Series 8 Bonus Episode 6: Vygotsky, Piaget, Driver and New Research in Children’s Cognitive Development in the Age of AI
17 February 2026

Series 8 Bonus Episode 6: Vygotsky, Piaget, Driver and New Research in Children’s Cognitive Development in the Age of AI

The Power of (STEM)2

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Series 8 Bonus Episode 6: Vygotsky, Piaget, Driver and New Research in Children’s Cognitive Development in the Age of AI  -  In this bonus episode of the 8th series, the host explores the need to revisit Piaget’s Stage Theories, Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and Driver’s seminal work on understanding children’s conceptions and misconceptions in science. Revisiting this work is particularly important in AI as a flawed educational technology that hallucinates may impact children’s understanding of science and nature in a wide variety of unknown ways. The episode ends with a call for new educational research that explores children’s cognitive development in science in the Age of AI in order to better understand both the benefits and possible impacts AI and other generative technologies may have on children’s ideas and conceptions of nature and STEAM.