Clean edtech and a dirty world: AIED as a waste mechanism

Amid ongoing socio-ecological crises, AIED promises a bright future by claiming to fix educational problems and thereby better prepare students for real-world challenges. While this problem-solving rationale may appear neutral, it is deeply entwined with how society manages other/ness as ‘dirt’ to be removed. Against this backdrop, this study focuses on the social mechanisms of disposability at work in AIED. I first interrogate how techno-solutionism underpins edtech as a co-articulation of edu-fixes and techno-fixes, unsettling the linear narrative in which technologies solve educational problems. Integrating waste as an analytic lens, I then examine how the problem-solution binary is implicated in the stigmatisation and control of other/ness in the name of improvement. Finally, I investigate how AIED wastifies and hygienises other/ness, revealing a pedagogic expression of waste capitalism. Based on this discussion, I suggest reimagining education in an AI era by reinterpreting waste as generative possibilities for otherwise educational relationships.