Elementary Education Researcher
Chelsia Shanen Panekenan
“Where school rituals wound and AI can either widen the gap or heal it — the teacher's critical empathy is what decides.”
About
Chelsia Shanen Panekenan works at the intersection of childhood identity formation, critical pedagogy, and the ethics of AI in elementary education — a research space that is rarely populated with the intellectual urgency it deserves.
An LPDP Scholar pursuing her Master of Arts in Elementary Education at Texas State University (August 2025 – May 2027), Chelsia has maintained a perfect academic record across both completed terms: GPA 4.00/4.00, across coursework spanning Science Curriculum, Advanced Early Childhood Development, Multicultural Teaching and Learning, Second Language Acquisition and Development, Human Development, and English as a Second Language Teaching and Materials.
Her academic formation is both quantitatively rigorous and qualitatively deep. She is trained in the ethnographic and critical theoretical traditions that allow her to ask the questions most educational technology researchers avoid: not just whether AI works in classrooms, but what it does to the identity of the child sitting in front of it — especially the child who has already been told, through ritual and routine, that they do not quite belong.
In April 2026, Chelsia presented her paper at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Los Angeles — one of the most prestigious venues in global education research. Her work, presented in the Roundtable Session "Teaching with AI: Identities, Challenges, and Burnout," directly confronts the ethical stakes of AI in education through the lens of figured worlds, class hegemony, and the lasting psychological damage of school shaming rituals.
She brings to AFIRMASI what most AI-in-education researchers lack: a humanizing lens. Her work insists that before any technology enters a classroom, we must ask what emotional and social architecture already exists in that room — and whether the technology will reinforce it or disrupt it for the better.
Activity Gallery
AERA 2026 Annual Meeting — Los Angeles, CA
Elementary classroom observation — critical pedagogy field research
Texas State University — graduate seminar on AI ethics in education
Community outreach — humanizing pedagogy workshop for young learners
Vision
An educational system — and an AI ecosystem — where no child's identity is wounded by the very institution meant to develop it. Where technology enters classrooms already held accountable to the emotional and social realities of the children inside them.
Mission
Research the ethical dimensions of AI in elementary education with the same rigor we apply to curriculum design. Train educators to be critical filters, not passive adopters. Center the experiences of children from marginalized communities in every design decision about educational technology.
Why AFIRMASI?
Because AFIRMASI asks the uncomfortable questions about AI in education — not just 'does it work' but 'who does it work for, and at whose expense.' That is exactly the question my research is built around. The intersection of identity, schooling, and emerging technology is not a boutique academic interest — it is the central ethical challenge of our moment in education. AFIRMASI is where that challenge can be addressed with both scientific rigor and genuine humanistic commitment.
Field Impact
Chelsia's AERA 2026 paper — presented to an international audience of education researchers in Los Angeles — makes a precise and urgent argument: the harm inflicted by school rituals like public shaming is not merely anecdotal, it is structural and identity-shaping. And AI, without critical ethical filtering, is positioned to replicate and amplify those same harms at scale. Her conclusion is not pessimistic — it is actionable. She argues that a teacher's own experience of harm, when processed through critical empathy, becomes the very foundation of a humanizing pedagogy capable of evaluating and governing educational technology with moral seriousness. This framework directly informs AFIRMASI's approach to AI deployment in classrooms serving vulnerable and marginalized children.