Dr. Yasemin Copur-Gencturk is Katzman/Ernst Chair in Educational Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Innovation and Professor of Education at the University of Southern California.
Beyond the Binary: Navigating the Promise and Peril of Generative AI in Education
Generative AI has initiated a transformative shift in the educational landscape, fundamentally expanding how learners, educators, and researchers engage with digital tools. Its applications range from supporting everyday tasks, such as completing assignments, to enabling sophisticated data analysis and tool development. Yet its potential represents only one side of the story. Generative AI can also introduce new challenges and amplify existing ones, often overlooking cultural and contextual nuances and sometimes producing inaccurate or fabricated information. These competing realities have led to increasing polarization within the education community. One perspective is marked by optimism about AI’s transformative potential, whereas the other reflects skepticism regarding its risks and unintended consequences. In this keynote, Yasemin Copur-Gencturk advances a balanced “middle ground” approach that acknowledges the legitimacy of both viewpoints while advocating for thoughtful, evidence-based solutions.
Drawing on ongoing research at the intersection of generative AI and mathematics education conducted by her and her colleagues, she will illustrate how generative AI can be leveraged responsibly and effectively. This talk aims to move beyond binary thinking toward practical discussions and applications that support the meaningful and responsible integration of generative AI in education.
Bio: Yasemin Copur-Gencturk is the Katzman/Ernst Chair in Educational Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Innovation and a Professor of Education at the University of Southern California. She is a leading voice in the integration of AI in mathematics education. Her scholarship focuses on designing AI-driven tools to enhance teachers' capacity, support students' learning, and incorporate qualitative data into large-scale research.
Her current work leverages large language models (LLMs) and emerging technologies to create scalable, high-impact solutions for teachers' professional development, personalized feedback, and the coding of open-text responses while keeping experts in the loop. This pioneering research is supported by more than $8.8 million in federal and private funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and the Gates Foundation.
Copur-Gencturk’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the NSF’s CAREER Award and the Early Career Publication Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Special Interest Group for Research in Mathematics Education. She currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education
