Disciplinary Differences in Students’ Epistemic Agency in Learning with AI

• In Event: Teaching and Learning in a Time of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Abstract

This study explores how students in higher education develop epistemic agency while engaging with generative AI tools such as ChatGPT across diverse disciplines. Drawing on sociological theories of knowledge, it examines how students across diverse disciplines critically evaluate, construct, and transform knowledge. Interviews with Korean and Vietnamese students across global contexts reveal four disciplinary knowledge modes—procedural, discursive, speculative, and contextual—that shape students’ epistemic agency. Moving beyond STEM/non-STEM binaries, this study highlights how students mobilise situated knowledge practices to assert agency amid shifting technological, institutional, and epistemic landscapes. It offers a future-oriented framework for understanding student development in postsecondary education, which foregrounds the enduring educational value of disciplinary knowledge and students’ intellectual experiences in increasingly AI-mediated learning environments.

Authors

• Soyoung Lee, Seoul National University

• Hyeyeon Ju, University of Cambridge

• Thi Xuan Phuc Nguyen, Oxford Royale Academy