ChatGPT is an AI tool that has sparked debates about its potential implications for education. We used the SWOT analysis framework to outline ChatGPT’s strengths and weaknesses and to discuss its opportunities for and threats to education. The strengths include using a sophisticated natural language model to generate plausible answers, self-improving capability, and providing personalised and real-time responses. As such, ChatGPT can increase access to information, facilitate personalised and complex learning, and decrease teaching workload, thereby making key processes and tasks more efficient. The weaknesses are a lack of deep understanding, difficulty in evaluating the quality of responses, a risk of bias and discrimination, and a lack of higher-order thinking skills. Threats to education include a lack of understanding of the context, threatening academic integrity, perpetuating discrimination in education, democratising plagiarism, and declining high-order cognitive skills. We provide agenda for educational practice and research in times of ChatGPT.

The COVID19-Pandemic has forced educators to transform their lessons into online versions in a short period of time. This study compares teachers’ perception regarding their online teaching expectations (prior to the transition to remote teaching) and experiences (after a month of online teaching). Two surveys were completed by 200 Dutch teachers. Results demonstrated a significant change in the perception of teachers regarding their resolutions to implement technology in their lessons in a post-corona era. In this regard, teachers’ gender and prior experiences with the use of ICT seem to play a small role. Findings of this study provide implications for the professionalisation of teachers, such as characteristics of teachers and intentions to implement technology in teaching, as well as experienced positive and negative aspects of online teaching. Future research should focus on constructing and testing educational design principles for effective professionalisation of teachers in adopting technology in their educational practices.

Recently, ChatGPT, a cutting-edge large language model, has emerged as a powerful Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tool with the capacity to influence education. ChatGPT provides ample opportunities for learners, researchers, educators, and practitioners to achieve the intended learning outcomes in various disciplines. This special issue examines the diverse applications and implications of GenAI tools including ChatGPT in education, highlighting their potential to enhance teaching and learning across various contexts. Key findings from seventeen studies collected in this special issue demonstrate that GenAI tools can significantly improve educational outcomes by providing personalized feedback, facilitating language learning, and supporting both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The findings emphasize GenAI’s capacity to increase learner engagement and motivation, yet also underscore the need for robust ethical guidelines and human oversight due to potential issues with privacy, bias, and accuracy. This special issue also highlights the challenges GenAI faces, such as limitations in contextual understanding and its impact on critical thinking skills. In addition, it provides a foundational framework for exploring effective and responsible GenAI integration, aiming to enrich educational experiences. We conclude that future research should focus on the longitudinal effects of GenAI tools on learning outcomes, developing ethical frameworks for their use, and ensuring their adaptability to diverse learner populations to promote inclusive educational practices.