A Research Report
AI Pre-Literacy: A Developmental Foundation That May Precede AI Literacy
Artificial Intelligence is becoming embedded in the environments in which children live, play, communicate, and learn. Importantly, AI does not always appear as AI. It may be embedded in children’s toys, games, voice assistants, recommendation systems, and adaptive technologies. Children may therefore experience AI-mediated behaviour without recognizing the systems responsible for it [Kewalramani et al., 2021; Yip et al., 2019].This raises a foundational question that has received comparatively limited conceptual attention:
What precedes formal AI literacy?
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AI Literacy teaches children how AI works. But children aged 3-7 encounter AI long before they can understand algorithms. AI Pre-Literacy is our proposed term for the developmental groundwork that must come first — language, imagination, agency, and reflection — so that later AI Literacy can succeed.
What is AI Literacy?
AI literacy is an increasingly established educational construct. Long and Magerko conceptualized AI literacy through the competencies required to understand, interact with, and critically evaluate AI. Ng et al. identified dimensions involving understanding AI, using and applying AI, evaluating and creating with AI, and addressing ethical issues.[2020][2021]
International policy reinforces this. UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence identifies prerequisite skills including critical thinking, communication, and socio-emotional capabilities [UNESCO]. Its AI Competency Framework for Students organizes AI education around human-centred thinking, ethics, AI techniques, and system design [UNESCO].[2021a][2024]
AI literacy, therefore, is concerned with knowledge, competencies, critical judgement, and ethical understanding concerning AI.
AI Before It Appears as AI
The developmental challenge begins earlier than formal schooling.
UNICEF’s work recognizes that AI is already embedded in children’s everyday environments — toys, virtual assistants, video games, adaptive learning, and recommendation systems — and emphasizes children’s development, well-being, safety, fairness, and agency [UNICEF]. It also recognizes parents and caregivers as important participants in child-centred AI.[2025]
This invisible presence matters. Young children can form interpretations and emotional responses to responsive technologies even when they do not understand their mechanisms [Yip et al., 2019].
We should not claim that AI directly determines children’s personalities. The evidence does not justify such a deterministic conclusion. A more defensible proposition is that repeated interactions with AI-mediated environments may contribute to children’s emerging expectations concerning agency, trust, decision-making, and relationships. The cumulative significance of these orientations warrants systematic research.
This concern is consistent with UNESCO’s observation that AI can influence human thinking and decision-making, and with UNICEF’s emphasis on children’s development and rights [UNESCO, 2021a; UNICEF, 2025].
Why Formal AI Literacy Is Not the Only Layer for Ages 3–7
The issue is different: formal AI literacy should not be assumed to be the only developmental layer through which young children encounter AI.
We focus on approximately 3–7 years because this period is consistently described in developmental literature as the phase in which symbolic thought, oral language, imaginative play, and early theory-of-mind and moral reasoning emerge — the very capacities on which later formal learning depends. We use this range as a working boundary, not a precise threshold.
The educational question is therefore not simply how to introduce AI concepts earlier, but what developmental foundations should precede formal AI literacy. This is reinforced by UNESCO’s recognition of prerequisite skills [UNESCO].[2021a]
Introducing AI Pre-Literacy: Our Proposed Construct
We propose the term AI Pre-Literacy to identify this developmental layer.
Academic Definition: AI pre-literacy is a developmentally prior, non-instructional, non-assessive, and meaning-centred orientation through which children aged approximately 3–7 progressively develop the linguistic, imaginative, cognitive, attitudinal, and emerging socio-ethical capacities to notice, name, interpret, and reflect upon AI-related phenomena, thereby establishing foundations for later formal AI literacy.
In simple words: AI Pre-Literacy is not about teaching AI to toddlers. It is about preparing the child, so the child can later learn about AI wisely.
- Developmentally prior: It precedes formal AI literacy.
- Non-instructional: It does not require teaching algorithms or machine learning.
- Non-assessive: It is not organized around tests or scores. This is deliberate, to protect developmentally appropriate practice and avoid premature performance measures.
- Meaning-centred: Its concern is how children make sense of what they experience.
How It Relates to Existing Early AI Literacy Work
AI pre-literacy is proposed alongside, not instead of, existing work on early AI literacy. Recent frameworks for “preliterate learners” outline concepts, practices, and dispositions for early childhood classrooms, and studies of preschool children have focused on children’s own “meaning-making” [Su & Yang, 2024].
