Putting criticality first in the age of AI

A conference provocation

Last December I presented with Dr Pennie White at the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) conference at the University of Melbourne. Our presentation was titled Critical, cultural, operational: Revisiting Bill Green’s Literacy in 3D framework for the age of AI. This framework is one of the key resources for the Teaching Digital Writing study.

Put “critical” first!

In this presentation, we called for the revision of the usual ordering of the three dimensions of the framework (operational, cultural, critical) to foreground the critical. Yes, we argued that “critical” needs to move back up to the front of the model, in everyday educational parlance!

What is the model?

The Literacy in 3D model was developed around 1988 to inform literacy across curriculum, then revised for literacy and technology in 1990s. The three dimensions are said to work “simultaneously in any literacy act” (Green and Beavis, 2012, p. xv). It provides a valuable way for teachers to plan pedagogy to develop all areas of literacy.

Why order matters: Should we use gen AI at all?

While the model is not meant to be linear, or indeed to start with any one dimension, logics of grammar and syntax mean that the first word in a sequence is salient. With the risks attached to gen AI, understanding how to use it needs to follow an initial decision as to whether it should be used at all. Of course, it’s hard to disentangle this from understanding what gen AI is (which may also invoke the “cultural”). However, the shift in sequence may do important pedagogical work to disrupt the naturalisation of gen AI in education.

What are the risks?

These risks of using gen AI are, for example, legal, personal, privacy-related, datafication-related, diversity-related (due to biases), democracy-related and planetary due to the costs of developing and sustaining large language models.

What do “critical, cultural and operational” mean re gen AI?

In our presentation, we suggested that:

• “Critical” foregrounds the power struggles related to meaning-making systems (e.g., understanding who has access to gen AI, and how much that access will cost in economic, social, and environmental terms).
• “Cultural” connects to content and meaning making in diverse contexts (e.g., how authors, artists and poets are using gen AI to enhance the impact of their work). (McKnight & Hicks, 2023, p. 118)
• “Operational” refers to language competencies and the technical “how to” of literacy (e.g., how to write a clear and instructive prompt for gen AI).

What do students think?

This is a great opportunity for teachers to debate with students what the order of the three dimensions could most effectively be, as they negotiate curriculum. Where should we start, given that not only words in sentences, but unit and lesson plans have linear structures? In a world of edtech rhetoric (McKnight and Furze, 2023) and pressures to adopt gen AI, theory, in the form of the 3D model, can remind us all that developing critical faculties is an important precursor to operational skills.

Three key questions

While literacy is complex and inevitably involves all three dimensions of the model, educators and students need to ask, in any instance:

1. Should we use this at all?
2. What are the risks and benefits of use?
3. What is displaced?

But what about the order of “cultural” and “operational”?

By the time we gave our conference presentation, in the gap between submitting the abstract and presenting, we had already started thinking the best order may be “critical, operational, cultural”. What do you think? Please add a comment. And is this all just semantic fiddling… or could this shift be useful?

Cite this:

McKnight, L. (2024). Putting criticality first in the age of AI ‘[Blog post]’. Retrieved from https://teachingdigitalwriting.wordpress.com/2024/03/26/putting-criticality-first-in-the-age-of-ai/

References

Green, B., & Beavis, C. (2012). Introduction. In B. Green & C. Beavis (Eds.), Literacy in 3D: An integrated perspective in theory and practice (pp. xv-xxiv). Melbourne: ACER Press.

McKnight, L., & Furze, L. (2023). Does the new AI framework serve schools or edtech? ‘[Blog post]’. Retrieved from https://blog.aare.edu.au/does-the-new-ai-framework-serve-schools-or-edtech/

McKnight, L., & Hicks, T. (2023). Generative AI Writing Tools: How They Work, What They Do, and Why They Matter. In R. E. Ferdig, R. Hartshorne, E. Baumgartner, R. Kaplan-Rakowski & C. Mouza (Eds.), What PreK-12 teachers Should Know About Educational Technology in 2023: A Research-to-Practice Anthology (pp. 117-122): Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. https://www.learntechlib.org/p/222690/ (Open Access)

McKnight, L., & White, P. (2023). Critical, cultural, operational: Revisiting Bill Green’s Literacy in 3D framework for the age of AI. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education Conference: Voice, truth, place. Critical junctures for education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne. Abstract retrieved from https://www.xcdsystem.com/aare/program/PJRPyvc/index.cfm