There is no doubt that educationally GenAI offers both opportunities and challenges.
Generative AI can support deeper learning by helping students explain their thinking, explore ideas, receive feedback, and reflect on their existing knowledge and learning. Other uses of GenAI may hinder learning by encouraging students to accept generated responses without thinking critically or engaging deeply. This can result in surface-level learning and a false sense of understanding rather than genuine knowledge development.
How AI Supports Learning:
Evaluate Information
Students need to evaluate the information GenAI provides as it cannot reliably verify its own responses. This means checking claims, questioning sources, and thinking critically rather than accepting AI-generated content at face value. These are important information literacy skills that should be explicitly taught alongside the use of GenAI in the classroom.
Develop Thinking Skills
GenAI can be most useful for developing transfer when it acts as a thinking partner rather than simply providing solutions. It can prompt students to explain their reasoning, identify the key principle behind a problem, or apply a method to a new situation. This helps students move beyond simply knowing how to solve a problem to understanding why a particular approach works, making their knowledge more transferable.
Applying Knowledge
GenAI is most effective when it encourages students to actively work with knowledge rather than simply receive information. This can include creating and answering their own retrieval questions, explaining concepts and identifying gaps, developing analogies through discussion, comparing concepts in their own words, and using feedback to revise and improve their work rather than simply confirm an answer.
An unseen exam question requires students to apply their knowledge to a new situation by recognising the underlying principle. This skill develops through independent problem-solving, which GenAI can easily bypass. Students who regularly practise retrieving and applying knowledge on their own are therefore better prepared for the skills required in exams.
A Way Forward
To realise AI’s educational potential and maintain academic and learning integrity, we need to develop approaches that:
- Promote critical engagement
- Develop students’ skill development by focusing on problem-solving and analytical thinking processes.
- Highlight the limitations and inaccuracies of AI outputs, fostering verification practices.
- Protect intellectual property and academic integrity.
AI is undeniably reshaping education. To ensure it enhances rather than undermines the learning experience, we must prioritise the development of critical thinking, conceptual understanding, and independent learning skills.
Tanti, M., Maddox, A., & Phillips, E. (2026). The Science of Learning and Generative AI: A guide for secondary teachers. La Trobe University. [https://doi.org/10.26181/32775...]