"The Vast Potential to Deliver Benefits": A Discourse Analysis of Slovenian Educational Policy Documents on Technology

Lucija Zala Bezlaj in Janja Žmavc

Summary:  The article presents the results of a discourse analysis of Slovenian educational policy documents on digital technology, conducted as part of the EDUCAT(H)UM project: Education at the Frontiers of the Human: The Challenge of New Technologies. Over the past decade, digitalisation has taken a central place in EU educational policies, characterised by a one-sided discourse of enthusiasm. An exception is the addressing of artificial intelligence, where caution towards technology as a potential threat to fundamental educational aims and objectives can sometimes be recognized. Using a corpus-assisted linguistic-pragmatic analysis, the article demonstrates how practices of introducing digitalisation into education are represented and legitimised in the corpus of national educational policy documents, with a focus on comparing this with the „new“ discourse on artificial intelligence and in relation to similar documents at the EU level.