Dr Jack Tsao

Jack
Tsao

Educator & Researcher

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Research: Education Futures

My research primarily focuses on Education Futures— the skills, competencies, and orientations that learners and institutions need for an uncertain and rapidly changing world, and how these are cultivated through curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional design. I am particularly interested in how transdisciplinary education and curricular innovation prepare students for futures that resist simple prediction.

Alongside this, I analyse the changing structural conditions of higher education and pre-tertiary schooling through examining how globalisation, policy reform, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence in education are reshaping what it means to teach and learn. I approach these questions through a mainly sociological lens, attending to the power relations and institutional forces that shape educational possibilities.

Crucially, my work does not treat the future of education as settled or inevitable. I am committed to unsettling dominant narratives — particularly techno-deterministic ones — and to reimagining alternative educational futures that are more inclusive, equitable, and just. This critical orientation runs through everything I do.

Key Research Areas

My work spans several distinct but interconnected areas:

  • Transdisciplinary education, in how universities can move towards inclusive and diverse domains of knowledge to foster adaptive and creative thinking that future challenges demand.

  • Artificial intelligence in education and its impacts on teaching, learning, assessment, and creative practice, as well as the policy trajectories and ethical questions that accompany AI’s rapid integration into educational settings.

  • International and comparative education, in how different educational and curricular systems navigate and adapt to global flows.

  • Sociology of education, interrogating the structural conditions, aspirations, and cultural politics that shape students’ imagined futures and their experiences of schooling, with attention to class, identity, and equity.

  • Curricular and pedagogical innovations, exploring the design and evaluation of experiential learning, community-based learning, and game-based approaches

I work across the empirical and the theoretical, drawing on sociology, philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, and the arts and humanities. In practice, this means I combine qualitative and comparative research with critical and post-humanist theories to understand education not as a fixed system but as an evolving, entangled set of practices.

Collaborating on Research

If any of these areas resonate with your own work, I would welcome the opportunity to collaborate. You can find my scholarly publications on ResearchGate and Google Scholar.

I love how doing research connects you with a community of brilliant people who think about shared problems from very different perspectives!

Dr Jack Tsao speaking about AI in Education
Opening speech of the GenAI Hackathon for Social Good

Research Publications in Detail

AI is not just a tool: Epistemic interoperability and sympoiesis

This conceptual paper discusses the challenges and promises of seamless AI and epistemic interoperability. The study argues that AI is not a neutral tool but a complex entanglement that requires necessary “care work” to correct cultural biases and hallucinations, proposing a collaborative human-machine approach to creating trustworthy, inclusive knowledge.

AI Policy and Implementations in Higher Education

As universities navigate the complexities of AI policy in higher education, a critical gap emerges between institutional guidelines and the lived experiences of students and teachers. This study reveals the messy realities of AI implementation in the face of decentralised and ambiguous policies. It discusses how institutions need to consider how policy interpretations, discourses, and material conditions shape teaching and learning practices.

Multilingual Health Communication through Generative AI

In a world where multilingual health communication is a fundamental human right, barriers still exist for non-native speakers due to costly translation services. This study discusses how student citizen adaptors in Australia and Hong Kong harnessed generative AI to transform neurofibromatosis health messages into multiple languages. The research uncovers the potential of non-professional, AI-assisted adaptations to democratise health communication. It signals the potential of AI use in reshaping the future of public health messaging and empowering communities.

Pandemic, neoliberalism, and holistic education

The study traces how the COVID-19 pandemic’s de-globalising impacts weakened the influence of neoliberal flows. This enabled schools such as the International Baccalaureate to temporarily focus on holistic missions, student well-being, and collaboration.

