Li & Zheng (2026). 📄 Full text (arXiv)
Li & Zheng argue that the four dominant learning theories — behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and connectivism — show significant conceptual limitations as generative-ai proliferates in educational settings. They propose Generativism, a new learning theory for the generative AI age, which posits that learning increasingly occurs through the iterative co-construction of knowledge between human learners and AI systems.
The theory is built on four core principles:
1. Epistemic Partnership — Humans and AI collaboratively construct knowledge through iterative dialogue and co-reasoning, extending human-ai-collaboration research. 2. Distributed Agency — Learning is a shared process where both human and AI exert influence over knowledge outcomes, building on cognitive-offloading-llm-synthesis-writing and cognitive-shift-ai-education. 3. Generative Literacy — Learners must develop skills to critically interpret, evaluate, and guide AI-generated content, complementing ai-literacy frameworks. 4. Adaptive Metacognition — Learners monitor and regulate their own cognition and the AI's contributions during collaborative learning, extending scaffolding and self-regulated-learning.
Generativism has profound implications for instructional design, learning and assessment, and expertise development in contexts where generative AI plays an integral role in cognition. The framework challenges existing educational AI principles and offers a foundation for rethinking how large language models reshape the fundamental nature of learning itself.
Related Pages
- cognitive-offloading-llm-synthesis-writing — Cognitive offloading as a mechanism in AI-mediated learning
- human-ai-collaboration — Frameworks for human-AI collaborative work
- scaffolding — Scaffolding in AI-mediated learning environments
- self-regulated-learning — Self-regulated learning in the context of GenAI
- ai-literacy — AI literacy and critical evaluation of AI outputs
- cognitive-shift-ai-education — How AI shifts cognitive processes in education