Overview
What the framework is trying to do
Conrad and Kamperman's approach pushes against AI literacy that becomes simple upskilling. It asks educators to examine the systems hidden beneath frictionless AI interfaces, including labor, corporate power, environmental cost, intellectual property, data sovereignty, and epistemic justice.
A particularly important feature is that critical judgment can lead to limits, resistance, or non-use. Competence with AI is subordinate to educational, ethical, and social judgment.
Framework structure
Core dimensions or competencies
Political and economic context
Corporate influence, technological determinism, ownership, incentives, and institutional governance.
Labor and environment
Human labor behind AI systems and their material environmental costs.
Knowledge and justice
Epistemic justice, representation, intellectual property, and diversity of thought.
Human agency
Using, limiting, modifying, questioning, or refusing AI depending on context.
Critical depth
Why this framework is rated Very High
Rated Very High because political economy, power, labor exploitation, environmental impact, institutional governance, epistemic justice, and refusal are central to the argument rather than peripheral considerations.
Central
Bias, power, labor, equity, environmental impact, epistemic authority, human agency
Present
Privacy, accessibility, verification, transparency
Limited
Surveillance
Not evident
See the Critical Dimensions Index for dimensions not assigned a stronger classification.
Evidence base
What supports the framework?
Conceptual and practice-informed scholarly framework
Practical use
Especially useful for
Faculty development, institutional policy critique, teaching philosophy, course design, AI governance discussions, and critical technology studies.
Evaluation
Strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Strong critique of technological inevitability and AI hype.
- Treats non-use and refusal as legitimate literate choices.
- Connects classroom decisions to political economy and institutional governance.
Limitations
- Primarily conceptual and pedagogical rather than a validated competency assessment.
- Less structured as a step-by-step curriculum framework than UNESCO or OU.
Portability
How well does it travel?
Moderate–High. The questions travel broadly across higher education, though implementation requires educators to translate them into local curricula and policies.
Source
Citation
Conrad, K., & Kamperman, S. (2025). Building Critical AI Literacy.