EPISODE 29: GEN AI IN EDUCATION WITH MICHAEL YOUNG
Episode 29: Gen AI in Education with Michael Young | 9 June 2026
Stephen and Trent interview Stephen’s former doctoral advisor and University of Connecticut colleague, Dr. Michael F. Young, a scholar of learning science whose academic career investigating situated cognition, instructional design, and playful learning has shaped contemporary approaches to pedagogy development and classroom technology integration. In addition to evaluating the specific impact(s) of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) on education, the trio discusses:
Challenging educators to rethink their approach to curriculum and assessment design;
Describing educational theories in the abstract vs. applying them in complex instructional contexts;
Shifting away from convergent thinking to prioritize divergent thinking;
Teaching learners how to write Gen AI prompts and practice responsible application of Gen AI replies;
Intentions, ethics, and the tokenization of ideas;
Differentiating correlational algorithmic responses from biological human cognition;
Gen AI tools as thought-partners and the resulting Section 230 implications;
The “Clark-Kozma” debate over emerging technologies, pedagogical design, and “good” teaching;
Sociocultural personification of avatars, robots, and other human-like tools;
Personal goal orientation and the limits of non-human intentionality;
Human cognition as an intentional perception-action loop that Gen AI cannot replicate;
How value systems differentiate human problem solving from machine-generated problem solving;
Overcoming administrative obsessions with “efficiency” to promote deeper learning;
Assimilation, accommodation, and what it means to “reboot” education"; and
Judging whether machine-generated solutions align with a designer’s original communicative intent.
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