From ChatGPT to Claude: A Literature Review of Large Language Models in Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65222/VIRAL.2026.7.41.61Keywords:
Abstract
The rapid diffusion of large language models has fundamentally altered discussions surrounding artificial intelligence in education and generated significant scholarly interest in their implications for teaching, learning, assessment, and institutional governance. Systems such as ChatGPT and Claude have moved generative artificial intelligence from experimental applications to mainstream educational practice, creating new opportunities and challenges for universities, educators, and policymakers. Despite the growing volume of research, the literature remains fragmented across technological, pedagogical, and organizational perspectives, limiting the development of integrated theoretical understandings of how large language models reshape educational systems.
This study addresses this fragmentation through a structured integrative literature review based on systematic searches of major academic databases and a theory-driven synthesis of existing research. The review examines the evolution of scholarly work on large language models in education, identifies dominant themes, and explores the theoretical foundations that underpin current debates. The findings reveal a rapid transition from studies centered on technological capabilities toward broader concerns involving human-AI collaboration, educational leadership, institutional transformation, and AI governance. At the same time, significant gaps remain regarding long-term organizational implications, regulatory frameworks, and the development of sustainable models of human-machine collaboration in educational environments.
The paper contributes to the literature by providing an integrative conceptual framework that connects fragmented research streams and proposes a future research agenda for the study of large language models in education. The analysis also offers practical insights for educational institutions seeking to navigate the opportunities and risks associated with generative artificial intelligence and highlights directions for future empirical and theoretical investigations.
Downloads
References
[1] Bai, Y., Kadavath, S., Kundu, S., Askell, A., Kernion, J., Jones, A., Chen, A., Goldie, A., Mirhoseini, A., McKinnon, C., Chen, C., Olsson, C., Olah, C., Hernandez, D., Drain, D., Ganguli, D., Li, D., Tran-Johnson, E., Perez, E., et al. (2022). Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI feedback. arXiv Preprint arXiv:2212.08073. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2212.08073
[2] Baidoo-Anu, D., & Ansah, L. O. (2023). Education in the era of generative artificial intelligence (AI): Understanding the potential benefits of ChatGPT in promoting teaching and learning. Journal of AI, 7(1), 52-62.
[3] Bearman, M., Ryan, J., & Ajjawi, R. (2023). Discourses of artificial intelligence in higher education: A critical literature review. Higher Education, 86(2), 369-385.
[4] Bond, M., Marín, V. I., Dolch, C., Bedenlier, S., & Zawacki-Richter, O. (2018). Digital transformation in German higher education: Student and teacher perceptions and usage of digital media. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 15(1), 48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0130-1
[5] Bommasani, R., Hudson, D. A., Adeli, E., Altman, R., Arora, S., von Arx, S., Bernstein, M. S., Bohg, J., Bosselut, A., Brunskill, E., Brynjolfsson, E., Buch, S., Card, D., Castellon, R., Chatterji, N., Chen, A., Creel, K., Davis, J. Q., Demszky, D., et al. (2021). On the opportunities and risks of foundation models. Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
[6] Bostrom, R. P., & Heinen, J. S. (1977). MIS problems and failures: A socio-technical perspective. Part I: The causes. MIS Quarterly, 1(3), 17-32.
[7] Bubeck, S., Chandrasekaran, V., Eldan, R., Gehrke, J., Horvitz, E., Kamar, E., Lee, P., Lee, Y. T., Li, Y., Lundberg, S., Nori, H., Palangi, H., Ribeiro, M. T., & Zhang, Y. (2023). Sparks of artificial general intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4. arXiv Preprint arXiv:2303.12712. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.12712
[8] Chiu, T. K. F. (2024). Future research recommendations for transforming higher education with generative AI. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 6, 100197.
[9] Crompton, H., & Burke, D. (2023). Artificial intelligence in higher education: The state of the field. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 20(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-023-00392-8
[10] Cotton, D. R. E., Cotton, P. A., & Shipway, J. R. (2023). Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 61(2), 228-239. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148
[11] Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2006). Complexity and education: Inquiries into learning, teaching, and research. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
[12] Dwivedi, Y. K., Kshetri, N., Hughes, L., Slade, E. L., Jeyaraj, A., Kar, A. K., Baabdullah, A. M., Koohang, A., Raghavan, V., Ahuja, M., Albanna, H., Albashrawi, M., Al-Busaidi, A. S., Balakrishnan, J., Barlette, Y., Basu, S., Bose, I., Brooks, L., Buhalis, D., et al. (2023). So what if ChatGPT wrote it? Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 71, 102642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2023.102642
[13] Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Orienta-Konsultit.
[14] Fashogbon, Bamikole Abel, Raimi Olalekan Adeleke, and Omobonike Adejoke Olowe. "The Application of Artificial Intelligence in economics: A review of current trends and future directions." International Journal of Education, Leadership, Artificial Intelligence, Computing, Business, Life Sciences, and Society 2.02 (2025): 67-89. https://doi.org/10.65222/VIRAL.2025.9.10
[15] Floridi, L., & Chiriatti, M. (2020). GPT-3: Its nature, scope, limits, and consequences. Minds and Machines, 30(4), 681-694. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-020-09548-1
[16] Galbraith, J. R. (1974). Organization design: An information processing view. Interfaces, 4(3), 28-36. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.4.3.28
[17] Holmes, W., Bialik, M., & Fadel, C. (2019). Artificial intelligence in education: Promises and implications for teaching and learning. Center for Curriculum Redesign.
