pedagogical-trust
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- PaperAssessment & Evaluation in Higher Education3 Jul 2026
Uncertainty, trust, and the individualisation of risk in contemporary assessment cultures
Kenneth Maxwell, Gregor Maxwell
Generative AI acts as a stress-test revealing latent fragilities in pedagogical trust and institutional governance. Survey data from a Norwegian university (2023–2025, n=1,365) show that student uncertainty has intensified and shifted from ethical caution to strategic risk management and perceptions of structural threat. This individualisation of uncertainty creates uneven equity consequences, transforming the digital divide into a gap between those who can absorb assessment risk and those who must withdraw to protect themselves.
Original abstract
Contemporary assessment cultures are characterised by increasing uncertainty, as established approaches to authorship, judgement, and integrity are placed under strain by emerging conditions such as generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Rather than positioning this technology solely as a disruption to be contained, this article conceptualises GenAI as an assessment stress-test that reveals latent fragilities in pedagogical trust and institutional governance. Drawing on three consecutive years of survey data from a Norwegian university (2023–2025, n = 1,365), the study analyses how students navigate assessment under conditions of sustained uncertainty. Findings indicate that instead of diminishing with familiarity, uncertainty has intensified and shifted from ethical caution to strategic risk management and perceptions of structural threat. In the absence of coherent guidance, students describe a fragmented landscape of inconsistent judgement, leading to adopting performative safety and self-imposed micro-ethics as compensatory boundary work. This individualisation of uncertainty creates uneven equity consequences, transforming the digital divide into a gap between those who possess the cultural resources to absorb assessment risk and those who must withdraw to protect themselves. The article concludes that control-oriented responses exacerbate these tensions, revealing both their limitations and the conditions under which pedagogical trust becomes strained.