Thinking with the Machine: Generative AI, Cognitive Processes, Writing Practices and Human Agency in Education

Abstract

This integrative literature review examines how generative artificial intelligence is shaping human thinking, cognitive processes and writing practices, with a focus on education across schools, universities, adult learning and professional settings. It considers how AI-supported composing alters the ways writers plan, generate, organise, revise and evaluate text, and how these changes reshape cognition, agency, authorship and learning. Rather than treating generative AI simply as a tool for productivity, the review approaches it as a relational technology that mediates meaning-making and textual production, while reserving the language of intentional agency for human actors. Thirty-six publications, identified through a structured search of seven information sources reported in accordance with PRISMA 2020 and appraised using criteria matched to each form of evidence, were synthesised thematically. Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory provides the analytical lens, particularly triadic reciprocal causation, self-efficacy, observational learning, self-regulation and human agency. The discussion develops a critical account that recognises clear benefits while flagging risks of cognitive offloading, uncritical trust, homogenised expression and weakened metacognitive control. Claims are calibrated to the type of evidence supporting them, and findings drawn from preprints, small samples and self-report designs are presented as preliminary. The review advances a hybrid account in which human and machine contributions to composing are entwined and argues that this entwinement makes deliberate human participation more rather than less necessary. It concludes by proposing guidelines for educators across sectors, together with the assessment conditions under which those guidelines can be verified.