Narrative agency is KQED’s approach to storytelling and learning that helps young people recognize, trust, and retain ownership of their own ideas, experiences, values, and perspectives when working with AI tools. This post is about where the concept came from and the curriculum we have created to help students discover and grow their own narrative agency. And it starts with storytelling.
We are all storytellers
One of the most important skills we develop in our lives is our ability to communicate and tell stories. When I refer to telling stories, I mean it in the broadest possible sense, including all of the ways we organize our experiences, ideas and information and convey meaning to other people. Ultimately, we rely on our ability to tell stories to form connections with others and accomplish the business of living.
In schools, we invest a lot in developing the ability of young people to tell stories:
- We ask them to take and defend positions.
- We ask them to present data and visually express ideas.
- We ask them to reflect on history and literature.
- We ask them to role play and act things out.
- We ask them to make podcasts and videos that share information.
- We ask them to tell us what things mean to them and why.
We do all this because we recognize how intertwined our ability to communicate and tell stories is with our ability to think and learn. We learn by listening to stories AND we learn through the act of storytelling itself.
The Process Crisis
Since storytelling is central to how we think and learn, then the ubiquitous presence of AI technology designed to simulate human voices and viewpoints should raise questions about what might be displaced, especially during the creative process. Without intentional strategies for navigating our AI world, young people risk something more fundamental than simply having AI do their schoolwork. They risk losing trust in their own experiences, values and perspectives as sources of meaning. They risk losing important opportunities to develop a voice of their own.
For anyone who went through school before 2022, the dominant “equation for learning” in schools could be expressed simply as something like:
Proof of Learning = The Final Product + The Process
This equation works because it accounts for the demonstration of both the ability to take on and use new information (the process) and apply it (the product).
AI has changed this equation. In addition to simulating our voices and viewpoints, AI chatbots have the process of getting from prompt to product handled, too. Now, students can produce a final product with a single click that has not been considered or reflected upon. And teachers cannot reliably know. This leaves us with a broken equation for learning for any work not completed in front of the teacher:
Proof of Learning ≠ The Final Product + An Offloaded Process
By their very design, and in whatever role they might be playing from “eager assistant” to “topic expert”, it is the chatbot’s job to take on the process between prompt and result. You want those meeting notes turned into a project proposal? Bingo! Give me that proposal!
At work, that’s efficiency. However, in a classroom, it is this exact work in between “prompt and result” where a giant bulk of learning happens.
We at KQED’s education department call this collapse of our traditional equation for learning “The Process Crisis.” The process crisis underpins much of the concern about the use of AI in schools, including fears around cheating, de-skilling and the lack of cognitive struggle.
Narrative Agency
Naming the problem in this way was important to informing and evolving our team’s thinking and move toward a framing that centers both product AND process.
At KQED, we are storytellers and our education team’s core work is to support the sharing, elevation and celebration of youth voices with public media audiences. But, for students, turning inspiration into media they are proud to share is process-heavy work.
Thus, as we turned the lens of the process crisis at our own work, it was clear there were questions needing to be addressed. Namely,
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- What happens to the stories young people will tell about their lives and the things that matter to them when they work with tools designed to simulate human voices and viewpoints?
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- What happens when those tools begin making some of the creative choices that then, in turn, do their own shaping of a young person’s voice?
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- Finally, what happens when some or many or most of the ideas between “tell your story” and the story itself are told by AI?
As we grappled with these questions, we came to a realization that many educators may have come to as well. Namely, we need to dedicate time in classrooms to thinking about where our own voices come from, what makes them unique, and why they matter.
And now, sitting here faced with a tool designed to replace thinking and simulate their voices, it might be a good idea to support students in thinking about why their ideas and their values and their voices are important to their learning, their self-development and their future.
Because, of course, it is easy to give away what you do not value.
In fact, classrooms need to be laser focused on providing young people with skills to consciously recognize, trust and intentionally own the things that make their perspective and story their own, especially when working with AI tools designed to simulate human voices and viewpoints and take over parts of the creative process. This is narrative agency.
We don’t see narrative agency as either pro-AI or anti-AI. Agency is by its definition about choice, after all. Instead, we see narrative agency and the pedagogy it inspires as a potential response to many of the issues expressed through the process crisis:
- Find your voice before inviting AI in.
Narrative agency emerges through opportunities for students to explore their own perspectives, identities, experiences, and understandings of the world. Reflection on these things must be a core part of pre-production, in the same way brainstorming and drafting are.
- Make process visible.
Documenting process, explaining decisions and reflecting on how their thinking and work evolves over time is critical for developing narrative agency. Thus, it is also important to create spaces where choices related to AI can be discussed with openness and curiosity to help remove AI use from its hiding places and make it visible to the creative process.
- Center audience and purpose.
Creating and publishing work for real audiences with real needs demonstrates that what students think and have to say about the world matters and has value to others. Narrative agency develops from the desire to be seen, heard, and understood.
- Choice and accountability around AI use.
Students possess (growing) agency over when, how, and if AI enters the process. Reflection on decision making around the use of AI and the role it played in the outcome that was created is an essential part of both personal accountability and developing narrative agency.
Finding First Person
To bring the concept of narrative agency into the real world, we have developed a unit of study titled Finding First Person to support the growth of narrative agency while engaging in media storytelling.
The activities in the curriculum were co-created with a group of 10 teenagers we worked with this summer. In that program we had students with a wide range of AI perspectives. Some were using AI in advanced ways every day and some were uncomfortable with, or questioning, most uses. However, the concept of narrative agency was seen as empowering, regardless of where they were on that spectrum. Narrative agency gave them a framework for responsible decision making around AI that didn’t seem so all or nothing and could evolve as they and their experiences grew.
In this unit, students first go through a series of activities designed to build narrative agency and then they write and record a personal narrative. It is designed to be a way for teachers to begin to talk about AI use, including experimenting with it in intentional ways. It is designed to inspire important conversations and allow students a space to express their emerging opinions about all of it.
Narrative agency certainly does not solve every problem facing students and classrooms related to AI. But helping students know themselves, understand, reflect on, and value their own unique voices and where they came from is a critical part of teaching. In a world where AI surrounds every move young people make, they will be faced with constant opportunities to use AI tools. Those with greater narrative agency will recognize the choices are theirs to make and why making them matters.