ME:: LLMs are a useful tool to complement your learning and to help construct your meaning; you can use them to replace your labour and get good grades but that's not going to result in learning which is of course NOT about grades ; Soroush Sabbaghan:: AI can be responsibly integrated into classrooms by answering the ‘why’ and ‘when’
Discovered: Oct 12, 2025 15:24 (UTC)ME:: LLMs are a useful tool to complement your learning and to help construct your meaning; you can use them to replace your labour and get good grades but that’s not going to result in learning which is of course NOT about grades ; Soroush Sabbaghan:: AI can be responsibly integrated into classrooms by answering the ‘why’ and ‘when’
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- Read the whole thing: AI can be responsibly integrated into classrooms by answering the ‘why’ and ‘when’
This reframes the “why” of using AI. From this perspective, the only justification for integrating AI into a learning process should be to support and sustain intellectual labour.
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However, when the “how” of AI is used to bypass the very struggle that builds virtue (by exercising intellectual labour, including analysis, deliberation and judgment), it directly undermines the “why” of the assignment. A graduate student who generates a descriptive list of pertinent research about a topic without engaging with the sources skips the valuable process of synthesis and critical engagement.
For Dewey, learning happens through doing, questioning and grappling with complexity, not by acquiring information passively. Assignments that reward perfection and correctness over process and growth further incentivize the use of AI as a shortcut, reducing learning to prompting and receiving rather than engaging in the intellectual labour of constructing meaning.
This is where an “ethics of care” becomes indispensable. As philosopher Nel Noddings proposed, a care-based approach prioritizes relationships and the needs of the individual over rigid, universal rules. It moves away from a one-size-fits-all policy and toward discretionary judgment.
Deciding the “when” requires educators to know their learner, understand the learning goal and act with compassion and wisdom. It is a relational act, not a technical one.
Educators must ensure that AI supports rather than displaces the development of core capabilities.