Date
AI Overview
Why it matters
A focus on operational skills of AI tools risks eclipsing critical and ethical reasoning. Without a comprehensive framework, education may create naive users or uninformed adoption driven by techno-determinism rather than human needs.
Study at a glance
- Question: How should educational frameworks define and approach comprehensive AI literacy to center human agency?
- Setting and data: Not stated in the paper
- Method: Conceptual and policy analysis
- AI tools: ChatGPT, Grammarly
Key findings
- A 2025 Microsoft report cited indicates that 93% of U.S. students have used AI, with 42% using it weekly and nearly a third using it daily.
- Comprehensive AI literacy requires moving beyond technical operation and prompt engineering to include ethical application and critical analysis of AI's societal implications.
- Preserving human agency requires recognizing non-use as a valid, empowered choice when artificial intelligence tools conflict with instructional values or learning goals.
Summary drafted with AI from the full paper and may contain errors. See the full paper for details.
The rapid assimilation of Artificial Intelligence technologies into various facets of society has created a significant educational imperative that current frameworks are failing to effectively address. We are witnessing the rise of a dangerous literacy gap, where a focus on the functional, operational skills of using AI tools is eclipsing the development of critical and ethical reasoning about them. This position paper argues for a systemic shift toward comprehensive AI literacy that centers human agency - the empowered capacity for intentional, critical, and responsible choice. This principle applies to all stakeholders in the educational ecosystem: it is the student's agency to question, create with, or consciously decide not to use AI based on the task; it is the teacher's agency to design learning experiences that align with instructional values, rather than ceding pedagogical control to a tool. True literacy involves teaching about agency itself, framing technology not as an inevitability to be adopted, but as a choice to be made. This requires a deep commitment to critical thinking and a robust understanding of epistemology. Through the AI Literacy, Fluency, and Competency frameworks described in this paper, educators and students will become agents in their own human-centric approaches to AI, providing necessary pathways to clearly articulate the intentions informing decisions and attitudes toward AI and the impact of these decisions on academic work, career, and society.
Research Categories
What is the application?
Who age?
Why use AI?
Methods
AI tools
Publication Source
Publisher
arXiv
