Collective Intelligence and Participatory Pedagogies for AI Integration in Education

This paper presents a participatory action-research pathway aimed at exploring the integration of artificial intelligence within educational contexts through active methodologies and shared laboratory-based environments. The project involved approximately 200 teachers from different levels of the Italian educational system, ranging from early childhood education to upper secondary school.
The experience was conceived not as a traditional technical training course on AI, but as a participatory pedagogical ecosystem grounded in dialogue, experimentation, and collective reflection. The pathway was structured through Diana Laurillard’s Conversational Framework, adopted as a pedagogical architecture for organizing educational activities based on six fundamental learning modalities: appropriation, inquiry, discussion, collaboration, practice, and production.
Synchronous meetings, classroom experimentation, focus groups, and reflective surveys were conducted for each educational activity developed throughout the pathway. Teachers’ attitudes, initially characterized by uncertainty and critical resistance, progressively evolved toward sharing, collaborative pedagogical construction, and dialogical engagement, fostering forms of collective intelligence around the pedagogical use of artificial intelligence.
The findings highlight high levels of participation retention (80% of the initial participants) together with a progressive reduction of resistance toward innovation and the transformation of the group into a reflective professional community.
The study suggests that educational innovation related to AI becomes more sustainable when supported by participatory methodologies and continuous dialogical infrastructures. Within this perspective, artificial intelligence does not merely represent a technological tool, but rather a mediating object capable of activating collaborative reflection, professional agency, and the shared construction of pedagogical meaning.

Collective intelligence; Participatory action research; Artificial intelligence in education

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