principles rather than undermine them?

Two Examples: AI Supporting Agency

1: Integrate AI in student dialogues
to support student epistemic agency

2: CraftPad for teacher design
to support teacher agency in design

Case 1: AI in Student KB Dialogues

Context

High school World Religions course
Taught by one experienced KB teacher
Multiple digital tools (KF, Miro, ChatGPT)

Design Question How to distribute agency between students and AI?

Co-Design with Teacher

Situate AI in Knowledge-Creating Dialogue Moves:

Problem definition
New ideas
Promisingness evaluation
Meta-dialogue
Comparison
Critical discourse
Higher-level ideas

[60-75 seconds]

Let me start with students. The context here was a high school World Religions course taught by an experienced Knowledge Building teacher in Colombia. Students were exploring religious literacy using multiple tools: Knowledge Forum, Miro for visual organization, and ChatGPT.

The central design question we faced was: How do we distribute agency between students and AI? We didn’t want AI to replace student thinking.

One important strategy we took was to – work with the teacher to carefully situate AI within what we call Knowledge-Creating Dialogue Moves.

These moves are defined by Bereiter and Scardamalia. You see these listed here—problem definition, generating new ideas and assessing their promisingness, comparison and critical discourse, meta-dialogue, and higher-level synthesis. These are the moves that drive knowledge creation. Our design approach was to position AI as a participant in these moves, but always with the students maintaining control.

Two Patterns of ChatGPT Integration

Pattern 1: Explore Problem Space

Pattern 2: Build Through Discourse

[45-60 seconds]

Based on this idea, we came up with two main patterns, shown in this figure.

Pattern 1, on the left, is about exploring the problem space. Students would use ChatGPT early in their inquiry to generate initial questions, uncover complexity they hadn’t considered, and identify gaps in their own knowledge. It was like using AI as a thinking partner to open up the problem.

Pattern 2, on the right, is about building through discourse. Here, students used ChatGPT later in their work to generate alternative perspectives that challenged their emerging ideas, to push back on their thinking, and to deepen the collaborative dialogue they were having with each other.

I won’t have time to unpack details. The key thing to notice is that in both patterns, students are in the driver’s seat. They’re using AI strategically, at different points in their inquiry, to support their knowledge-building work.”

Key Finding: AI Made Learning Harder and Deeper

Students Demonstrated AI Literacy

Understood mechanisms & limitations
Recognized need for fact-checking
Saw risks of over-dependence
Maintained critical stance

Students Took High-Level Agency

Used AI for inspiration, not answers
Engaged in prompt design
Collaborated more, not less, with peers

🦉 By maintaining epistemic agency, students learned about AI, and learned how to learn with AI

[90-120 seconds - THIS IS YOUR PUNCHLINE]

From data analysis, the most interesting finding from the students was: AI made learning harder, not easier.

When we analyzed student reflections and their work, we found that students making efforts to develop AI literacy. They understood the mechanisms and limitations of large language models. They recognized the need for fact-checking. They saw the risks of over-dependence. They need to work on maintaining a critical stance when using AI.

In the process, students took high agency over their learning. They used AI for inspiration, not answers. They engaged deeply in prompt design – learning how to ask better questions. Also crucially, they collaborated more with their peers, not less. AI didn’t isolate them—it gave them more to talk about with each other.

[Pause for fragment to appear]

In this case…

Case 2: CraftPad for Teacher Design

Goals

Support teachers as designers with professional agency

Flexible workspace with pedagogical scaffolding

Case 2: CraftPad for Teacher Design

Goals

Support teachers as designers with professional agency

Flexible workspace with pedagogical scaffolding
Context-aware KB Coach

Case 2: CraftPad for Teacher Design

Goals

Support teachers as designers with professional agency

Flexible workspace with pedagogical scaffolding
Context-aware KB Coach
Rich opportunities for teacher decisions

CraftPad: Preliminary Findings

Design Activity (from 52 users)

Shows deep iterative refinement
Some with up to 96 revisions

KB Coach Conversations

Most were consultations focused on refining lesson designs
Some focused on certain KB principles
A few went deep (e.g., 38 messages exploring SDG connections in a photosynthesis unit)

Teachers are designing with AI, not just consuming AI-generated content

[90-105 seconds]

“We’re still early in this work, but the preliminary findings are encouraging.

On the left, you see data from 52 teachers who used CraftPad to design lessons. What struck us was the depth of iterative refinement. Many teachers went beyond the initial version. Some created up to 96 versions of a single lesson! This isn’t AI spitting out one lesson plan that teachers just accept. This is teachers designing, revising, reconsidering, refining—engaging in iterative design work.

On the right, you see data from conversations between teachers and the KB Coach. Most conversations were consultations focused on refining lesson designs—short, focused interactions. Some zoomed in on specific KB principles. But a few went really deep—one teacher had a 38-message conversation exploring how to connect photosynthesis to Sustainable Development Goals.

The key point here is: Teachers are designing WITH AI, not just consuming AI-generated content. The metrics reveal agency in action—iteration, decision-making, sustained engagement with ideas. Just like with students in Case 1, AI is a tool that supports human agency rather than replacing it.”

Integrate AI in KB Classrooms

Students + AI

AI aligned with dialogue moves
Students maintained epistemic agency
Learning became harder (deeper)
More collaboration, not less

Teachers + AI

AI positioned as design coach
Teachers maintained professional agency
Design became more iterative
More reflection, not less

Design for high-level human agency. AI as flashlight, not magic.

Enhancing Student and Teacher Agency in Knowledge Building with AI

Knowledge Building

Technology for Knowledge Building

Essential KB Principles

Two Examples: AI Supporting Agency

Case 1: AI in Student KB Dialogues

Two Patterns of ChatGPT Integration

Key Finding: AI Made Learning Harder and Deeper

Case 2: CraftPad for Teacher Design

Case 2: CraftPad for Teacher Design

Case 2: CraftPad for Teacher Design

CraftPad: Preliminary Findings

Integrate AI in KB Classrooms

Thank you!