GenAI Does Not Automatically Lead to Learning

While general-purpose GenAI tools can enhance students’ performance on tasks, they do not necessarily lead to learning gains.

Educational GenAI tools designed or used with an intentional pedagogical purpose tend to show sustained improvements in learning but offloading cognitive tasks to general-purpose chatbots creates risks of metacognitive laziness and disengagement.

Several studies indicate that although students with access to general-purpose GenAI tools produce higher-quality outputs than their peers, this advantage disappears - and sometimes reverses - in exams when access is removed.

According to the OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026, using GenAI with pedagogical intent can improve learning and foster skills like critical thinking, creativity and collaboration and can improve learning gains if used with a clear pedagogical purpose, or when teaching strategies are redesigned to adapt to its availability.

For example, in collaborative learning scenarios aligned with learning science, GenAI tools can increase student knowledge or strengthen their argumentation skills. GenAI can also make traditional digital tools more engaging and efficient. For example, Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) powered by GenAI can transform rigidly scripted digital tutors into digital pedagogical agents capable of questioning, nudging and shifting strategies through natural, dialogue-based interactions.

Robust research evidence demonstrates that inexperienced tutors can enhance the quality of their tutoring and improve student learning outcomes by using educational GenAI tools. By integrating teacher expertise into the design process, GenAI tools can amplify teachers' capacity to teach, creating benefits that exceed what either teachers or AI can achieve independently. Co-designing GenAI tools with teachers and end users is one way to ensure they deliver educational value.

Learning and teaching should primarily aim to develop valued human knowledge and skills such as independent thinking and foundational skills across subjects, without GenAI, with educational GenAI, and then with general-purpose GenAI. GenAI should be used selectively and purposefully for pedagogical reasons to enrich learning and not replace cognitive effort or weaken the human relationships at the heart of education.

School administrators see their tasks transformed however; GenAI can streamline system and school management by improving a wide range of backend workflows. It can support the design of standardised assessment items, review curricular alignments, and tag and classify educational resources. Well-tuned, it also permits 24/7 good study and career guidance.

Image by Matheus Bertelli