Intelligent pedagogical agents for self-regulated learning: Balancing learner, teacher, and AI agency

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing education, particularly through the use of pedagogical agents that help students develop self-regulated learning (SRL) skills. This article reviews how AI-based pedagogical agents currently support learners by providing adaptive guidance and scaffolding during learning. It briefly describes an information-processing model of SRL that has guided the design of many AI-supported learning technologies, examines recent developments in human–AI collaboration where learners and AI work together as learning partners, discusses the evolving role of teachers in AI-supported classrooms, and considers future directions and key challenges for integrating AI into education. Finally, it presents a forward-looking vision of the classroom of the future, in which learners, teachers, and pedagogical AI agents form a symbiotic, hybrid human–AI learning ecosystem. Through an illustrative classroom scenario, it demonstrates how pedagogical agents powered by generative and agentic AI can collaboratively reason about, support, and foster self-regulated learning while preserving human agency.