Practicum placements are central to field-based qualifications, offering students embodied opportunities to develop professional practice. This presentation explores how augmented reflection with an AI agent, ARI, supports Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Teaching) students in Aotearoa New Zealand as they navigate practicum expectations across three years of study. Students are assessed against 18 Key Teaching Tasks (KTTs), progressing from beginner to proficient levels. For some, this trajectory is challenging. Framed within a post-digital paradigm, ARI functions as a non-human dialogic partner, prompting, reframing, and scaffolding students’ reflective processes. Drawing on analytic and focus group data, the study illustrates how ARI surfaces implicit assumptions, deepens pedagogical awareness, and fosters metacognitive insight. Crucially, ARI does not replace human collaboration but complements it, mediating reflection without diminishing learner agency. This hybrid form of reflection creates a space where understanding of practice levels becomes visible, actionable, and improvable over time. Rather than positioning AI as a sentient collaborator or a mere tool, this work conceptualizes ARI as a post-digital presence, an entangled participant in meaning-making and recursive inquiry. The findings suggest that such configurations can enrich practicum learning by supporting students to articulate professional decisions and navigate complexity with greater confidence.

Authors:
Anna Jo Perry, Manukau Institute of Technology, New Zealand

About the Presenter(s)
Ms Anna Jo Perry is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland in New Zealand

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