The Critical Student: How GenAI reshapes Critical Skills and Higher Education’s Role Preparing Students For It
How is AI changing the shape and space of higher education?
Critical thinking continues to rank highly among key skills and attributes for a 21st century society (Van Damme, 2022). At the same time, the growth in artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) brings new expectations for what skills students might gain from a higher education degree (Lim et al., 2023)
For universities, the rise of GenAI and readily available and accessible systems such as ChatGPT require increased consideration around what the impact of such technologies means for teaching, learning, and assessment (O’Dea, 2024). How do students use these technologies and how does this impact their learning choices; how do educators’ pedagogical decisions around how to regulate and use AI in teaching and assessment impact the way in which we view what knowledge is and how it is acquired? What will a ‘critical relationship’ with AI look like in the world for our students and how will they enact their critical thinking skills in the modern world?
Emerging studies have looked at the impact of GenAI on academic integrity and consider the potential for the misuse of GenAI to plagiarize (Michel-Villarreal et al., 2023), but also the caution with which many staff and students approach GenAI due to a lack of clear policy and guidance around what is and isn’t acceptable in the learning space (Šedlbauer et al., 2023). This causes much concern and confusion for how universities are expected to manage and develop the use of AI in their curriculum and assessment design (O’Dea, 2024) and fulfil their wider civic missions.
However, one thing remains clear; students will still need to be critical, perhaps even more so than before, to navigate a world of potential misinformation that GenAI can often produce (Jawari and Yousif, 2025). This leads us to question how our approach to teaching and developing critical skills and minds in higher education, stands up to the challenges and opportunities presented to us by GenAI.
Higher education: skills or identities?
While there is a continued emphasis on the skills required of graduates for the future jobs of the world, debate remains in universities as to the usefulness of viewing academic skills, such as critical thinking, through this lens. The growth in higher education being seen as a force to advance social citizenship has created space for a critical pedagogy movement (Davies, 2015 ) where the role of the individual shifts to more than cognitive skills of argumentation and analysis in academic work, to an identity rooted in ‘being’ critical of the social and political world to enact social citizenship (Barnett, 2015). The growth of AI across sectors and in our individual lives causes us to question whether a skills-based approach to thinking critically about these technologies alone is enough to shape students into citizens that are reflective and socially aware of the position of GenAI in their own interactions with the world.
Moreover, the conversation for educators becomes less about skills for their course and assessment, and more about the power of higher education to shape students who are aware of how they interact with the world around them, how they are shaped by world advancements, such as GenAI, and how they influence the use and existence of such technologies in a society of the future.
The questions and focus presented echoes that of those involved in the social domains of critical thinking and critical pedagogy; those that believe critical thinking is a social and political endeavor as much as it is about an individuals’ cognitive ability to demonstrate reason and logic in the thinking process (Davies, 2015 ). As universities aim to produce graduates with appropriate skills at the same time as shaping social citizens for an everchanging world, these broader conceptions of critical thinking require appropriate discussion and debate. Yet, the growth of GenAI adds an additional dimension to this. How can we equip students with the appropriate skills to use AI in the job market, whilst also enabling them to consider what the role of GenAI might be in reshaping and defining their engagement with the world; how do we give students the space in their learning to develop a capacity to make choices about how they will engage with the world and these technologies around them.
Criticality – a socially situated practice
The notion of critical action is emphasised as a key difference between the cognitive and the social dimensions of critical thought. Through the social dimension, broader terms such as criticality emerge with an emphasis on individuals’ experiences, identities, and actions through which they exercise their cognitive critical thinking skills (Barnett, 1997). Often described as ‘being’ critical (Barnett, 1997 Barnett, 2015 ) or having a ‘critical spirit’(Facione, 1990) these definitions of criticality offer us enhanced ways of viewing how we might teach students to embody their critical thinking when engaging with GenAI systems.
For those documenting their practice in research literature, this looks like a move towards greater reflective practice in assessment, and allowing space for individuals to bring their experiences, connect with each other and different perspectives, and take these interactions forward for their future selves and actions; acknowledging ‘students as persons’ (Barnett, 2015) .Research which brings criticality, social practice, and GenAI together in this area remains in its infancy but emerging rapidly. With this in mind, a focus around GenAI and its interaction with longstanding academic skills and literacies is required more than ever to enable pedagogy, technology, and the future value of higher education to remain of importance as part of the mechanisms that shape students’ lives into those desired for a modern society.
On a practical level, designing a curriculum underpinned by social dimensions of critical thinking might offer a useful space to consider the opportunities that GenAI may bring to enhancing critical minds. By viewing critical thinking as a socially situated practice, educators might consider ways to, create space in the classroom. Allow students to bring their own experiences, ideas and identities to enhance their critical curiosity. For example, educators can give space and design activities to allow students to consider a range of questions when engaging with GenAI in their learning:
- How do my experiences compare with the knowledge I am presented with?
- Do I know where this knowledge comes from?
- What might appear problematic and where does my impression of this come from?
- How can (or how are) my own views be challenged, how far am I prepared to review and reflect on these issues and my attitude towards them, and why?
- Where does my experience and expertise as a student and an individual offer me ways to reflect on the usefulness, accuracy and reliability of knowledge?
- How might these reflections and my experiences translate into tools and methods of critique when engaging with GenAI?
- How can these tools, driven by my experience, equip me with a critical identity in the world around me?
