Classic theories, new questions
AI Dialogues™ is a structured public-scholarship series that places influential educational and psychological theories in conversation with the conditions created by artificial intelligence. The aim is not to dismiss classic thinkers, but to ask where their assumptions remain powerful, where new technologies create friction, and what must be reinterpreted for contemporary classrooms.
Piaget on Trial
Piaget becomes a way to examine development, readiness, discovery and the consequences of giving learners cognitive tools that can generate explanations before the learner has constructed understanding independently.
When Maslow Met Perplexity™
Maslow offers a route into questions of need, motivation, esteem and self-actualization in environments where AI can increasingly mediate work, feedback, belonging and achievement. This dialogue is available as a DOI-backed Zenodo record.
Vygotsky on Trial
Vygotsky invites perhaps the most direct AI-era question: what happens to the zone of proximal development when a learner can interact continuously with an artificial scaffold? The dialogue asks how we distinguish productive mediation from dependency.
Future Dialogues
Bloom, Bruner, Gardner and Erikson provide further lenses on mastery, scaffolding, multiple forms of capability, identity and development. The series treats these thinkers as starting points for inquiry rather than authorities beyond question.
Purpose of the series
AI Dialogues™ is designed to make theory usable. It gives educators, students and researchers a vocabulary for discussing AI that is neither purely technical nor purely celebratory. Each dialogue asks what we preserve, what we revise and what new educational responsibilities emerge.
This work forms part of the wider AI Masters Barbados scholarship programme. For lectures, seminars, institutional discussions or research collaboration, request a session.
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