This study explores how teacher students experience AI-generated feedback provided through a digital response system during campus-based seminars and how they relate these experiences to their future teaching practice. Unlike research focusing on individual uses of generative AI, this study examines AI feedback embedded in a collaborative think–pair–share activity where teacher students participate as both learners and prospective teachers. Data were collected through observations, written reflections, and interviews, and analyzed thematically. Teacher students appreciated the AI-generated feedback for its immediacy, structure, and capacity to prompt reflection. At the same time, they questioned its reliability, contextual sensitivity, and ethical appropriateness in classroom settings. They described a trust hierarchy in which teacher feedback was relied upon most, followed by AI-generated feedback, while peer feedback ranked lowest. During the seminars, AI-generated feedback became a shared reference point that students compared, questioned, and discussed, positioning it as part of the interaction rather than a time-saving tool. Teacher students connected these experiences to concrete considerations about how similar feedback arrangements could be used, adapted, or avoided in their own classrooms, particularly in relation to comparing feedback sources, pedagogical responsibility, feedback practices, and digital competence.

In this article, we explore how the recently revived approach of social science fiction can be used as a creative and critical method to imagine and discuss the future of artificial intelligence in education (AIED). We review one hundred social science fiction stories written by researchers and analyse how they depict the potential role of AI in teaching and learning. Through a thematic analysis, we identify four main themes and several sub-themes that highlight the hopes and concerns that the researchers express for the future of AIED. Although the fictions present imaginative scenarios of anticipated AIED futures already present in the literature, they also feature creative illustrations of how such futures may materialise. We observe that social science fiction can be valuable in approaching the complex and uncertain landscape of AIED while stimulating reflection and dialogue. We conclude by suggesting some directions for further research and practice using this emerging approach of storytelling.

Little attention has been paid to adults pursuing online education at the upper secondary level. The aim of this article is to identify and describe predictors of presence, academic achievement, and satisfaction in online upper secondary education for adults. The study is grounded in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, which is based on three types of presence: teaching presence (TP), social presence (SP), and cognitive presence (CP). A survey was administered to adults who had completed, or were close to completing, an online upper secondary-level course in Sweden, yielding 672 responses. An exploratory factor analysis showed that items from the CP and TP constructs related to peer interaction and teacher guidance loaded onto the SP construct instead. Accordingly, the factors were labeled as individual TP (iTP), extended SP (eSP), and individual CP (iCP) to describe how the CoI framework is manifested in this context, characterized by substantial individual study and varying opportunities for social interaction. Multiple regression models explained a substantial proportion of the variance in iTP (adjusted R2 = .58), eSP (adjusted R2 = .68), and satisfaction (adjusted R2 = .53), a more moderate proportion in iCP (adjusted R2 = .36) and only a small proportion for academic achievement (adjusted R2 = .13). Academic achievement was primarily associated with iCP (β = .38), whereas student satisfaction was primarily associated with iTP (β = .58). Key predictors included course introductions related to studying and technology, tutoring, synchronous online teaching, and collaborative course design.

In the final chapter, we meet an educator, a student, a manager, and a researcher. Each imagines what education could be, beginning to see beyond the routines and constraints of practice and research. Breaking free from these chains feels nearly impossible, yet they start imagining otherwise. They dream of being radical in the present and of other, better, more engaging education worlds. Though they do not know exactly how to get there, the first steps already exist in their imagining.

This chapter explores students’ imagined futures of artificial intelligence (AI) teaching assistants through a creative story completion exercise. Students in an introductory AI in education course continued a speculative narrative about a professor and an AI assistant. Using the composite narrative method, we wove together student voices to create a unified story that captures their hopes and concerns. The resulting narrative, “The Double-Edged Hologram”, reveals a fundamental tension: while AI assistants offer personalized explanations and efficiency, they risk creating distance between teachers and students and fostering passive learning. We reflect on the methodological strengths of composite narratives in creating emotional resonance and honoring participant voices, while acknowledging challenges of researcher subjectivity and potential oversimplification in representing diverse perspectives.

In a recent interview (Bender et al., 2025), Professor Emily M. Bender discussed the limitations of technical solutions in addressing harmful Artificial Intelligence (AI) bias. She described a particular point we may reach at which technical solutions stop working, and when we should then widen the lens to ask about the problem framing itself. This is a crucial step in any inquiry that is of concern to both novice and experienced researchers alike: moving from problem-solving to problematisation. This commentary aims to provide educational researchers with a glimpse into the wide array of research problems and problematisation of AI in Education (AIED). It discusses seven framings of AIED: methodological pluralism; metaphors; ethnographic studies; imagining futures through fiction; humanistic groundings of AI design and development; third space professionals in research; and open education. We describe why these particular frames are relevant and how we wrote this commentary. We go on to suggest that to sustain the desirable but sometimes elusive nexus between research and teaching, we need to see both as rich, diverse, and distributed activities consisting of many actors. We seek to probe: What is AI? Who gets to say so and why? What critical, creative and pluralistic approaches can we take to research into its effects on the outcomes and experiences of students in higher education?.

Education fiction offers unique opportunities to creatively explore education futures, yet approaches for analysing such works remain limited. This paper proposes three interpretive lenses for analysing education fiction: alternative educational imaginaries, narrative and rhetorical mechanics, and critical value for educational scholarship and practice. Each lens is posed alongside guiding questions to support deeper and reflective reading. Applying the lenses to a worked example about artificial intelligence in education shows how literary form, persuasion, and implicit value claims generate practice-relevant insights, without prescribing a single final reading. The lenses aim to bridge speculative storytelling with educational scholarship, demonstrating education fiction's potential not merely to imagine but to actively shape the future of educational research and practice.