ReSearch: Researching the transforming landscape of information seeking – AI technologies and learning in Swedish schools

The project seeks to understand what generative AI technologies used for information-seeking entail for Swedish compulsory school.

Seeking information is a taken-for-granted activity in many learning exercises, but the introduction of AI unsettles conditions for how information can be sought and evaluated.

This project aims to: I) expand the empirical understanding of information-seeking and evaluation of information sources as a basis for learning in school, in a situation of rapid technological transformation; II) develop conceptual tools for understanding source evaluation in relation to an information infrastructure pervaded by AI-technologies for information-seeking.

It is informed by sociomaterial theory and the associated concept of configuration. The project has three connected, empirical sub-studies.

Each zooms in on a different area in Swedish education to analyse how AI technologies for information seeking are imagined, discussed and used: (1) public discourse (analysis of e.g., media, social media), (2) the classroom (pupils in grades 7-9; e.g. observations, screen recordings, interviews) and (3) the teachers´ room (focus groups with teachers and librarians).

The results will contribute with an empirical basis to enable an understanding of present challenges posed by AI technologies for seeking and evaluation information in education and conceptual development for a future-oriented rethinking of how technologies are configured into school settings and education.