Designing Civic Learning for AI Justice
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Blog Post by Dr. Jennifer Elemen
Dr. Jennifer Elemen is an award-winning education leader, writer and speaker who designs and facilitates professional learning. She is a BeGLAD certified agency trainer and consultant. She has served in roles from teacher to director to president at the classroom, school district, county, state and higher education levels. You can see her previous blog post for Civics of Tech here.
How might we design civic learning for AI justice?
I serve on the Center for Leadership, Equity, and Research (CLEAR) AI Initiative (CAI) and curated an AI Justice Project Toolkit (2025) with leadership from Mary Lang (CLEAR Chief Education Justice Officer and CAI Lead), Dr. Stephen Morris (Co-Founder and CEO of the Civic Education Center, National Civic Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, CLEAR Board Member, CAI Officer, and Voices of the Valley Lead), Dr. Philip Neufeld (CAI Officer), and Dr. Ken Magdaleno (CLEAR Founder and CEO, a non-profit organization “dedicated to eliminating educational and social disparities which impede equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students and the communities from which they arrive”).
The goal of the Toolkit is to empower students to become active participants in shaping how AI affects their communities. In this process, they develop the technical skills, AI literacy, ethics, critical consciousness, transformative agency, and civic engagement competencies essential for democratic participation in the current and future local and global contexts. Using the Toolkit, high school students are introduced to the concept of AI justice, along with “AI Justice Maps” to focus their civic engagement projects on topics including: AI and identity, AI and data equity, AI and cyber-social learning, AI and community intersections, AI and social justice, and AI and responsible tech.
AI Justice: ensuring that AI systems are designed, developed, and deployed in ways that promote fairness, equity, and human rights…addressing how utilizing AI can perpetuate existing societal inequalities or be leveraged to create more equitable outcomes for communities.
Students’ AI Justice Projects may be part of earning their State Seal of Civic Engagement, which in California calls for them to “participate in one or more informed civic engagement project(s) that address real-world problems and require students to identify and inquire into civic needs or problems, consider varied responses, take action, and reflect on efforts,” among other criteria (California Department of Education, 2021). The Toolkit provides teachers with standards-aligned curriculum framework considerations to effectively guide students through AI justice focused civic engagement projects. Students ask ethical inquiry questions, research potential injustices and possibilities for justice, investigate, critique, reimagine, propose potential solutions, take civic action, reflect, document and share their learning.
As part of CAI, we “collaborate with local, regional and statewide partners to empower educational justice that serves a diverse society today and creates a future for everyone across the AI ecosystem. We align with California laws AB 2786 and SB 1288 (Public Schools: Artificial Intelligence Working Group) and we collaborate across the Central Valley Counties and beyond to extend and build from our Voices of the Valley Initiative.”
For an overview of the Toolkit and additional resources from speakers on a virtual panel, join us on September 24, 2025 at 6:00-7:00 pm PT at the California Council for the Social Studies webinar “AI and Media Literacy” during High School Voter Education Weeks (September 15-26, 2025) and preparing for Digital Citizenship Week (October 20-24, 2025) and Media Literacy Week (October 27-31, 2025). We look forward to supporting educators in implementing the Toolkit and sharing the learning
What inspired the creation of the Toolkit?
When generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) apps became widely available starting in November 2022, what followed was an avalanche of advice on how to use the new applications. This was many people’s understanding of AI literacy: simply using GenAI apps. Having learned about and facilitated educators’ professional learning on critical digital literacy, I knew that this view of digital tools usage as a literacy, while prevalent, was limited. Moreover, what did emerge as ethics amid GenAI app use amounted to training on data privacy and security. It still didn’t support educators to critically evaluate the role of technology in the education system nor empower students to engage in rigorous analysis of the role of technology in society as part of civic learning. Exceptions to this were groups like the Civics of Technology project and some higher ed spaces, which many K-12 educators were not affiliated with. Instead, many attended conferences, webinars, and workshops that were sponsored by edtech companies and brokers (Ortegón, Decuypere, & Williamson, 2025).
