Framing Human-AI Dynamics: An Epistemological Perspective on Generative AI Practices

Synthesis: Strydom (2026) introduces seven human–generative-AI (GAI) engagement paradigms grounded in personal epistemological beliefs, addressing what the author calls the "theory deficit" in educational technology. The conceptual, theory-building paper differentiates five epistemological dimensions (source, certainty, organisation, control, and speed of knowledge acquisition) and uses them to theorise seven enacted paradigms of human-GAI engagement: guarded, possibility-focused, augmented, pioneering, symbiotic, values-based, and equity. Rather than fixed traits, the paradigms are enacted patterns of engagement that emerge across disciplinary, socio-technical, and institutional contexts — with direct implications for teaching, assessment, professional development, and AI governance. This is a significant theory-building contribution to the wiki's AI-education foundational strand.

Key Findings

A theory-building response to the "theory deficit." The paper argues that educational-technology and GAI research suffers from limited theory development, and responds with a conceptual framework — grounding human-GAI engagement in Schommer's multidimensional model of personal epistemological beliefs rather than in tool-evaluation or common-sense deduction.
Seven enacted paradigms. The framework theorises seven human-GAI engagement paradigms — possibility-focused (Optimist), pioneering (Dreamer), augmented (Enhancer), symbiotic (Collaborator), guarded (Guardian), values-based (Defender), and equity (Advocate) — each examined against the five epistemological dimensions.
Paradigms are enacted, not possessed. Individuals are not fixed in a single paradigm; they move between them across contexts or adopt hybrid positions. This has direct consequences for practice — shifting engagement requires changing the socio-technical environment, not just beliefs.
A continuum from optimism to caution. The paradigms span from optimistic (possibility-focused, pioneering) and capability-enhancing (augmented, symbiotic) positions to cautious (guarded), ethical (values-based), and equity-critical (equity) orientations — reflecting the full range of the field's discourse on GAI.
Exploratory and falsifiable by design. The framework is explicitly untested — it cannot yet establish paradigm prevalence, stability, movement over time, or whether implied interventions work. It is offered as a heuristic and a stimulus for empirical research rather than a complete account.

The epistemological grounding

The paper builds on Schommer's multidimensional model of personal epistemological beliefs, differentiating among five dimensions:

Source of knowledge — whether knowledge originates externally or is constructed by the knower
Certainty of knowledge — whether knowledge is fixed or evolving
Organisation of knowledge — whether knowledge is compartmentalised or integrated
Control of knowledge acquisition — whether learning is controlled by the learner or external forces
Speed of knowledge acquisition — whether learning is quick/all-or-nothing or gradual

Strydom contends these dimensions offer a productive lens on how individuals differently position themselves relative to GAI — explaining why the same tool is engaged very differently across people and contexts. The framework thus extends the wiki's Learning Theories strand into the human-GAI interaction space.

The seven paradigms in detail

Possibility-focused (Optimist): An optimistic epistemological stance acknowledging GAI's power to synthesise, organise, and identify patterns across large literatures. Uncertainties are viewed as sites of productivity, provided the source of knowledge is appropriately distributed between human and machine, with humans retaining final interpretive judgement.
Pioneering (Dreamer): Views GAI as a participant in knowledge creation rather than a means. Grapples with the philosophical implication that if innovation can be attributed to human-machine co-production, the origin of knowledge becomes an open matter. Associated with accelerating Peer Review, but raises speed-vs-rigour trade-offs.
Augmented (Enhancer): Views GAI as an embedded tool that becomes part of individual reasoning by changing the organisation of knowledge. Extends the extended-mind thesis toward an "amplified mind" — individuals actively contribute to a dynamic cognitive space while retaining interpretive Agency.
Symbiotic (Collaborator): A relational, posthumanist orientation viewing human and machine cognition as permeable and entangled; knowledge is co-created via the relationship itself, with Agency distributed across the human-machine dyad rather than retained individually.
Guarded (Guardian): Foregrounds epistemic vigilance — interrogation of who makes knowledge claims, on what grounds, and their reliability before acceptance. Reflects concerns about detection accuracy, academic integrity, authorship, and techno-solutionism; not resistance but deliberate, slower verification.
Values-based (Defender): Prioritises ethical AI use and the ethics of knowledge creation — fairness, transparency, accountability, Privacy. Asks not just whether claims are true but how they were arrived at responsibly.
Equity (Advocate): Foregrounds power, ideology, and equity. Recognises GAI's democratising potential while attending to digital inequality and bias — GAI trained on English-language, Western academic sources risks reproducing hierarchies of whose knowledge counts; technology is not neutral.

Implications for AI in education

The framework reframes the human-GAI relationship from a tool-usage question into an epistemological one — how individuals enact knowledge and learning within human-GAI assemblages. This connects directly to the wiki's Human AI Collaboration, Student AI Interaction, and philosophy of AI threads. Practically:

Teaching and assessment: paradigms imply differentiated approaches — e.g., pioneering/possibility-focused alignments could be encouraged to experiment with alternative Assessment formats rather than polished-product-only evidence.
Professional development: guarded orientations are not mere resistance but a coherent epistemological position requiring targeted staff development; the framework offers a diagnostic vocabulary for differentiated development.
Governance and policy: the lens can inform Governance frameworks and educational policy in multidisciplinary and higher-education contexts, echoing how epistemological stances shape institutional responses.

The framework sits alongside other theory-building work in the corpus (epistemic co-agency, generativism, the absent cognitive baseline) in theorising how learners' relationship to AI-shaped cognition develops, while explicitly positioning itself as an exploratory heuristic requiring empirical validation.

Connected Concepts

Connected Articles

Learning With Machines Toward A Theory Of Epistemic Co Agency — Epistemic co-agency as a theory of learning with machines
Generativism Learning Theory — Generativism as a new learning theory
Absent Cognitive Baseline 2026 — The absent cognitive baseline (ACB)
Epistemic Proactivity Math — Epistemic proactivity in student-AI math interaction

Citation

Strydom, S. (2026). Framing human-AI dynamics: An epistemological perspective on generative AI practices. Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching, 9(2).