Reconstructing GenAI in education: a social systems theory approach

Building on Luhmann’s theory of social systems, we analyse education as an operationally closed, autopoietic system that can relate to GenAI only by translating it into educational communication. The central claim is that GenAI does not enter education as a ready-made object with fixed effects; it becomes meaningful only through educational distinctions, expectations, and routines that enable the system to reproduce itself under heightened contingency. This perspective is important because it clarifies where and how influences commonly described as external (e.g. economic agendas or corporate tools) become operative in education: only insofar as they are reconstructed within educational communication, rather than imposed directly from outside. By shifting attention from evaluating GenAI to observing education’s operative mechanisms, we present a conceptual tool for empirically comparing how different aspects of educational communication reproduce and reorganise itself under external pressures through its own internally generated programs and decisions.