Foregrounding doctoral knowledge and knower in the age of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Transformation in Higher Education

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Foregrounding doctoral knowledge and knower in the age of Generative Artificial Intelligence
 
Creator McKenna, Sioux
 
Subject higher education studies, sociology, education, economics doctoral education; Generative AI; critical scholarship; research development; postgraduate education; LLMs
Description While Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents new challenges for doctoral education, it also offers an opportunity to refocus doctoral programmes on their fundamental purposes: contributing to knowledge and developing critical researchers. This article draws on the literature on doctoral education to contend that a fixation on efficiency and market-driven outcomes has made doctoral education particularly vulnerable to the misuse of AI. This is because seeing the doctorate as a product to be acquired within a minimum time diminishes the likelihood of substantive conversations taking place about scholarly responsibility and the nature of knowledge creation. By outlining a few ethical deliberations about Generative AI pertinent to all doctoral candidates, this opinion article optimistically suggests that the common concerns about the misuse of AI in our institutions might act as a catalyst, turning the focus onto the knowledge and knowers of doctoral education.Contribution: The emergence of Generative AI, such as Large Language Models ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek, has led to concerns about authorship in the doctorate. This article suggests that we should instead use this potential threat as the impetus to turn the focus onto the knowledge and knower purposes of doctoral education.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2025-12-09
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Review article
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/the.v10i0.653
 
Source Transformation in Higher Education; Vol 10 (2025); 5 pages 2519-5638 2415-0991
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/653/1074 https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/653/1075 https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/653/1076 https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/653/1077
 
Coverage Global Last two years Not applicable
Rights Copyright (c) 2025 Sioux McKenna https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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