Currently reading Bearman et al. (2026) “Time, emotions and moral judgements: how university students position GenAI within their study”

What caught my eye about this article was that Bearman et al. (2026) write that “students prioritise their developing values and moral positions over institutional messaging“. Sounds intriguing, and somehow inspires hope in the future, doesn’t it?

In this study, Bearman et al. (2026) did focus group interviews with almost 80 students, exploring how students position GenAI in relation to their studies. As one important outcome, they stress the importance and value of “centring student voices in shaping scholarly practice and policy, particularly in contexts of significant technological change“.

From the focus group interviews, they develop a matrix spanned by three thematic categories (studying with and without GenAI, mixing messages and assumptions, “Coming from me”: trusting self and resisting dependency) and three axial threads (time, moral judgements, emotions). The quotes that they present to illustrate each of the nine resulting fields are very similar to what students tell us all the time, too. Bearman et al. (2026)’s discussion that students are generally very thoughtful, take their studies very seriously, and have diverse ideas is in line with our experiences, as well as the observation that students are very much engaged emotionally, trying to do the “right” thing (rather than the “correct”: “Working with AI was inseparable from constant moral judgements about what it meant for the self as student“). Some use — and others refuse to use — GenAI in an attempt to exercise agency.

A fascinating point is the often-reported feeling that work must come from the students themselves, that they need to do the learning, that they must resist becoming dependent or over-reliant on GenAI. What exactly it means to do the work themselves differs not just between students but also over time, and it is not necessarily aligned with institutional policies (which students do not necessarily even know or understand correctly). Which makes it even more important to stay in conversation with students about this: “At a time when students are struggling to understand what such ownership of practices, processes and positions might look like, there is an onus on institutions and educators to engaging in continuing conversation that goes beyond what is acceptable to what is meaningful for students and their futures“, and, I would add, to help them figure out what is aligned with their own values and goals. We live in interesting times…

Bearman, M., Fawns, T., Corbin, T., Henderson, M., Liang, Y., Oberg, G., … Matthews, K. E. (2026). Time, emotions and moral judgements: how university students position GenAI within their study. Higher Education Research & Development, 45(4), 884–898. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2025.2580616

On the way to the dip one windy day…

Fall is undeniably in the air!

Also interesting slit experiments on the beach!

And Langmuir circulation with nice foam stripes!

Good day for a quick warm-up!

And a windy walk home…