ChatGPT-5 in Education: New Capabilities and Opportunities for Teaching and Learning

This study examined the technological advancements of OpenAI’s GPT-5 and their implications for teaching and learning. Building on previous GPT iterations, GPT-5 introduced a unified model architecture featuring real-time routing, enhanced reasoning, and substantial improvements in factual accuracy, multimodal capabilities, and instruction following. Benchmark evaluations demonstrated notable performance gains across mathematics, coding, visual reasoning, and professional knowledge tasks, surpassing prior models in both depth and reliability. Through a narrative synthesis, this paper addressed two research questions: (1) What were GPT-5’s architectural and performance improvements compared to earlier models? and (2) How did these advancements translate into educational opportunities? Findings indicated that GPT-5 supported diverse instructional scenarios, including intelligent tutoring, assessment design, content generation, and cross-linguistic learning. A key innovation, Study Mode, enhanced educational alignment by walking learners through problems step-by-step, prompting reasoning, and offering scaffolded hints—mirroring evidence-based teaching strategies such as formative feedback and the Socratic method. These features enabled more personalized, interactive, and pedagogically sound engagement, particularly in self-directed and differentiated learning contexts. Although large-scale classroom studies remain limited, GPT-5 represented a major step forward in the use of AI for education, offering improved reliability, flexibility, and alignment with instructional goals. Responsible integration and ongoing evaluation were identified as essential for maximizing its educational impact.