The development of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has been underway for over half a century. It is only in the past decade that commercial AI-based technologies have been introduced into classrooms, with the promise of improving and transforming teachers’ work. This compilation thesis aims to generate an improved understanding of the implications of AI for the teaching profession. It does so by exploring the ways in which AI is being introduced in school settings, how AI comes into being—how it is materialised—and what this materialisation implies. Actor-Network Theory is applied as a methodological approach and analytical lens to explore the enactments between humans and three different AI technologies, where technology plays an active role.

The thesis comprises five papers. Paper I is a literature review examining teachers' professional knowledge related to AI. Papers II-V are based on three fieldwork studies conducted in Swedish primary and secondary schools between 2020-2023. AI is introduced and materialised on the one hand as an emergent yet implicitly defined form of professional knowledge that teachers are expected to acquire and integrate into their practice. On the other hand, AI comes into being as different data-driven technologies in the making, strongly underpinned by ideas of automating and augmenting teachers’ work. The findings also show how teachers adapted to the technology and compensated for its shortcomings in different ways, even when the technology acted to undermine their professional expertise.

Taken together, the thesis proposes that AI, as related to the teaching profession, is far from a settled affair. AI has still to deliver on its claimed promises. In this context, teachers’ ethical judgement (phronesis) can play an important role in the future making of AI, a making that moves beyond f(ai)th.

Utvecklingen av artificiell intelligens (AI) inom utbildning har pågått i minst ett halvt sekel. Det är först under det senaste decenniet som kommersiella AI-baserade teknologier har introducerats i klassrum, med löften om att förbättra och förändra lärares arbete. Denna avhandling syftar till att generera en ökad förståelse om hur AI-baserade utbildningsteknologier påverkar läraryrket. Här studeras hur AI introduceras i skolmiljöer, hur AI görs ‒ materialiseras ‒ och de konsekvenser som följer. Aktör-Nätverksteori (ANT) används som en metodologisk utgångspunkt och som ett analytiskt raster för att undersöka vad som uppstår i interaktionerna mellan människor och tre olika AI-teknologier och där tekniken får en aktiv roll.

Avhandlingen inkluderar fem artiklar. Artikel I är en litteraturöversikt om lärares professionella kunskap relaterad till AI. Artikel II-V bygger på tre fältarbeten i svenska grund- och gymnasieskolor genomförda mellan 2020 och 2023.

AI introduceras och materialiseras som en framväxande, men implicit definierad form av kunskap som lärare förväntas förvärva och integrera i sin praktik och som olika typer av datadrivna teknologier. Dessa teknologier är i ständig förändring och genomsyras av idéer om att automatisera och förstärka lärarens arbete. Resultaten visar hur lärare anpassade sig till teknologin och kompenserade för dess tillkortakommanden på olika sätt, även i de fall då den underminerade lärares professionella kunnande. Samtidigt som studierna pekar på att teknologierna ännu inte lever upp till löftena, är AI:s roll i relation till läraryrket långt ifrån är bestämd. I det avseendet kan lärarnas etiska omdöme (phronesis) spela en viktig roll i framtida utveckling av AI i framtiden, en utveckling som går bortom AI-tron - f(ai)th.

This paper provides a critical examination of the domain of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, with a focus on the expectations and practical implications accompanying its integration into teaching. The expectations have been propelled by two interconnected concepts: (1) the potential for AI to automate pedagogical processes, replacing teachers in certain scenarios; and (2) the notion that teachers’ insights can be augmented through AI-based analysis. Drawing on two ethnographic studies in Swedish primary and secondary schools, this paper explores the enactments of pupils, teachers and two AI-based educational technologies. The aim is to demonstrate how automation and augmentation can emerge in teachers’ practice. Utilizing inspiration from a relational epistemological problematisation of socio-technical phenomena, the paper demonstrates how rather than automation and augmentation, AI in education is an act of symmation in which automation and augmentation is co-produced by the technology and teachers’ different hidden work, in this paper conceptualised as adaptations, experimentations, compensations and confirmations. The paper suggests that the study of symmation in relation to the teaching profession can be productive in further exploring the yet limited understanding of AI in educational practice.

