The questions are big: What does AI mean for human flourishing in schools? For educators? For the future of learning itself? Something special happens when positive educators from around the world come together to explore them. Ideas spark. Questions deepen. And hope emerges.
That’s what unfolded at our recent roundtable, hosted as part of the IPPA Virtual Summit: AI and the Future of Wellbeing – a gathering that brought together global researchers, practitioners, educators, and leaders to explore human flourishing in the age of AI.
A Heartfelt Thank You to IPPA
First, we are very thankful to IPPA – the International Positive Psychology Association – for hosting this impactful gathering and for their continued partnership with IPEN. The Summit made space for courageous, nuanced conversations that didn’t shy away from complexity, uncertainty, and the very human questions technology raises.
Learn more and access the Summit on-demand →
Thanks to IPPA’s generosity, we were thrilled to celebrate our IPEN community by gifting two complimentary summit tickets to members who completed our community survey. More on that later! 🎉
The Roundtable: AI Through a Lens of Flourishing
Our one-hour conversation – facilitated by Dana Fulwiler Volk (CEO, IPEN) and Justin Robinson (Treasurer, IPEN) – moved through six interconnected prompts, exploring AI and education through the lens of human flourishing.
Participants joined from across the globe and generously shared their wisdom, creative ideas and essential questions. Here’s what emerged.
What We Discussed & Learned Together
1. Human flourishing as the North Star for AI in education
The OECD’s new Education for Human Flourishing framework offered a powerful reframe: education must move beyond preparing students for the labour market and toward cultivating meaning, agency, and contribution.
If flourishing is the purpose of education, the question shifts. It’s no longer “What can AI do in schools?” It becomes “How do we design, adopt, and steward AI in ways that deepen human flourishing?”
2. AI has the potential to support flourishing – if we’re intentional
One of the most hopeful threads in the conversation: AI, used wisely and intentionally, could lift administrative burden and repetitive tasks from educators – freeing time and energy for what humans (and educators) do best: relationships, mentorship, meaning-making, and creating conditions for growth.
As one participant beautifully put it, rather than simply reducing burnout, AI could actually add curiosity and fun to the job – making teaching a richer, more joyful practice.
The word that kept surfacing: intentional. What does that look like in practice?
3. Some things must be protected
The conversation surfaced a clear and urgent call: there are aspects of education that AI cannot and must not replace.
- Relationships: belonging, empathy, and the irreplaceable experience of feeling truly seen by another human
- Identity and purpose: helping young people explore “Who am I, and why does it matter?”
- Embodied, experiential learning: growing through doing, creating, and engaging with the real world
- Ethical responsibility: to one another, and to future generations
4. Be aware of cognitive offloading – and how we might address it through a lens of human flourishing
Jazz Rasool offered a powerful line in the chat: “Convenience eats Competency for Breakfast.”
In reaching for AI-generated outputs, students (and adults) may gradually offload the very cognitive and creative processes that are the learning.
“The angst, inertia, friction and messiness is part of developing the creativity, maturity and competency muscle and the wisdom behind it.”
– Jazz Rasool
As another participant noted, we need to normalize how we learn – and help students understand why the process (not just the product) has inherent value.
This raised a rich question: Can we teach AI literacy in a way that’s grounded in self-awareness and wellbeing? Are students noticing when they’re outsourcing their sense of meaning – or sacrificing flow – to a machine? What would it look like to use AI in ways that deepen our connection to ourselves, our creativity, and our most human capacities?
5. Human capacities are rising in value, not falling
Rather than viewing AI as a threat to human capability, our roundtable considered a powerful reframe: AI raises the bar on what it means to be human.
Curiosity. Creativity. Compassion. Ethics. Meaning-making. Critical thinking. These aren’t soft extras – they are the core of what education is for, and they matter more, not less, in an AI-rich world.
One participant offered a beautiful insight: AI might actually amplify a growth mindset – helping people understand that they are not fixed, that their capacities can always grow.
6. Educator wellbeing and student flourishing are inseparable
A thread that ran throughout the conversation: we cannot talk about AI supporting student flourishing without talking about teachers. AI’s potential to reduce administrative load matters if it also increases autonomy and professional joy. Participants raised a caution here: if AI creates more perceived “time,” we must be intentional about not filling it with additional demands on an already overwhelmed profession. Another participant reminded us of the importance of connecting the research to practice, and having leaders who model curiosity and courage in navigating new terrain, rather than defaulting to compliance.
7. A vision for 2035
We asked: If things went as well as they possibly could, what would education look like in 2035?
The vision that emerged was hopeful: Students working on real-world problems. Teachers as designers of meaningful experiences and mentors of growth. Systems that measure flourishing and not just performance. Communities where AI is a tool in service of human purpose, not a driver of it.
That vision is possible and starts with the choices we make today: what we assess, how we define success, how we harness our own agency in the age of AI, and whether we treat AI as a tool we wield, or a force that wields us.
A Question to Carry Forward
As we closed the roundtable, we invited each participant to consider one of two questions:
What is your biggest hope for the future of education in the age of AI?
or
What is one question we, as a field in positive education, should be exploring more deeply?
The question we’re carrying: “What does it mean to stay deeply human – and to honour and celebrate that humanness more intentionally across our educational ecosystem – in an age of increasingly capable machines?”
We’d love to hear your answer.
Bring This Conversation to Your School
We’ve created a free discussion guide based on the six prompts from our roundtable – designed for school leaders, educators, and teams who want to explore AI and flourishing together.
Download the Free Discussion Guide →
🎉 Celebrating Our Ticket Giveaway
Through IPPA’s generosity, we gave away two complimentary Summit tickets to IPEN community members who completed our survey. For anonymity, we mapped a positive emotion to each entry, and drew the winners with a live spin wheel.
Our winners: Friendship (IPEN member from South Africa) and Transcendence (IPEN member from Germany):
“I enjoyed every second of the Summit. The spirited engagement with the topic was both timely and refreshing, offering an optimistic perspective often missing from expert discussions. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have attended and value the flexibility to revisit these insights through the available resources.”
– Sarina Prinsloo, South Africa
Complete Our Survey & Join the Global Voices Forum
The survey is still open! Please complete the survey by May 1 to secure your spot in our live, virtual Global Voices Forum. You must complete the survey in order to join the forum. Learn more and complete the survey below:
Share your insights with IPEN →
Thank you to everyone who has already shared their voice with us! Your insights are directly shaping IPEN’s next chapter, and we are so grateful.
Education remains a profoundly human, collective endeavour. Thank you for the work you do and for being a part of this global community.
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