Beyond Tools: A Multi-Stakeholder Examination of Generative AI Affordances and Tensions in Creative Learning Environments

Abstract

In practice-based disciplines, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is gradually transforming creative learning settings. This embedded mixed-methods study explores how GenAI is viewed, negotiated, and integrated across creative learning activities using film education as a sample case. The study integrates quantitative and qualitative content analysis based on 1,093 survey responses from students, instructors, industry practitioners, and AI engineers. Three main trends emerge from the findings: a cognition-practice gap between awareness and actual use; ongoing pedagogical conflicts about creativity, authorship, and ethical responsibility; and a move away from tool-based use and toward ecosystem-oriented expectations for interactive and collaborative learning. The study conceptualises GenAI as a sociotechnical infrastructure that reconfigures human-AI collaboration, creative workflows, and pedagogical interaction in creative learning environments, with film education providing the empirical context, rather than framing it only as an instructional technology. By offering an affordance-tension viewpoint for comprehending the negotiated integration of AI in creative learning settings, the paper adds to the ongoing discussions on the future of generative AI in education.