When I researched what existed in terms of AI ethics in K-12 curriculum (as in lesson plans for teaching), I found a plethora of resources grounded in computer science and digital citizenship, but not “critical digital citizenship” (Logan, Chapman, Krutka, Mehta, & Vakil, 2021). There were few curricular resources with connections to deeper learning and social studies, which would design for students to “use new technologies to seek and display knowledge and connect to resources, experts, and peers across the country and around the world” in addition to “engage in inquiry-based and hands-on learning as they investigate scientific, social, historical, literary, artistic, and mathematical questions and develop grounded arguments, solutions, and projects” (Learning Policy Institute, 2019). Exceptions included emerging and research-based enrichment programs, i.e. “Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness as the organizing logic and default setting of digital and artificially intelligent technology…centers the voices, experiences and technological innovations of the students, and in doing so, introduces a new type of digital literacy: critical race algorithmic literacy” (Tanksley, 2024). As a former high school teacher, district and county administrator, and current statewide university-based professional learning leader, I wondered how we might co-design, provide and support such types of learning experiences in school curricula so that all students have equitable access to learning about AI ethics.
I was reminded in the book Code for What? that “Schools and other learning spaces provide an opportunity to build the world we want. To do that, we’ve got to ask the big questions. What do we teach? Why are we teaching it? What persistent inequalities might we be perpetuating? In what ways do we serve some students and harm others? How can our lessons be truly liberatory for all learners?” (Lee & Soep, 2022, p. 11). Critical inquiry guided my approach to supporting educators in a practitioner’s adaptation of what Warr and Heath (2025) describe as “the methodology of technology audit to identify reflective questions scholars, practitioners, and policy makers may use to uncover the hidden curriculum of GenAI… finding proof of inequities to challenge social structures and seek justice.”
After reviewing lessons from various providers compiled within an AI Literacy Curriculum Hub (AI for Equity & Murphy, 2024), I wrote a few lessons to address some of the gaps. These focus on critical AI literacy, ethics and justice with environmental literacy, critical media literacy and digital citizenship, intended for high school teachers to use with students. They were published by California Educators Together as “high quality lessons” (refer to the podcast episode as well) and posted on the National AI Literacy Day website (Elemen, 2024b). I presented at conferences, webinars, and posted resources on social media. I received gratitude for sharing ideas and resources that many had not been aware of, and for having framed learning with inquiry. Guiding questions included: “How is AI used in ways that reinforce bias and prejudice?” (lesson: “AI Bias and Harm”); “How does using GenAI impact the environment and what should we do about it?” (lesson: “AI Environmental Impact”); and “How is AI used to influence public opinion of political issues?” (lesson: “AI, Media and Politics”).
An inequity I observed had been the lack of affordance to educators to engage in epistemological dialogue and technoskeptical stances. For example, at the beginning of certain professional development sessions, techno-optimistic facilitators asked participants to self-identify with their comfort level using AI and implied that increased use correlates with improved learning outcomes, applauding those who were forging ahead to be future ready, and helping to guide the laggards along. This framing of archetypical AI users seemed to contribute to false dichotomies and misunderstandings. Critical concerns were hyperbolized as excessive fear to protect academic integrity in an era when assessments need to be redesigned toward project based learning, while concerns were authentic among educators in pursuit of greater humanity and critical thinking.
Professional learning facilitators benefit from understanding that “Technoskepticism is an orientation which invites technology users to pause before immediately adopting a new technology to think and act with intention and criticality about the technology’s impact on our individual and collective lives (Krutka et al., 2020). Technoskepticism involves building skills, knowledge, and dispositions around how technologies function, the complicated relationships between technology and society, and how political decisions are made about technological adoption and non-adoption (Pleasants et al., 2023)” (Warr & Heath, 2025). Not only do educators need the time and space to grapple with multiple perspectives among colleagues (Zapien & Elemen, 2024), they also need instructional materials to facilitate critical analysis and deeper learning with their students on AI ethics and alignment to emerging, research, and evidence-based practices that improve equitable student learning.
