Roziqin Roziqin, Achmad Samsudin, Duden Saepuzaman, Haslinda Nawang Sari, Mimin Iryanti
Artificial intelligence (AI) has made a fast entry into the world of physics education research, but the empirical literature is still fragmented according to content domain, pedagogical function, and evaluation criteria. Leveraging disciplinary epistemic practices, instructional scaffolding theory, and self-regulated learning, this is a systematic literature review of 44 empirical studies published from 2021 to 2025 to examine the implementation of AI in physics education, where it is concentrated, the learning functions it serves, and the epistemic risks associated with its use. Following the guidelines of PRISMA, the review combines frequency analysis and thematic synthesis in order to search for patterns beyond isolated outcomes across studies. The results show that there is a high concentration of AI applications in the areas of mechanics, thermodynamics, and modern physics, which are characterized by machine-interpretable problem structures and high demands for abstraction. AI is mainly applied in conversational tutoring, automated feedback, and personalization systems, and the benefits have been shown to be focused on short-term learning performance, engagement, and instructional efficiency. However, common themes among the contexts are observed, such as epistemic unreliability, overreliance on AI outputs, lack of AI literacy, and fragility of methodology, which directly pose a threat to disciplinary reasoning practices that are central to learning physics. Far from reflecting pedagogical transformation, the current use of AI appears from the synthesized evidence to be instrumented instructional support, frequently divorced from explicit theory-driven learning design. This review introduces a theory-informed, integrative, and explanatory framework for relationships between characteristics of physics content, AI pedagogical functions, and epistemic risks to provide a basis for future research to go beyond tool-centered evaluations, toward sustainable, discipline-sensitive AI integration in physics education. © 2026 American Institute of Mathematical Sciences. All rights reserved.
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, 40154, Indonesia; Department of Chemistry Education, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, 55281, Indonesia