List of Published Works

Below is a chronological list of my publications. Consequently, these works reflect the ongoing dialogue regarding my research intersecting curriculum and pedagogies, AI technology, and higher education policy.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

2025 Publications

Tsao, J. (2025) Trajectories of AI policy in higher education: Interpretations, discourses, and enactments of students and teachers. Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence 8 (2025), Article 100496 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2025.100496
Tsao, J., Heinrichs, D.H., Camit, M. (2025) Artificial intelligence and epistemic interoperability: Towards a sympoeitic approach. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education  https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2025.2579702
Tsao, J., Liang, C., Nogues, C., Wong, S.M. (2025) Perceptions and integration of generative artificial intelligence in creative practices and industries: A scoping review and conceptual model. AI and Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02667-2
Hameed, S.A., Li, Y.C., Tsao, J. (2025) Navigating the neoliberal tensions during the Covid-19 pandemic: International Baccalaureate practices within Singapore, Hong Kong & Taiwan. The Australian Educational Researcher. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-025-00884-8
Heinrichs, D.H., Camit, M., Tsao, J. (2025) Response-able, collaborative adaptations of multilingual health messaging: A case study from Australia and Hong Kong. Critical Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2025.2555211
Law, N., Wang, N., Ma, M., Liu, Z., Lei, C.U., Feng, S. Hu, X., Tsao, J. (2025) The role of generative artificial intelligence in collaborative problem solving of authentic challenges. The British Journal of Educational Technology. http://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.70010
Tsao, J., Alhadad, S., Heinrichs, D.H., Hameed, S.A., McLay, K. (2025) The digital-intercultural-transdisciplinary nexus: Online international exchanges for transdisciplinary education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.9620
Tsao, J., Kochhar-Lindgren, G.M., Lam, A.M.H. (2025) Institutionalising a transdisciplinary curriculum: assemblages, territories, and refrains. Higher Education. 89, 849–864 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-024-01250-w

2024 and Earlier Publications

Li, Y.C., Tsao, J., Hameed, S.A. (2024) 學校內的教育全球化：國際文憑學校的觀Educational globalisation in schools: Perspectives from IB schools. 當代教育研究季刊 Contemporary Educational Research Quarterly 32:3, 101 – 133 http://doi.org/10.6151/CERQ.202409_32(3).0004 

Tsao, J., Nogues, C. (2024) Beyond the author: Artificial intelligence, creative writing, and intellectual emancipation. Poetics. 102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2024.101865

Tsao J, Li Y.C., Hameed, S.A. (2023) The impacts of International Baccalaureate expansion on professional cultures and assessments in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, Cambridge Journal of Education https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2023.2246397

Heinrichs, D.H, Hameed, S.A., Tsao, J., McLay, K., Huong, N., Alhadad, S. (2023) Mundane matters: Entangling moments of student well-being across cultures, time, space, and virtual world, Critical Studies in Education https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2023.2252469
Tsao J., Hardy I. & Lingard B. (2021) Schooling in Hong Kong, youth aspirations, and the contesting of Chinese identity, British Journal of Sociology of Education https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2021.1882836
Tsao J., Hardy I. & Lingard B. (2018) Aspirational ambivalence of middle-class secondary students in Hong Kong, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39:8, 1094-1110 https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2018.1456904

Edited Book

Kochhar-Lindgren, G.M., Sims-Schouten, W., Tsao, J. (Forthcoming, 2026) Transdisciplinary Experiments: Research, Teaching, & Institutionalisation, UCL Press, London.

Book Chapters

Li, Y.C., Tsao, J., Hameed, S.A. (Forthcoming, 2026) Creating Institutional Legitimacy of Internationality: International Baccalaureate Schools in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In J.C.K. Lee, M. Lee & E.Wright (Eds.) Handbook of Asian Educational Innovation towards the Futures of Education. Springer Nature, Singapore.
Kochhar-Lindgren, G.M., Sims-Schouten W., Tsao, J. (Forthcoming, 2026) Coda: transdisciplinary experiments in motion. In G.M. Kochhar-Lindgren, W. Sims-Schouten & J. Tsao (Eds.), Transdisciplinary Experiments: Research, Teaching, & Institutionalisation. UCL Press, London.
Tsao, J. (Forthcoming, 2026) Artificial Intelligence and Transdisciplinary Playgrounds. In G.M. Kochhar-Lindgren, W. Sims-Schouten & J. Tsao (Eds.), Transdisciplinary Experiments: Research, Teaching, & Institutionalisation. UCL Press, London.