I wrote the article “Teaching Critical GenAI Literacy: Empowering Students for a Digital Democracy,” published in the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Today magazine (Elemen, 2024a) to provide an introduction and examples. What I referred to as critical GenAI literacy is distinct from 1) using the term critical as a synonym for important, 2) being reluctant to adopt new strategies just because they are accused of being the flavor of the week among teaching strategy trends, 3) going beyond data privacy and security policies such as FERPA, COPPA, and CIPA training as part of media literacy and digital citizenship, and 4) only learning with AI as part of computer science education and college/career readiness. There is a range of interest in and use of GenAI apps in pursuit of academic and pedagogical appropriateness, social, economic, and environmental justice, as well as varying levels of critical digital media and AI literacy professional learning provided to educators.
Critical GenAI Literacy
The concept of critical GenAI literacy is derived from the tradition of Critical Literacy as “both a narrative for agency as well as a referent for critique,” leading to critical consciousness and liberation (Freire & Macedo, 1987), which extends to:
Critical Digital Literacy as “practices that lead to the creation of digital texts that interrogate issues of power, representation, and agency in the world and critically interrogate digital media and technologies themselves” (Bacalja, Aguilera, & Castrillón-Ángel, 2021).
Critical Media Literacy as “analysis of the dominant ideology and an interrogation of the means of production…is an inquiry into power, especially the power of the media industries and how they determine the stories and messages to which we are the audience" (Butler, 2021).
Critical AI Literacy as“developing awareness of social justice issues and cultivating in learners a disposition to redress them” (Bali, 2024) and “the capacity to analyze, critique, and transform AI’s critical implications; disrupting the commonplace, considering multiple viewpoints, and focusing on the sociopolitical, and taking action” (Veldhuis, Lo, Kenny, & Antle, 2025).
Critical GenAI Literacy to “decipher fact from misinformation and disinformation, identify claims perpetuated by bots and deepfakes, counter messages and systems that reinforce stereotypes and harm, and explore new ways of learning…with a focus on ethics, connections to ethnic studies, and critical civic inquiry” (Elemen, 2024a).
There are now relevant lessons posted on DayofAI.org/curriculum by the MIT RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) Initiative and gradespan progressions in AI Learning Priorities for All K-12 Students (CSTA & AI4K12, 2025) organized into the categories of “Humans and AI,” “Representation and Reasoning,” “Machine Learning,” “Ethical AI System Design and Programming,” and “Societal Impacts of AI.” This entails:
Societal Impacts of AI to “evaluate how AI use impacts an individual’s decision making and other behavior; evaluate the intended and unintended impacts of AI on society (e.g., deep fakes, job loss) — including government, education, entertainment, culture, careers, and national security — while considering how these impacts may differ among diverse communities; and design ways to minimize negative environmental impacts of AI and communicate those ways to others” (CSTA & AI4K12, 2025). The “SCOPE Framework of AI Literacy” expands upon the “societal perspectives of AI, collaborative inquiry with AI, objective analysis, practical decision-making with AI, and ethical considerations in AI” within a social studies context” (Hammond, Pan, & Oltman, 2025, pp. 99-104).
Ethics of AI involves the study of “bias and discrimination, environment, truth and academic integrity, copyright, privacy, datafication, affect recognition, human labor, and power” (Furze, 2025); with attention to “human rights, human agency, promotion of linguistic and cultural diversity, inclusion and environmental sustainability" (UNESCO, 2024, p. 29) ... "data privacy, intellectual property rights and other legal frameworks" (p. 34) ... "sociocultural and environmental concerns in the design and use of AI, and contributing to the co-creation of ethical rules for AI practices in education" (p. 39).
