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.

The current effort to establish computational thinking in compulsory school is not a new agenda. In Sweden, the history starts in the late 1960s with the introduction of computer technology in schools. This chapter explores how the arguments for this endeavour have varied over time and what preceded the initiation of the concepts of digital competence and programming in the subject of Technology and the Swedish national curriculum of 2017. The foundation for this is, on one hand, a scrutiny of four large-scale national campaigns and, on the other hand a review of the Swedish curricula from 1969, 1980, 1994 and 2011. It was found that an underlying political agenda has tightly connected the introduction of “new” technology in schools with the competitiveness of Sweden as an industrial nation.

This study aims to demonstrate how interactions between a Visual Analytics (VA) application and students shape an interactive and multimodal reading practice. VA is a technology offering support with analysing vast amounts of data through visualisations. Such information-rich interactive interfaces provide possibilities for students to gain insights, find correlations, and draw conclusions, but they also generate complexities concerning how to ‘read’ multimodal information on a screen. Inspired by Design-Based Research, interventions were designed and conducted in five social science secondary classrooms. The interactions between the VA application Statistics eXplorer and the students were video captured. A socio-material semiotic approach guides the analyses of how interactions between all actors (the interactive visualisations, the written text, the teachers, students, etc.) produce a reading network. The results show a reading characterised by being performative, collaborative, and dynamic. A combination of visuals and text supports the reading. However, visuals such as colour, highlighting and movement dominantly attract students’ attention, while written text often becomes subordinate and sometimes even ‘invisible’. Hence, this paper argues that it is vital for teachers to didactically support students’ visual reading skills.

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.

In this study, a visual analytics application is put into practice in Swedish secondary school social science classrooms. The application offers support to analyse vast amounts of data through interactive data visualizations. Previous studies have demonstrated that the visual interactive interface challenges the traditional practice in school, where students usually demonstrate their knowledge by means of written texts. Thus, this study examines what happens if students work with more malleable, adaptable, or fluid modes when attempting to express their conclusions from work with interactive data visualizations. It aims to detect patterns in how knowledge visualizations are produced and arranged multimodally. Inspired by design-based research, the study conducted two classroom interventions followed by video captures. It employed a socio-material semiotic approach, which enables the study of interactions between both social and material actors. Three patterns emerged when students’ insights were translated into knowledge visualizations – exploring, gathering, and inserting. It became obvious how different actors taking part of such a digital multimodal writing activity affect and change every actor/everyone/everything, which in turn transfers, relocalizes, reformulates, and re-presents the communicated message. Knowing how knowledge visualizations are produced might strengthen students’ visual abilities when transforming insights multimodally.

Denna ”post-sanningens-tid” innebär en osannolik överbelastning avinformation. Det utmanar skolan att stödja elevernas kunskapsuppbyggnad,förmåga att hitta relevant information och samtidigt kritiskt hantera uppgifterfrån olika perspektiv.Detta design-baserade projekt har därför undersökt hur Visual Analytics (VA)och verktyg för kunskapsvisualisering (KV) kan bidra till eleversinformationsprocesser som inte bara syftar till att upptäcka fakta, se sambandoch dra slutsatser utan även utvecklar kunskaper i kombination med attityder,perspektiv och åsikter.Med stöd av aktörnätverks-teori har relationer analyserats mellan visualiseringarpå bildskärmar, interaktivitetens erbjudanden, betydelsebärande semiotiskabudskap och skolans kunskapskrav. Ambitionen har varit att förstå hur VAtillsammans med KV kan stödja lärandet i samhällskunskap på grundskolanshögstadium.Resultaten visar hur VA i undervisning påverkar läraktiviteterna med bådemervärden och utmaningar. Elever kan använda VA, dra slutsatser och göradatavisualiseringar men de måste erbjudas alternativa sätt att visa sina kunskaper(KV), jämfört med vad skolan oftast erbjuder. Här kan en kombination avmuntlig och bildlig kommunikation fungera mer flexibelt. 

Vår tid kännetecknas av att samtidigt som den empirisk-realistiska uppfattningen om betydelsen av vetenskap och kunskap är ifrågasatt, står mänskligheten inför en rad utmaningar såsom hot mot klimatet, hot mot demokratiska institutioner, växande ojämlikhet och pandemier. För att möta detta behöver medborgare inte enbart kunna sovra och bedöma information utan också kan agera som politiska subjekt.

Kapitlet bygger på en studie i två klassrum i ämnet samhällskunskap där elever använder officiell statistik för att med hjälp av ett visualiseringsverktyg undersöka globala handelsmönster. Eleverna presenterar sedan muntligt och visuellt sina insikter, och läraren bedömer elevernas redovisningar.

Studien visar att eleverna med hjälp av visualiserad information, kan förstå ekonomiska och politiska samband, vilket skulle kunna ligga till grund för politiskt engagemang. I klassrummet uteblir dock insikten om att det “skulle kunna vara annorlunda” och att den enskilde/gruppen kan medverka till förändring. Istället hamnar fokus på bedömning av elevens prestation. Studien visar därmed att även om pedagogiska praktiker kan skapa förutsättningar för politisk subjektivitet så tenderar dessa att undergrävas av krav på bedömning, kvalificering och prestationer.

In these times, described as an ´post-truth´ era where we are faced with information overload, it is a challenge to help students find relevant information, support their knowledge building and engage them in thinking critically about information and knowledge from different perspectives. This study investigates how a visual analytics interface (with a dynalinked view of an interactive map together with interactive graphs) and students interact to solve tasks in secondary schools’ social-science classrooms. Teachers are probably better able to support their students if they know more about the translations and the patterns that emerge when students try to engage in interactive graph reading. We have distinguished three patterns that emerge in the interactions. These patterns, decoding, manoeuvring and incorporation of prior knowledge, is supportive in elucidating the students’ visual and analytical reasoning processes. Insights about those reasoning processes is important since earlier research has highlighted the centrality of considering the problems of the complexity of interactive graph reading and thus dealing with issues concerning students’ abilities to read and interpret such graphs, when presented as part of interactive information visualization technology.

Hur kan en framtida digital utbildningspraktik främja elevers utveckling av kunskaper, förmågor och bildning i Hans Roslings anda? Elevers möjligheter att bidra till samhälleliga utmaningar som klimatförändringar, fattigdomsbekämpning och förbättrade levnadsvillkor behöver stärkas. I VISE-projektet arbetar lärare och forskare gemensamt för att skapa insikter i hur interaktiva datavisualiseringar kan bistå elever att analysera viktig fakta, skapa förståelse om vår värld och visuellt presentera dessa kunskaper.

The study explores students production of interactive visualized stories with visual analytics (VA). The aim is to understand emerging interactions in classrooms of grades 7-9 students when visual storytelling methods are playing a part in producing social science content. The dual aspects of visual literacy, information retrievement paired with the creation of interactive visualized stories, are crucial. Video captures of students working in groups and of what happens on their screens are conducted. The results show that students can handle the technical aspects of a VA application, but interpretation of visualized statistics is challenging. The study suggests that VA has potential to strengthen students ability to handle huge amounts of data and increase the possibilities for young people to take part in society.