ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND STUDENT AGENCY IN KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION IN BASIC EDUCATION

Abstract

The expansion of generative artificial intelligence has changed the ways in which students access information, produce texts, investigate problems, formulate responses, and interact with different objects of knowledge. In Basic Education, these transformations expand possibilities for personalization, creation, collaboration, and learning support, while also raising questions related to authorship, cognitive dependence, information reliability, and the preservation of students’ intellectual activity. This article aims to analyze the possibilities and challenges of the pedagogical use of artificial intelligence for strengthening student agency and knowledge construction in Basic Education, considering the dimensions of authorship, autonomy, pedagogical mediation, and critical thinking. This is a qualitative, bibliographic and documentary study with an analytical-interpretative approach, based on national and international academic literature and institutional documents concerning artificial intelligence and education. The analysis is organized around three axes: student agency, authorship, and knowledge construction in digital culture; artificial intelligence as a form of mediation for learning, inquiry, and creation; and the tensions between agency, cognitive dependence, and student autonomy. The study argues that the educational contribution of artificial intelligence does not result from its mere introduction into school practices, but from the pedagogical conditions guiding its use. It concludes that its formative potential increases when technology supports processes of inquiry, choice, verification, creation, and re-elaboration, preserving students as intellectual agents of their own learning and teachers as mediators of the educational process.