Enterprising Academics - Heterarchical Policy Networks for Artificial Intelligence in British Higher Education

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by hdkawk

Limited scholarship examines how artificial intelligence (AI) influences higher education governance, despite rapid adoption of AI-powered technologies across fields, including education. This article addresses the research gap by studying how AI-related ideas circulate within UK policy networks for higher education. Using network ethnography and discourse analysis, it finds a heterarchically structured policy network shaped by neoliberal rationales and populated by actors actively promoting AI technologies for educational use.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages29

Reading Time1 h 13 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Purpose

Design/Approach/Methods

Findings

Originality/Value

Introduction

Background and research gap

Policy networks and research question

Enterprising Academics: Heterarchical Policy Networks for Artiﬁcial Intelligence in British Higher Education Dániel Béla Gellai King’s College London ECNU Review of Education 2023, Vol. 6(4) 568–596 © The Author(s) 2022 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/20965311221143798](DOI: 10.1177/20965311221143798)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/20965311221143798)[journals.sagepub.com/home/roe](journals.sagepub.com/home/roe) Abstract Purpose: There is limited scholarship on artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) in higher education governance, despite the growing prevalence of AI-powered technologies in many ﬁelds, including education. However, as the technology is still nascent and has yet to reach its full potential, ideas and arguments abound, championing or cautioning against the use of these technologies. Design/Approach/Methods: To ﬁll this gap in research on policy networks and AI in British higher education, this article employs network ethnography and discourse analysis to study how ideas about AI-powered technologies in higher education circulate in policy networks in the United Kingdom. Findings: The ﬁndings evidence a policy network showing signs of a heterarchy permeated by neoliberal rationales and populated by policy actors actively promoting artiﬁcial intelligence technologies to be used in education. Originality/Value: This paper builds on existing research by looking at the university and notfor-proﬁt sectors, in addition to the governmental and educational technology sectors. Using network ethnography, this article expands our understanding of the policy actors involved and critically analyzes ideas regarding the use of AI in education. Corresponding author: Dániel Béla Gellai, King’s College London, 30 Aldwych, London, London WC2B 4BG, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Email: [daniel.gellai@gmail.com](daniel.gellai@gmail.com) Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as speciﬁed on the SAGE and Open Access page ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). Keywords Artiﬁcial intelligence, heterarchy, higher education, network ethnography, policy networks, United Kingdom Date received: 22 November 2021; revised: 27 February 2022, 11 September 2022; accepted: 20 September 2022 Introduction Artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) has been heralded as a cybernetic panacea able to improve and extend educational provisions. Although there have been signiﬁcant strides in the development of this technology, which has started to gain space in higher educational management (Fischer et al., 2020; Francisco-Javier et al., 2019), it is still in its infancy and has yet to reach its full potential. Nonetheless, proponents of AI are actively advocating and imagining what an educational system built with AI might entail (e.g., Larsson, 2019; Luckin, 2018) . Technology evangelistsand their arguments abound, and it seems that they are being heard in universities, conferences, and parliament, with relatively few dissenting voices (Bostrom, 2019) . In all cases, AI is treated as an inevitable element of the present and future. However, the public understanding of the policy implications ofAI is poor (Feldstein, 2019), while current research on AI in higher education lacks critical reﬂection and theory (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019), and scholarship on AI and education governance is limited (Sharma et al., 2020) . Thus, Selwyn (2015) has called for critical studies of data and the digital in education.

FAQs

What problem does the article address about AI in higher education?

The article targets limited scholarship on AI within higher education governance, even though AI-powered technologies are increasingly prevalent and debates about their use are widespread.

What methods does the study use to analyze AI policy networks?

It employs network ethnography and critical discourse analysis to examine how AI ideas circulate in UK higher education policy networks and how policy actors try to shape outcomes.

What are the key findings about the UK AI policy network?

The findings describe a heterarchical policy network permeated by neoliberal rationales, involving policy actors actively promoting AI technologies for use in education.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by hdkawk