ALGORITHMIC RHYTHMS AND HUMAN LEARNING: A PEDAGOGY OF AFFECTIVITY IN THE AGE OF AI
Abstract
The article critically examines the transformations of educational experience in the age of Artificial Intelligence, interpreting them through the lens of “algorithmic beats,” understood as an accelerated and predictive temporality that reshapes cognitive, affective, and formative processes. Through a dialogue between logos and pathos, it highlights how the pervasive integration of intelligent systems alters not only the tools of learning but also the relationship between the subject, knowledge, and time, with implications for cognitive depth and the emotional dimension. To address the risk of reducing human thought to computational models, the article proposes digital affective literacy as an epistemological and pedagogical competence capable of integrating emotion and cognition while fostering critical autonomy. This perspective advocates a pedagogy of complexity that restores centrality to the holistic formation of the subject and to meaning as the foundation of education.
References
Alter, A. (2017). Irresistible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked. New York, NY: Penguin Press.
Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, H. (1978). The Life of the Mind. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Aristotele. (2004). Metafisica (G. Reale, Ed. & Trans.). Bompiani, Milano.
Aristotele. (2014). Retorica (F. Cannavò, Ed.). Bompiani, Milano.
Baker, R. S., & Inventado, P. S. (2014). Educational data mining and learning analytics. In J. A. Larusson & B. White (Eds.), Learning analytics: From research to practice (pp. 61–75). New York, NY: Springer.
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Biesta, G. (2020). Risking ourselves in education: Qualification, socialization, and subjectification revisited. Educational Theory, 70(1), 89–104.
Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruni, E.M. (2016). Educazione e affettività. Per una pedagogia del desiderio, in Ea. (a cura di), Modi dell’educare. Lanciano: Carabba Editore, pp. 49-82.
Carr, N. (2010). The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Chaney, A. J. B., Stewart, B. M., & Engelhardt, B. E. (2018). How algorithmic confounding in recommendation systems increases homogeneity and decreases utility. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (pp. 224–232). New York, NY: ACM.
Citton, Y. (2014). Pour une écologie de l’attention. Paris, France: Seuil.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
DataReportal. (2025). Digital 2025: Global overview report. Retrieved from https://datareportal.com
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee Books.
Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432.
Eco, U. (1962). Opera aperta. Milano, Italia: Bompiani.
Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906–911.
Floridi, L. (2014). The fourth revolution: How the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Floridi, L., Cowls, J., Beltrametti, M., Chatila, R., Chazerand, P., Dignum, V., Vayena, E. (2018). AI4People—An ethical framework for a good AI society: Opportunities, risks, principles, and recommendations. Minds and Machines, 28(4), 689–707.
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1960). Truth and method (2nd rev. ed.). New York, NY: Continuum.
Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Habermas, J. (1981). The theory of communicative action (Vols. 1–2). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Holmes, W., Bialik, M., & Fadel, C. (2022). Artificial intelligence in education: Promises and implications for teaching and learning (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Center for Curriculum Redesign.
Illeris, K. (2002). The three dimensions of learning: Contemporary learning theory in the tension field between the cognitive, the emotional and the social. Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University Press.
Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2016). Emotions, learning, and the brain: Exploring the educational implications of affective neuroscience. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., Darling-Hammond, L., & Krone, C. R. (2019). Nurturing nature: How brain development is inherently social and emotional, and what this means for education. Educational Psychologist, 54(3), 185–204.
Kahn, C. H. (1979). The art and thought of Heraclitus: An edition of the fragments with translation and commentary. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kuhn, D. (2000). Metacognitive development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5), 178–181.
Kulik, J. A., & Fletcher, J. D. (2016). Effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems: A meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 86(1), 42–78.
LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Luckin, R., Holmes, W., Griffiths, M., & Forcier, L. B. (2016). Intelligence unleashed: An argument for AI in education. London, UK: Pearson.
Ma, W., Adesope, O. O., Nesbit, J. C., & Liu, Q. (2022). Intelligent tutoring systems and learning outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(2), 392–414.
Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Montag, C., & Diefenbach, S. (2023). Toward a psychology of digital technologies: Understanding digital media use and its impact on mental health and behavior. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2(3), 149–165.
Montag, C., & Hegelich, S. (2024). Understanding digital behavior and affective computing: Implications for society and democracy. Nature Human Behaviour, 8(1), 12–20.
Morin, E. (1999). La tête bien faite: Repenser la réforme, réformer la pensée. Paris, France: Seuil.
Nguyen, T. T., Hui, P. M., Harper, F. M., Terveen, L., & Konstan, J. A. (2022). Exploring the filter bubble: The effect of using recommender systems on content diversity. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2), 1–27.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2001). Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2021). Beyond academic learning: First results from the survey of social and emotional skills. Paris, France: OECD Publishing.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2022). Education at a glance 2022: OECD indicators. Paris, France: OECD Publishing.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2023). OECD skills outlook 2023: Skills for a resilient green and digital transition. Paris, France: OECD Publishing.
Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. New York, NY: Penguin Press.
Pasquale, F. (2015). The black box society: The secret algorithms that control money and information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pekrun, R. (2014). Emotions and learning. Paris, France: UNESCO.
Piaget, J. (1975). The equilibration of cognitive structures: The central problem of intellectual development. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Platone. (2009). Teeteto o Sulla scienza (L. Antonelli, Trans.). Feltrinelli.
Ricoeur, P. (1990). Soi-même comme un autre. Paris: Seuil.
Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive offloading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(9), 676–688.
Roll, I., Baker, R. S., Aleven, V., & Koedinger, K. R. (2021). On the benefits of seeking (and avoiding) help in online learning environments. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 30(4–5), 573–618.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Selwyn, N. (2019). Should robots replace teachers? AI and the future of education. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Siemens, G., & Baker, R. S. (2022). Learning analytics and educational data mining: Towards communication and collaboration. Journal of Learning Analytics, 9(1), 1–11.
Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776–778.
Stiegler, B. (2016). Automatic society: The future of work (Vol. 1). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Storm, B. C., & Stone, S. M. (2015). Saving-enhanced memory: The benefits of saving on the learning and remembering of new information. Psychological Science, 26(2), 182–188.
Sunstein, C. R. (2017). #Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, R. D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J. A., & Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school-based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta-analysis of follow-up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156–1171.
VanLehn, K. (2011). The relative effectiveness of human tutoring, intelligent tutoring systems, and other tutoring systems. Educational Psychologist, 46(4), 197–221.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ward, A. F. (2021). People mistake the internet’s knowledge for their own. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(43), e2105061118.
Williamson, B. (2017). Big data in education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice. London, UK: SAGE.
World Health Organization (WHO). (2022). World mental health report: Transforming mental health for all. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32043/gsd.v10i4.1988
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2026 ITALIAN JOURNAL OF HEALTH EDUCATION, SPORT AND INCLUSIVE DIDACTICS

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Italian Journal of Health Education, Sports and Inclusive Didactics
Publisher: Cares srl – REN Press (since 2026). Previously published by Gaia srl – Edizioni Universitarie Romane (2017–2025).
ISSN: 2532-3296 E-ISSN: 3103-5744
Italian Journal of Health Education, Sports and Inclusive Didactics
