#769: Who Gets to Know? Children’s Epistemic Agency in Science eBook Reading with AI

Children’s ability to act as epistemic agents not only support their understanding of concepts but also for shaping how they engage with ideas and participate in knowledge construction within their learning environment. The advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) has provided opportunities for interactive science learning, such as serving as a learning companion in dynamic and dialogic reading. While prior research has examined how children enact epistemic agency in human-to-human interaction, it is unclear about whether, and if so how, children enact epistemic agency when interacting with AI, a non-human entity. This paper draws on video recordings of two individual children, each reading a science eBook with an AI agent. Using an interaction analysis, we examine how, through both language and embodied action, these two children claimed, evaluated, and negotiated knowledge, positioning themselves as epistemic agents in interaction with the AI agent.