Student Interaction with Chat GPT Can Aid Critical Thinking Skills

I saw this on my Facebook feed this morning and thought it was worth a post.

What a title. And one that absolutely should prompt (pun intended) further conversation and dialogue in the education sector (but maybe not Primary – which is fair enough) You can read a section of the research paper here, and while the entire paper isn’t available, there is enough to give you a real flavour of the potential outcomes – most of which aren’t remarkable, in that they aren’t surprising.

There are a few studies, like Krupp et al. (2024), that show many students will accept inaccurate answers from AI platforms and use copy-and-paste without critically evaluating information. This will obviously highlight the necessity and importance in educating all students on how to use AI responsibly and critically. In contrast, Kosar et al. (2024) found no significant differences in academic performance between students who use ChatGPT and those who do not.

Here’s what the data showed:

Engagement with the tool predicted critical thinking gains far better than simply knowing facts about how AI works. Students who approached ChatGPT with curiosity and reflection built stronger reasoning skills. Students who treated it like “a homework vending machine” got exactly what you’d expect. The tool can actually free up cognitive resources for deeper reasoning. But only when students stay mentally active. Only when teachers set expectations that require it.

If your students are copying and pasting AI outputs, that’s a pedagogy problem, not a technology problem.

Essel et al. (2024) conducted a significant study involving university students in Ghana, revealing that interaction with ChatGPT positively impacted students’ critical, reflective, and creative thinking abilities. This suggests that the use of advanced language models like ChatGPT could represent a promising innovation for developing advanced cognitive skills among students.

Guo and Lee (2023), in a specific educational context within the field of chemistry, observed significant improvements in students’ ability to formulate insightful questions and analyze complex information through interaction with ChatGPT. This highlights the potential of generative AI in facilitating deeper and more critical learning processes.

Minh (2024) further explored how the use of ChatGPT not only increased the depth of students’ arguments but also improved the structure and complexity of their argumentative presentations. Van Rensburg’s study (2024) examined how ChatGPT 3.5 could be used to model critical thinking through the generation of textual responses. It was found that targeted educational involvement is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of this process, emphasizing the importance of active pedagogical guidance in utilizing these technologies.

Particularly relevant, the findings from Avello et al. (2024) indicated a significant reduction in cognitive load in the group using ChatGPT. This suggests that the use of artificial intelligence tools can facilitate critical thinking by freeing up cognitive resources for analysing and solving complex problems.

The findings from research spells it out plainly: educational value comes from how we teach, not from the tool itself. Task design, guidance, and clear expectations determine the outcome.

We can blame ChatGPT for student laziness, or we can admit that lazy assignments produce lazy work, with or without AI. This might be a hard point to hear – especially for examination classes where there is typically less room to manoeuvre, but does that mean we have to do everything the same way? Is there scope for learning the material in a new way? I know not every subject will be the same, so I’ll leave that to you.

Clearly, we still have work to do. Our pupils are using AI for a host of purposes that are education linked and as teachers, we need to position ourselves ahead of the curve, so that we can educate, guide and mentor students in how they use this tool – and in reference to senior pupils (GCSE/A-Level), in a way that shows purposeful, responsible and mature use that enhances what they do, not just to get the answer.

JCQ now list the following AI tools that are available for :

• ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/auth/login)
• Jenni AI (https://jenni.ai)
• Jasper AI (https://www.jasper.ai/)
• Writesonic (https://writesonic.com/chat/)
• Bloom AI (https://huggingface.co/bigscience/bloom)
• Gemini (https://gemini.google.com/)
• Claude (https://claude.ai/)
• Gauth (https://gauthmath.com/)
• Question AI (https://questionai.com/)
• Brainly (https://brainly.com/)

To stay ahead of pupil AI use, we need teaching staff to keep a pressure on management when it comes to the use of AI in education. Continued training, time set aside to use AI platforms, and for teachers to work out how to use it for their own benefit. Better training equals better equipped teachers. And better equipped teachers should equal better learning outcomes for pupils.

The key here is time – we need more of it set aside to learn how pupils are using these platforms, what they’re using them for, and how we can utilise them for learning.

The opportunities that AI presents to learning is now being evidenced through research. This should reassure school leaders who like to be ‘evidence based.’ The good news here is that pupils can make good use of AI for learning – that has massive implications for learning outside of the classroom, an idea that I am a big fan of. But there are steps needed and plans to be made to help turn this into a reality.

As teachers, we need to be actively working towards how we use AI to make the greatest impact, while saving ourselves time and protecting ourselves from burnout, and cognitive overload, while allowing us to get some tasks completed in a more efficient manner.

It’s not always easy teaching in schools, but today should hopefully be a good news post – not all pupils are using AI to cheat or skip through a homework!