Proceeding carefully is important as “the Platform Society not only entrenches market interests in schools but also expands their reach by nurturing new dependencies between technologies and classroom practices” (Nicols & Garcia, 2025, p. 4) and “the social uses and impacts of platforms are always conditioned by the technical and political-economic substrates” (p. 10). Current events and real-world dilemmas are important to be studied as part of critical GenAI literacy and ethics. In the Rolling Stone article “These women tried to warn us about AI,” O’Neil (2023) highlighted the contributions of scholars Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Rumman Chowdhury, and Seeta Peña Gangadharan. Students deserve to learn about them as part of critical civic inquiry and to deliberate over what the past, present, and future entail with regard to AI justice.
A source to find open access articles is the Tech Policy Press, “a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. We publish opinion and analysis” (Tech Policy Press, 2025). Educators and learners can evaluate claims such as “The efficiency gains are real, but so too are the democratic costs. How we navigate this trade-off will determine whether AI-powered search serves as a tool for enlightenment or a mechanism for epistemic capture” (Pattison, Ricks, & Wihbey, 2025) and “A “woke-free” AI plan is not neutral; it is a blueprint for perpetuating the very inequities that this country has long struggled to overcome. If we build without intention, we won’t just automate the past, we will hard-code its inequities into the future and mistake that for progress” (Davis, 2025). Preparing critical thinkers to analyze policy may include questions such as: to what extent are the recent Executive Orders “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” and “Pledge to American’s Youth: Investing in AI Education” subsidized surveillance racial capitalism and patriarchal tech “broligarchy” (Sung, Cueva, & Egusa, 2025) and/or access to technological power and redistribution of resources?
In June (2025), EDSAFE AI Alliance, aiEDU, Data Science 4 Everyone, the Global Science of Learning Education Network, and the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University convened “more than 50 leaders from education, technology, philanthropy, and research gathered in Washington, D.C.” to co-create and publish The Blueprint for Action: Comprehensive AI Literacy for All, recommending:
Learning Experience Considerations for AI Literacy calls for hands-on, developmentally aligned learning that integrates AI across disciplines, centers on student identity and experiences, and is grounded in the Science of Learning and Development (SoLD);
Social and Ethical Considerations for AI Literacy emphasizes the importance of integrating ethics and student voices into the teaching and governance of AI. We emphasize the importance of building trust through transparency, community engagement, and responsible design;
Economic and Civic Considerations for AI Literacy explores how AI is reshaping labor markets, information systems, media, and civic engagement.
Within this document, to “cultivate AI literacy across the K-12 learning continuum,” there are elementary, middle, and high school curriculum connections, culminating in “High School (9-12): Emphasize Societal Effects and Ethical Design. Equip students with skills that allow them to critically analyze the role of AI in institutions, like journalism, justice, and the economy. Students can collaborate on projects that require them to design, evaluate, or advocate for ethical AI applications. Emphasize leadership, systems thinking, and solution-oriented design to cultivate civic engagement, digital citizenship, and preparedness for an AI-infused future.”
Considering both real-world challenges and students’ funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) as part of the curriculum:
Beyond the “civic opportunity gap,” (Kahne & Middaugh, 2009) a focus on addressing the “civic debt in democratic education” is needed (Lo, 2019). Schools and society owe Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer+ (LGBTQ+) individuals and community, immigrant and refugee students, linguistically diverse and emergent bilingual students, students with disabilities, foster youth and students living in poverty access to power in school leadership to successfully cultivate critical civic literacy, in addition to challenging inequitable and oppressive practices, structures, and systems. Efforts should include these aspects of identity to empower the historically marginalized, disenfranchised and oppressed, countering the dominant narratives, building a vision and future of equity and justice for all. (Elemen, Santillan, & Guajardo, 2021)
Furthermore, “school leaders have much to learn from listening to and collaborating with students in action research school leadership and civic learning processes” (Elemen, 2015, p. 14). What might the future become when youth lead with community and civic agency for AI justice?
Note: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities she represents
References
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