Artificial intelligence (AI) literacy has recently emerged on the educational agenda raising expectations on teachers' and teacher educators' professional knowledge. This scoping review examines how the scientific literature conceptualises AI literacy in relation to teachers' different forms of professional knowledge relevant for Teacher Education (TE). The search strategy included papers and proceedings from 2000 to 2023 related to AI literacy and TE as well as the intersection of AI and teaching. Thirty-four papers were included in the analysis. The Aristotelian concepts episteme (theoretical-scientific knowledge), techne (practical-productive knowledge), and phronesis (professional judgement) were used as a lens to capture implicit and explicit dimensions of teachers' professional knowledge. Results indicate that AI literacy is a globally emerging research topic in education but almost absent in the context of TE. The literature covers many different topics and draws on different methodological approaches. Computer science and exploratory teaching approaches influence the type of epistemic, practical, and ethical knowledge. Currently, teachers' professional knowledge is not broadly addressed or captured in the research. Questions of ethics are predominantly addressed as a matter of understanding technical configurations of data-driven AI technologies. Teachers' practical knowledge tends to translate into the adoption of digital resources for teaching about AI or the integration of AI EdTech into teaching. By identifying several research gaps, particularly concerning teachers' practical and ethical knowledge, this paper adds to a more comprehensive understanding of AI literacy in teaching and can contribute to a more wellinformed AI literacy education in TE as well as laying the ground for future research related to teachers' professional knowledge.

This paper explores the implementation of a wellbeing app in a Swedish Upper Secondary School. The aim is to understand how ideas of data driven school improvement underpinned by promises of artificial intelligence (AI) and learning analytics (LA) change the work of teachers. The study draws on video-ethnography from 17 meetings between five teachers/form tutors. The produced data is analysed using actor-network theory to focus on the various stages of the implementation process and the interactions between the learning analytics dashboard (LAD) and the teachers. To capture the complexity of the data, the empirical material is presented through cartoon-inspired illustrations grounded in a Thinking through Cartoons methodology. Findings show how teachers took on new roles and responsibilities in relation to the wellbeing app, most notably the role of collecting data from students. Teachers came to act as data analysts which imposed constant negotiations and uncertainties. To address the declining engagement of students over time, a student-facing LAD was intro-duced. The teachers shifted their focus to motivate students to engage with their own data in different ways. Despite no improvements in students’ response rates teachers remained committed to the app, trusting that new AI and LA function-alities would compensate unsatisfactory outcomes. In conclusion, instead of im-proving teachers’ capacity to identify at-risk students, the wellbeing app in-creased teachers’ workload and led to different dilemmas related to teacher-stu-dent relations and teachers’ professional judgement.

This article explores the complex challenges of co-designing an AI- and learning analytics (LA)-integrated learning management system (LMS). While co-design has been proposed as a human-centred design approach for scaling AI and LA adoption, our understanding of how these design processes play out in real-life settings remains limited. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in primary and secondary schools and employs a relational materialist approach to trace, visualise, and analyse the increasingly complex and transformative relations between a growing number of actors. The findings shed light on the intricate ecosystem in which AI and LA are being introduced and on the marketisation of K-12 education. Instead of following a rational and sequential approach that can be easily executed, the co-design process emerged as a series of events, shifting from solely generating ideas with teachers to integrating and commercialising the LMS into a school market with an already high prevalence of educational technology (EdTech). AI and LA in education, co-design and data-driven schooling served as negotiating ideas, boundary objects, which maintained connectivity between actors, despite limited AI and LA implementation and the development of a stand-alone app. Even though teachers and students were actively involved in the design decisions, the co-design process did not lead to extensive adoption of the LMS nor did it sufficiently address the ethical issues related to the unrestricted collection of student data.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often highlighted as a transformative technology that can“address some of the biggest challenges in education today”(UNESCO, 2019). Introducing data-driven AI in classrooms also raises pedagogical and ethical concerns related to students’, teachers’ and teacher educators’ understanding of how AI works in theory and practice (Holmes, 2022; Sperling et al., 2022). This extended abstract presents initial findings from the first study conducted within the WASP-HS1-funded research project: "AI Literacy for Swedish Teacher Education - A Participatory Design Approach". The project aims to establish a scientific foundation for teaching AI literacy in teacher education (TE) programs.

Machine learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are predicted to play a transformative role in primary education, where these technologies for automation and personalization are now being introduced to classroom instruction. This article explores the rationales and practices by which machine learning and AI are emerging in schools. We report on ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden, where a machine learning teaching aid in mathematics, the AI Engine, was tried out by 22 teachers and more than 250 primary education students. By adopting an Actor-Network Theory approach, the analysis focuses on the interactions within the network of heterogeneous actors bound by the AI Engine as an obligatory passage point. The findings show how the actions and accounts emerging within the complex ecosystem of human actors compensate for the unexpected and undesirable algorithmic decisions of the AI Engine. We discuss expectations about AI in education, contradictions in how the AI Engine worked and uncertainties about how machine learning algorithms ‘learn’ and predict. These factors contribute to our understanding of the potential of automation and personalisation—a process that requires continued re-negotiations. The findings are presented in the form of a fictional play in two acts, an ethnodrama. The ethnodrama highlights controversies in the use of AI in education, such as the lack of transparency in algorithmic decision-making—and how this can play out in real-life learning contexts. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of AI in primary education.