Understanding what good education is: a phenomenographic investigation of university teachers' understandings of AI

Understanding what good education is — a phenomenographic study interviewing 16 teachers in Danish higher education to map how they understand and frame AI in teaching and student learning. It identifies three qualitatively different ways of understanding the relationship between teaching and AI, three ways of understanding the relationship between learning and AI, and four approaches to designing for student learning experiences around AI — highlighting the plurality and messiness of educational practice, and the need to attend to agency and teachers' labour.

Stenalt (2026) shifts focus from students and tools to teachers' conceptions of AI — what teachers believe counts as good education in an AI-integrated context. Rather than prescribing how AI should be used, it surfaces the variation in how educators themselves conceptualize AI's role, which shapes how they design AI into learning experiences.

Method

• Approach: Phenomenography (a qualitative method for mapping the qualitatively different ways people experience/conceive a phenomenon).
• Sample: 16 teachers in Danish higher education.
• Focus: Teachers' conceptions of AI in higher-education teaching processes and student learning processes, plus their approaches to designing AI into student learning experiences.

Key Findings

• Three conceptions of teaching–AI relationship: qualitatively different ways teachers understand the relationship between teaching and AI.
• Three conceptions of learning–AI relationship: qualitatively different ways of understanding AI in relation to student learning.
• Four design approaches: four qualitatively different approaches to designing AI into student learning experiences.
• Plurality and messiness: the outcome spaces highlight that educational practice is plural and messy — there is no single "right" way to understand AI in education.
• Agency and teachers' labour: the study points to the need to attend to teacher agency and the labour of integrating AI.

Implications

• For Teacher Role and Teacher AI Competency: teacher conceptions of AI vary qualitatively and shape design; supporting teacher agency and acknowledging the labour of AI integration are essential, not just training.
• For Curriculum Design and Pedagogy: the four design approaches provide a vocabulary for how educators actually design AI into learning, informing higher-education practice.
• For AI Literacy: complements learner-focused AI literacy with the teacher-conception dimension — how educators frame "good education" with AI.

Connected Concepts

• Teacher Role
• Teacher AI Competency
• Higher Ed
• AI Literacy
• Curriculum Design
• Pedagogy
• Qualitative Research
• Learning Theories
• Teacher Education
• Ethics

Connected Articles

• AI Pedagogical Orientation — Faculty orientations shape AI adoption
• AI Changing Teaching Workflows — How AI is changing teaching workflows
• Teachers Reflective Regulators Cognition Offloading — teachers as reflective regulators
• Enright Staff Perspectives GenAI 2026 — staff perspectives on GenAI
• Crompton Faculty Technology Integration Standards 2026 — faculty technology-integration standards

Citation

Stenalt, M. H. (2026). Understanding what good education is: a phenomenographic investigation of university teachers' understandings of AI. Teaching in Higher Education.