Generative Artificial Intelligence and Student Agency: Reclaiming Questioning, Knowledge Construction, and Responsibility in Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66581/hs48qf06Keywords:
generative artificial intelligence, student agency, student subjectivity, knowledge construction, educational technology, AI literacyAbstract
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly entered educational practice as a tool for explanation, drafting, feedback, assessment support, and personalized learning assistance. Much of the early debate has focused on whether GenAI improves efficiency or threatens academic integrity. This article argues that the deeper educational question is whether GenAI use preserves or erodes student agency. From an educational perspective, agency is not reducible to student choice, motivation, or technical competence; it refers to learners' capacity to pose meaningful questions, construct knowledge through disciplined inquiry, regulate their own learning, exercise judgment, and assume responsibility for their intellectual work. Drawing on educational theory, self-regulated learning, knowledge-building pedagogy, cognitive offloading, and recent research on AI-assisted learning, this article develops a conceptual account of how GenAI may both support and weaken student agency. It identifies three core risks: the displacement of question-formation by prompt optimization, the substitution of fluent AI output for knowledge construction, and the diffusion of responsibility in authorship and judgment. The article then proposes an agency-preserving pedagogy of GenAI use built around six principles: problem-posing before prompting, process transparency, critical verification, scaffolded rather than substitutive assistance, assessment redesign, and teacher-guided ethical reflection. The central claim is that GenAI should not be treated as either a threat to be banned or an efficiency tool to be adopted uncritically. Its educational value depends on whether it is embedded in learning environments that strengthen students' epistemic, metacognitive, dialogic, and responsible agency.
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