Cognitive offloading, critical pedagogy, and connectivist learning shape academic responses to generative AI in higher education: transforming resistance into pedagogical care

Gail Crimmins; Erin Sanders O’Leary; Eileen Strempel

doi:10.1080/07294360.2026.2700227

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Cognitive offloading, critical pedagogy, and connectivist learning shape academic responses to generative AI in higher education: transforming resistance into pedagogical care

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Cognitive offloading, critical pedagogy, and connectivist learning shape academic responses to generative AI in higher education: transforming resistance into pedagogical care

Gail Crimmins, Erin Sanders O’Leary and Eileen Strempel

Higher Education Research and Development, Vol.Advanced access

16-Jul-2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2700227

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Abstract

Critical Theory

Generative artificial intelligence

Higher education

Influence of Technology

Interviews

Learning Theories

Pedagogy

The rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has renewed debate in higher education about how technology shapes learning, cognition, and academic practice. This study examines how university educators are responding to GenAI in teaching and learning, with attention to cognitive offloading, professional judgement, and pedagogical values. Guided by connectivist learning theory and critical pedagogy, and informed by UTAUT2 constructs we conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 faculty across disciplines in 2025 and analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings reveal a spectrum of responses, combining enthusiasm for GenAI’s creative affordances with concerns about academic integrity, cognitive dependency, cultural bias, environmental sustainability, and digital inclusion. Adoption was shaped by peer norms and institutional signals but consistently mediated by ethical reasoning and commitments to student-centred learning. Participants framed integrity as the preservation of judgement and meaning making, and identified inequities in access and AI literacy as a growing hidden curriculum. They also raised concerns that uncritical use of GenAI may privilege Western epistemic norms and marginalise Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing. We argue that resistance to GenAI reflects pedagogical care rather than technological reluctance, and that principled approaches are required to safeguard scholarly rigour, equity, and student agency.

Details

Title: Cognitive offloading, critical pedagogy, and connectivist learning shape academic responses to generative AI in higher education: transforming resistance into pedagogical care
Authors: Gail Crimmins (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast
Erin Sanders O’Leary - University of California, Los Angeles
Eileen Strempel - Richard Bland College
Publication details: Higher Education Research and Development, Vol.Advanced access
Publisher: Routledge
DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2026.2700227
ISSN: 1469-8366
Copyright note: © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Organisation Unit: School of Business and Creative Industries
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991246958302621
Output Type: Journal article

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