Critical Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) literacy cannot be reduced to a universal framework. Rather, it must be understood as a constellation of situated literacies, shaped by disciplinary perspectives, socio-political contexts, and technological affordances. This multi-authored article explores the emerging concept of critical GenAI literacy and its postdigital configurations. Fourteen authors contributed with different sections, followed by five author-reviewers who examined the article as a whole. The objective was to invite diverse perspectives, constructive critique, and promote collaborative efforts to develop a clearer and more inclusive understanding of critical GenAI literacy. The introduction focuses on establishing some initial assumptions about what we mean by ‘critical’ in general, and for GenAI literacy in particular, and why a conjunction of postdigital configurations of the construct emerges as an adequate methodological solution. In the main part of the article, some authors focus on the concept of ‘literacies’ as a starting point for their reflection, while others directly examine critical GenAI literacy through a postdigital perspective. We conclude that critical GenAI literacy requires moving beyond technical skills to engage with AI’s epistemological, ethical, and relational dimensions, ensuring learners critically interrogate its role in knowledge production. Future inquiry should focus on integrating this literacy into education in ways that promote social justice, epistemic diversity, and democratic participation.

This article discusses the relationship between the use and perception of generative AI among university students as media practices. The study is based on data from a digital survey distributed among students at Södertörn University, which included questions about knowledge, usage, and attitudes towards generative AI, with a particular focus on chatbots (n = 418). The results showed that several students use chatbots in their studies for various purposes, such as getting started with writing, proofreading texts, searching for information, or clarifying difficult concepts and texts. At the same time, a majority of respondents indicated that using AI in exams is cheating, that the results are unreliable, and that usage could negatively impact their own learning. Based on this paradox, the article describes chatbots as “an unreliable teacher” and highlights the importance of supporting students in using AI in a constructive and fair way. This involves developing an understanding about the technology behind AI, as well as broad subject knowledge and critical skills.

Denna artikel diskuterar relationen mellan högskolestudenters användning av och uppfattningar om generativ AI i sina studier som mediepraktiker. Undersökningen bygger på material från en digital enkät som distribuerades bland studenter på Södertörns högskola och som innehöll frågor om kunskaper, användning och attityder till generativ AI, med särskilt fokus på chatbotar (n = 418). Resultaten visade att flera studenter använder sig av chatbotar i sina studier för olika syften som att komma i gång med skrivande, språkgranska texter, söka information eller få svåra begrepp och texter förklarade. Samtidigt uppgav en majoritet av respondenterna att det är fusk att använda AI i examinationer, att resultaten inte är pålitliga och att användningen kan påverka det egna lärandet negativt. Utifrån denna paradox beskriver artikeln chatbotar som ”en opålitlig lärare” och belyser vikten av att stötta studenter i att använda generativ AI på ett konstruktivt och rättssäkert sätt. Detta innebär kunskap om hur tekniken bakom AI fungerar, liksom breda sakkunskaper och kritisk förmåga. 

This chapter explores the methodological challenges of studying future imaginaries in education and introduces a revised model of future workshops to address these difficulties. Based on workshops with representatives from the EdTech sector, research institutions, and educational policy organizations in Sweden and Estonia on the theme ‘The Classroom of 2040’, the study examines the interplay between sociotechnical imaginaries, collectively held visions about how (new) technology can solve current problems and contribute to societal progression, and the participants own imaginations about what the future of education could or should be. The workshops facilitated a process that moved from a mapping of dominant educational imaginaries to critical reflection and the co-creation of alternative, postdigital futures. This approach can be used to understand how sociotechnical imaginaries are materialized in educational technologies and policies while also revealing the tensions and negotiations involved in this process. By engaging influential stakeholders from the EdTech and education sector, the workshops model also highlights the potential of experimental and participatory methods to facilitate dialogue and collaboration between different actors that can inform future development in education.

This study discusses how representatives of the EdTech sector and stakeholders within the field of educational policy in Sweden and Estonia imagine the classroom of the future and the role of digital technologies in these visions. Based on material from a series of future workshops where a total of nine groups gathered to discuss future school development, the study analyzes the sociotechnical imaginaries of education present in each country and the logics underpinning the datafication of the education sector. The results show that participants in both countries highlight datafication as a means to achieve a more individualized educational system, but they also identify tensions between this vision and another common imaginary of a school with diverse learning environments and teaching methods. The study also discusses national differences in the material and how they reflect the educational politics in each country where Estonia uses digitalization to strengthen its national identity as a modern and innovative tech nation, whereas in Sweden there is a growing tendency to question the effects of digital technologies on students’ well-being and cognitive development. These findings contribute to critical research on the datafication of schooling by offering a deeper understanding of the relation between national and global imaginaries of educational futures. © Författarna.

Contemporary education in Sweden is characterized by two parallel processes: the implementation of digital tools in the classroom, on the one hand, and an increased emphasis on brain-based learning, on the other. Proponents of the latter strand of 'neuroeducation' claim that digital media might have harmful effects on learning and cognitive development. How do they then deal with school digitalization? By examining popular science books by influential neuroscience actors in the Swedish educational context, this study identifies two diverging discourses where digital technologies are discussed both as distractions in the classroom and as promising tools for personalized and self-optimizing learning. This ambiguity reflects a cautious criticism against school digitalization as overhastly, a critique that is also emphasized in recent policy changes in the Swedish school system. The article concludes that the impact of brain-based perspectives on educational digitalization policy have positioned neuroscience actors as a new kind of digital experts.

Virtual reality (VR) in educational settings is often promoted by commercial actors as a way to experience environments outside the classroom and a soon-to-be part of everyday teaching and learning. This study follows the development of an educational software package in a Swedish municipality that combines VR technology with 360° live footage from museums and science centers to enable students to visit these spaces from the classroom via their headsets. By focusing on the workarounds and configurations intuitively performed by teachers, students, museum staff, and technicians in this pilot project, different kinds of articulation work performed to make the technology fit with local conditions are identified, from hands-on repair and maintenance to the facilitation of interaction and presence. The collective effort put into making the technology disappear and create a feeling of unmediated experience or immediacy shows how global imaginaries about VR as an immersive technology are enacted by the participants, at the same time as the work put into the project made them challenge the idea of VR as a new everyday technology. This tension between the desire for immediacy and the hands-on work in the physical environment that goes into fulfilling these imaginaries points to the need for local production of educational technologies that recognizes their co-constructive, embodied, and situated nature.

This article focuses on visual peer feedback and the idea process in visual arts education and how this process was shared digitally. In the study, sixth-grade students gave each other visual feedback on their sketches in an assignment in pictorial composition. Visual feedback is understood here as direct interaction with copies of the original composition, given by adding and/or revising elements, which differs from traditional peer feedback that is mainly textual. The aim of the study was to investigate how students can develop their idea process by giving and receiving visual peer feedback, and how students can share their ideas and the feedback digitally. Thematic analysis was used to identify different techniques of visual communication given in the feedback, and a survey was used to map how the students perceived the feedback process. Most students engaged in the feedback process by reusing the objects or the shapes of the objects in the original sketch in new compositions using various techniques like cutting, sketching, and coloring. The interactive and visual feedback dialogues created a playful learning environment. Most students found the peer feedback activity useful and appreciated studying and developing the work of their peers.