Introduction: AI, Inclusion, and ‘Everyone Learning Everything’

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the book—Artificial Intelligence and Inclusive Education: speculative futures and emerging practices. It examines the potential intersections, correspondences, divergences, and contestations between the discourses that typically accompany, on the one hand, calls for artificial intelligence technology to disrupt and enhance educational practice and, on the other, appeals for greater inclusion in teaching and learning. Both these areas of discourse are shown to envision a future of ‘education for all’: artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) tends to promote the idea of an automated, and personalised, one-to-one tutor for every learner, while inclusive education often appears concerned with methods of involving marginalised and excluded individuals and organising the communal dimensions of education. However, these approaches are also shown to imply important distinctions: between the attempts at collective educational work through inclusive pedagogies and the drive for personalised learning through AIEd. This chapter presents a critical view of the quest for personalisation found in AIEd, suggesting a problematic grounding in the myth of the one-to-one tutor and questionable associations with simplistic views of ‘learner-centred’ education. In contrast, inclusive pedagogy is suggested to be more concerned with developing a ‘common ground’ for educational activity, rather than developing a one-on-one relationship between the teacher and the student. Inclusive education is therefore portrayed as political, involving the promotion of active, collective, and democratic forms of citizen participation. The chapter concludes with an outline of the subsequent contributions to the book.