[18] Holmes, W., & Tuomi, I. (2022). State of the art and practice in AI in education. European Journal of Education, 57(4), 542-570. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12533
[19] Jarrahi, M. H. (2018). Artificial intelligence and the future of work: Human-AI symbiosis in organizational decision making. Business Horizons, 61(4), 577-586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2018.03.007
[20] Kasneci, E., Sessler, K., Küchemann, S., Bannert, M., Dementieva, D., Fischer, F., Gasser, U., Groh, G., Günnemann, S., Hüllermeier, E., Krusche, S., Kutyniok, G., Michaeli, T., Nerdel, C., Pfeiffer, F., Poquet, O., Sailer, M., Schmidt, A., Seidel, T., & Kasneci, G. (2023). ChatGPT for good? On opportunities and challenges of large language models for education. Learning and Individual Differences, 103, 102274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2023.102274
[21] Leonardi, P. M. (2011). When flexible routines meet flexible technologies: Affordance, constraint, and the imbrication of human and material agencies. MIS Quarterly, 35(1), 147-167. https://doi.org/10.2307/23043493
[22] Lim, W. M., Gunasekara, A. N., Pallant, J. L., Pallant, J. I., & Pechenkina, E. (2023). Generative AI and the future of education: Ragnarök or reformation? A paradoxical perspective from management educators. International Journal of Management Education, 21(2), 100790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2023.100790
[23] Lo, C. K. (2023). What is the impact of ChatGPT on education? A rapid review of the literature. Education Sciences, 13(4), 410. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13040410
[24] Luckin, R., Holmes, W., Griffiths, M., & Forcier, L. B. (2016). Intelligence unleashed: An argument for AI in education. Pearson.
[25] Lund, B. D., Wang, T., Mannuru, N. R., Nie, B., Shimray, S., & Wang, Z. (2023). ChatGPT and a new academic reality: Artificial intelligence-written research papers and the ethics of the large language models in scholarly publishing. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 74(5), 570-581. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24750
[26] Mollick, E., & Mollick, L. (2023). Assigning AI: Seven approaches for students, with prompts. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4475995
[27] Ouyang, L., Wu, J., Jiang, X., Almeida, D., Wainwright, C., Mishkin, P., Zhang, C., Agarwal, S., Slama, K., Ray, A., Schulman, J., Hilton, J., Kelton, F., Miller, L., Simens, M., Askell, A., Welinder, P., Christiano, P., Leike, J., & Lowe, R. (2022). Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 35, 27730-27744.
[28] OpenAI. (2023). GPT-4 technical report. arXiv Preprint arXiv:2303.08774. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.08774
[29] Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., et al. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71
[30] Rahman, M. M., Watanobe, Y., & Hasan, M. M. (2024). ChatGPT for education and research: Opportunities, threats, and strategies. Applied Sciences, 14(2), 572.
[31] Rudolph, J., Tan, S., & Tan, S. (2023). ChatGPT: Bullshit spewer or the end of traditional assessments in higher education? Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, 6(1), 342-363.
[32] Sallam, M. (2023). ChatGPT utility in healthcare education, research, and practice: Systematic review on the promising perspectives and valid concerns. Healthcare, 11(6), 887. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11060887
[33] Selwyn, N. (2019). Should robots replace teachers? AI and the future of education. Polity Press.
[34] Siemens, G., & Long, P. (2011). Penetrating the fog: Analytics in learning and education. EDUCAUSE Review, 46(5), 30-40.
[35] Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 104, 333-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.07.039
[36] Susnjak, T. (2022). ChatGPT: The end of online exam integrity? arXiv Preprint arXiv:2212.09292. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2212.09292
[37] Tlili, A., Alturise, F., Alghamdi, A., Aldahmani, F., Alshahrani, F., Alotaibi, S., Alharthi, N., Aljohani, N., Alswedani, S., Huang, R., Burgos, D., & Bozkurt, A. (2025). Generative artificial intelligence in education: Where we are and where we are going. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 8, 100311.
[38] Tlili, A., Shehata, B., Adarkwah, M. A., Bozkurt, A., Hickey, D. T., Huang, R., & Agyemang, B. (2023). What if the devil is my guardian angel: ChatGPT as a case study of using chatbots in education. Smart Learning Environments, 10(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-023-00237-x
[39] Torraco, R. J. (2005). Writing integrative literature reviews: Guidelines and examples. Human Resource Development Review, 4(3), 356-367. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484305278283
[40] UNESCO. (2023). Guidance for generative AI in education and research. UNESCO Publishing.
[41] Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., Kaiser, Ł., & Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is all you need. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (Vol. 30, pp. 5998-6008).
[43] Vulpe, M. I., Stancu, S., Munteanu, P., & Bǎrbulescu, R. (2026). Digital divide and technological exclusion: strategies for inclusive ict skill development in adult education. International Journal of Education, Leadership, Artificial Intelligence, Computing, Business, Life Sciences, and Society, 5, 81-92. https://doi.org/10.65222/VIRAL.2026.2.12.32
[44] Williamson, B., & Eynon, R. (2020). Historical threads, missing links, and future directions in AI in education. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(3), 223-235. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1798995
[45] Wilson, H. J., & Daugherty, P. R. (2018). Collaborative intelligence: Humans and AI are joining forces. Harvard Business Review, 96(4), 114-123.
[46] Woolf, B. P. (2010). Building intelligent interactive tutors: Student-centered strategies for revolutionizing e-learning. Morgan Kaufmann.
[47] Zawacki-Richter, O., Marín, V. I., Bond, M., & Gouverneur, F. (2019). Systematic review of research on artificial intelligence applications in higher education - Where are the educators? International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 16(1), 39. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0171-0
[48] Zhao, Y. (2023). Two decades of havoc: A synthesis of criticism against PISA. Journal of Educational Change, 24(2), 169-190.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 International Journal of Education, Leadership, Artificial Intelligence, Computing, Business, Life Sciences, and Society
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.