Speaker
Description
This study examines how human-centred education is discursively constructed in the English-language representation of the WISE 2025 Opening Ceremony. Drawing on Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, it adopts a qualitative case-study approach to examine selected speeches and an on-stage interview, including contributions delivered through English interpretation. The analysis focuses on metaphor, modality, evaluative language, and the allocation of agency, relating these textual features to the ceremony’s institutional context and its framing of educational futures.
A preliminary reading identifies a shared commitment to human values alongside divergent representations of AI. AI is framed as a potential source of dependency and lost freedom, an extension of human intelligence, and a creative resource requiring ethical direction. Metaphors of servitude, reflection, and parental responsibility position humans differently as subjects at risk, decision-makers, and moral educators of intelligent systems. These representations reveal tensions between technological optimism and concerns about intellectual ownership, educational responsibility, and the value of learning through uncertainty and error. Human-centred education consequently emerges as a contested orientation through which speakers articulate different expectations of technological progress. The study contributes to understanding how educational summit discourse constructs legitimate roles for AI while defining the human capacities and values that education should preserve. Its conclusions remain specific to the selected event and acknowledge the interpretive mediation of translated contributions.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis; Artificial Intelligence in Education; WISE 2025; Human-Centred Education; Human Agency; Educational Discourse.