We have two research objectives. First, we aspire to trace the ways knowledge production, dissemination and consumption has been imagined and conceptualised in literary and cultural narratives as well as in intellectual and pedagogical discussions from classical modernity (since mid-18th century) to the era of AI and current education policy. Second, we will explore students’ relationship with knowledge in contemporary higher education, particularly focusing on the implications of AI use, revising the prevailing modes of thinking and speaking about knowledge.
To reach these objectives, we apply three approaches: historical-cultural (literary studies, intellectual history), societal-institutional (sociology of education), and pedagogical-interactional (cognitive science, educational psychology).
The research questions are:
1. How has the idea of knowledge evolved in the course of modern cultural history and affected the way we envision and imagine the student’s relationship with knowledge today?
2. How do current discourses directing the educational purpose of HE regulate the student’s access to knowledge?
3. How does the use of AI shape the construction and alter our notion of knowledge, and how this new paradigm of knowledge-making and learning invites us to rethink the student’s role in the learning process?
This qualitative research consists of three sub-studies:
Sub-study 1 (RQ1) explores literary narratives and intellectual discourses of knowledge from mid-18th century until our day. The material for the sub-study includes historical fictional and non fictional texts that describe schooling and learning practices. Fictional texts include, for example, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Julia Ward Howe’s Hermaphrodite. Non-fictional texts comprise prescriptive literature, philosophical and pedagogical essays on knowledge, with a particular emphasis on Anglo-American pragmatism (Emerson, Spencer, Dewey) that presages contemporary student-oriented approach in higher education. The analysis applies the methods of both close and distant (Moretti, 2013) reading of literary texts and discourse and narrative analyses. It engages with theoretical frameworks of economic criticism (Woodmansee & Osteen, 2005), gift theory, and intellectual history to elaborate how knowledge ideas evolve and circulate in
various texts and discourses.
Sub-study 2 (RQ2) focuses on the current societal and state-led discourses on knowledge, competencies, digitalisation and learning in university education. The material for this sub-study is comprised of key higher education policy documents in Finland and EU (e.g. documents on European Education Area 2025, Digivisio in Finland) as well as 2-3 curriculum case studies (e.g. micro-degrees or challenge-based learning initiatives). Through Foucauldian discourse analysis (Foucault, 2002) and theory-driven conceptual tools (e.g. Bernstein, 2000; Maton, 2014) we examine how state documents envision knowledge and its role in education and learning, and students’ approaches to knowledge.
Sub-study 3 (RQ3) examines how AI may shape thinking – redirecting learning processes – and how students constitute themselves as learners within the interaction with AI. The material for this sub-study is comprised of students’ logs in AI tools (three rounds of data collection of student logs every 3 months), individual interviews (N=30), and art-based focus group interviews (6 groups of 5 students). Drawing on the extended mind theory, we will develop a theory-driven coding protocol, allowing us to analyze and understand cognitive aspects of the students’ interactions with genAI during their independent studies. Parallelly, we employ a thematic analysis in the individual and focus group interview data to unravel how students conceptualise knowledge and recognise themselves in their learning processes when using AI tools in independent learning.
Working from such different disciplinary perspectives and across such dissimilar registers as policies, curricula, logs, literary texts, interviews, and art-based focus groups, we aim at breaching the self-contained methodologies of our different disciplines.