The distinction we draw is fine but important: existing frameworks are primarily pedagogical — they specify what a curriculum should do to teach AI concepts through play. AI pre-literacy, by contrast, is offered as a developmental construct — a capacity-building orientation that can occur informally at home, before any curriculum, and without the explicit goal of teaching AI concepts. It sits upstream of early AI literacy curricula.
We want to be transparent: AI pre-literacy is, at this stage, a theoretical construct we are proposing for discussion and further research, not a developmental stage demonstrated through empirical study. The sources cited establish that AI is present in young children’s environments and that children respond to it interpretively; they do not yet provide direct evidence for a distinct pre-literacy stage. We offer it as a hypothesis worth testing.
A terminological note: “Pre-literacy” already has an established meaning in reading research — emergent skills like phonological awareness that precede formal reading. Our use of “AI pre-literacy” is intentionally analogous: foundational, informally acquired capacities that precede a later formal competency.
Why It Matters: The International Context
The significance of this construct is situated within a wider international concern. UNICEF calls for preparing children for present and future AI developments within an agenda of development, safety, fairness, privacy, and agency [UNICEF]. The Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools includes human well-being, transparency, fairness, and privacy among its principles and includes parents among stakeholders. The UK Department for Education, the European Commission, and the US Department of Education have issued comparable guidance emphasizing ethical and critical approaches.[2025]
These positions do not establish AI pre-literacy as a field. They establish the imperative within which it becomes relevant.
Parents as Partners
Parents have a particularly important role because many earliest encounters with AI occur outside school. AI pre-literacy does not ask parents to become technical instructors. It encourages them to create opportunities for children to notice, describe, question, imagine, compare, and reflect.
Concepts such as choice, pattern, decision, fairness, responsibility, cause, effect, help, and agency can be explored through ordinary play and conversation. These are not technical AI lessons; they are developmental foundations.
What BridgeLineGP Will Offer
The academic argument above stands on its own. In practice, this website will translate it into books, parent guides, teacher guides, and practical tools designed around this developmental purpose.
The aim is not to turn young children into technical AI learners. It is to help all those who shape early childhood — parents and families, educators, clinicians and specialists, curriculum designers and researchers, and policymakers and international bodies — create conditions for children to develop language, imagination, agency, and emerging ethical awareness.
AI literacy develops competencies for engaging with AI. AI pre-literacy, as we propose it, describes the foundations for making sense of an AI-shaped world before that engagement becomes formal.
Authors
Prof. Dr. Shaheen Pasha is a visionary leader and esteemed educator in Special Education, with a distinguished career spanning over two decades. A Ph.D. graduate from the University of Southampton, UK, she has profoundly impacted the field as a Chairperson and Professor at the University of Education, Lahore. Her exceptional scholarly output includes the authorship of 3 books and over 35 research articles, establishing her as a leading voice and a nationally recognized advocate for inclusive education. Dr. Pasha’s work is dedicated to breaking down barriers and creating empowering, transformative learning environments for all children in Pakistan.
Dr. Muhammad Anwar-ur-Rehman Pasha is a visionary educator and leader with over 35 years of experience shaping the future of computing and technology in Pakistan. A University of Southampton, UK Ph.D. graduate, he has held pivotal roles as Rector, Dean, and Principal, driving innovation in education. An expert in Artificial Intelligence and a passionate advocate for 21st-century skills, Dr. Pasha is dedicated to bridging the gap between academic knowledge and real-world competency, inspiring a new generation of innovators and critical thinkers.
References
Kewalramani, S., Kidman, G., & Palaiologou, I. (2021). Using artificial intelligence (AI)-interfaced robotic toys in early childhood settings: A case for children’s inquiry literacy. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 29(5), 652–668. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2021.1968458
Long, D., & Magerko, B. (2020). What is AI literacy? Competencies and design considerations. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376727
Ng, D. T. K., et al. (2021). Conceptualizing AI literacy: An exploratory review. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 2, 100041. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2021.100041
Su, J., & Yang, W. (2024). AI literacy curriculum and its relation to children’s perceptions of robots. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 40(1), 241–253.
UNESCO. (2021a). Recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence. UNESCO.
UNESCO. (2024). AI competency framework for students. UNESCO.
UNICEF. (2025). Guidance on AI and children v3.0. UNICEF Innocenti.
Yip, J. C., et al. (2019). Laughing is scary, but farting is cute: A conceptual model of children’s perspectives of creepy technologies. CHI Conference, 1–15.