Background
This research project brings together sociology of education, literary and cultural studies, and cognitive sciences to examine the meaning, the status, and the new forms of knowledge in relation to the educational purposes of higher education. The digitalisation of education, the encroachment of shortcut formats of knowledge such as Wikipedia, the facilitation of accessing knowledge (e.g. via Google search), and, most recently, the rapid pervasion of artificial intelligence (AI), signal a pivotal shift.
Technological and artificial proxies invite us to think of both knowledge-making and learning in terms of human and non-human entanglement as well as prioritise access to knowledge over its appropriation and possession. At the same time, we can detect the seeds of the recent changes in educational policies and practices already in the patterns that evolved and iterated in the 18th and 19th centuries, a period known as classical modernity.
A series of broad questions inspire our inquiry: What is knowledge, where is knowledge and who does it belong to? What is the role of the student in the knowledge production and reproduction? Is knowledge perceived as self-contained or entangled with the learner? What happens when the humans entrust knowledge production and distribution to artificial proxy – automated decision-making tools that operate without human involvement – and what are the cognitive and moral implications of this process for current and future students?
These broad questions are further operationalised through specific research objectives and research questions.
Objectives
We have two research objectives. First, we aspire to trace the ways knowledge production, dissemination and consumption has been imagined and conceptualised in literary and cultural narratives as well as in intellectual and pedagogical discussions from classical modernity (since mid-18th century) to the era of AI and current education policy. Second, we will explore students’ relationship with knowledge in contemporary higher education, particularly focusing on the implications of AI use, revising the prevailing modes of thinking and speaking about knowledge.
The project is organised around three sub-studies addressing three research questions (RQs):
- Sub-study 1 draws on historical-cultural approach and explores literary narratives and intellectual discourses of knowledge from mid-18th century until today to answer the RQ1: How has the idea of knowledge evolved in the course of modern cultural history and affected the way we envision and imagine student’s relationship with knowledge today?
- Sub-study 2 applies societal-institutional approach and focuses on the current societal and state-led discourses on knowledge, competencies, digitalisation and learning in university education, to answer the RQ2: How do current discourses directing the educational purpose of higher education regulate the student’s access to knowledge?
- Sub-study 3 uses pedagogical-interactional approach and examines how AI may shape thinking, redirecting learning processes and how students constitute themselves as learners within the interaction with AI. This sub-study aims to answer the RQ3: How does the use of AI shape the construction and alter our notion of knowledge, and how this new paradigm of knowledge-making and learning invites us to rethink the student’s role in the learning process?
The research combines historical and theoretical analysis with new empirical data, including literary texts, policy documents, curricula, students’ logs, interviews, and art-based focus groups.
Impact
Producing a rich understanding of the students’ relationship with knowledge from history to today serves rethinking the educational role and purpose of higher education in the digitalised era. The diachronic course of understanding knowledge in its relationship with its main ‘consumers’ and ‘carriers’ is a vital question to science community, its renewal and continuity. This project creates a fertile portrayal of multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives to educational knowledge revealing links between past and present, imaginary fiction and actual practices. It also allows rethinking how to face the complexity and limits of knowledge and prepare for an unknown future in a holistic and sustainable way.
Funding
Kone Foundation