Centre colleague Huw Davies, Lecturer in Digital Education, and Yan Shvartshnaider, Assistant Professor,Lassonde School of Engineering at York University welcome applications for the special issue "Critical Studies Perspectives on AI’s Impact in Education" in Information and Learning Sciences.
They invite papers that critically examine the use of AI in EdTech and works that engage this scholarly inquiry through conceptual, theoretical, methodological, empirical research, ethics, and governance and policy lenses. The types of research questions and topics of interest that are invited include the following:
- What research and scholarly paradigms, methods and theories are well-suited to understanding the proliferation of AI in education contexts?
- What are the most relevant and impactful ethics theories and approaches relevant to AI in education?
- Is AI becoming an instrument for democratizing, and/or, privatising public education? How do such perspectives juxtapose or coincide or contradict each other?
- In what ways is AI refusal surfacing in contexts, regions, sectors as a response to AI proliferation?
- What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of using AI in EdTech for teaching and learning?
- How can research on AI education integration, and teaching and learning processes and outcomes be conducted rigorously, as it pertains to their concurrent risks?
- Is the ability of companies to exploit AI in educational technology exacerbating educational inequality? How might this relate to the digital divide, especially as it pertains to whether and how the technology may augment or impede meaningful learning?
- How do the environmental costs of AI pose barriers to its use in public education at mass scales?
- In what ways can AI undermine trust and social relations within education?
- Does AI enable the outsourcing of effortful and mindful learning activities to machines?
- Does AI inhibit knowledge acquisition and subsequent skills development and application?
- How should we (re)conceptualize and operationalize academic integrity and plagiarism in the AI era?
- What will societies lose if they outsource education to AI?
- Are concerns about student cheating with AI a rational response to the system proliferation and if not, how should it be otherwise conceived of? If so, how should such a response be incorporated into instructional paradigms?
Submissions open: 15 October 2025
Submissions close: 15 February 2026
Read the full Call for Papers for details on the submission process and the submission guidelines: Critical Studies Perspectives on AI’s Impact in Education | Emerald Publishing.