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The purpose of this paper is to provide a transcript of a dialogue among literacy educators and researchers on the impact of generative aritficial intelligence (AI) in the field. In the spring of 2023, a lively conversation emerged on the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy (NCRLL)’s listserv. Stephanie initiated the conversation by sharing an op-ed she wrote for Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the rise of ChatGPT and similar generative AI platforms, moving beyond the general public’s concerns about student cheating and robot takeovers. NCRLL then convened a webinar of eight leading scholars in writing and literacies development, inspired by that listerv conversation and an organizational interest in promoting intergenerational collaboration among literacy scholars.

As former doctoral students of two of the panel participants, webinar facilitators Grace and Victoria positioned themselves primarily as learners about this topic and gathered questions from colleagues, P-16 practitioners and those outside the field of education to assess the concerns and wonderings that ChatGPT and generative AI have raised. The following webinar conversation was recorded on two different days due to scheduling conflicts. It has been merged and edited into one dialogue for coherence and convergence.

Panel participants raise a host of questions and issues that go beyond topics of ethics, morality and basic writing instruction. Furthermore, in dialogue with one another, they describe possibilities for meaningful pedagogy and critical literacy to ensure that generative AI is used for a socially just future for students. While the discussion addressed matters of pedagogy, definitions of literacy and the purpose of (literacy) education, other themes included a critique of capitalism; an interrogation of the systems of power and oppression involved in using generative AI; and the philosophical, ontological, ethical and practical life questions about being human.

This paper provides a glimpse into one of the first panel conversations about ChatGPT and generative AI in the field of literacy. Not only are the panel members respected scholars in the field, they are also former doctoral students and advisors of one another, thus positioning all involved as both learners and teachers of this new technology.

With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and experiment with generative AI in their daily writing practices.

This critical case study of one digital platform – Character.ai – brings together an adolescent and adult authorship team to inquire about the intertwining of young people’s playful and critical perspectives when writing on/with digital platforms. Drawing on critical walkthrough methodology (Light et al., 2018), the authors engage digital methods to study how the creative and “fun” uses of AI in youths’ writing lives are situated in broader platform ecologies.

The findings suggest experimentation and pleasure are key aspects of young people’s engagement with generative AI. The authors demonstrate how one platform works to capitalize on these dimensions, even as youth users engage critically and artfully with the platform and develop their digital writing practices.

This study highlights how playful experimentation with generative AI can engage young people both in pleasurable digital writing and in exploration and contemplation of platforms dynamics and structures that shape their and others’ literate activities. Educators can consider young people’s creative uses of these evolving technologies as potential opportunities to develop a critical awareness of how commercial platforms seek to benefit from their users.

This study contributes to the development of a critical and humanist research agenda around generative AI by centering the experiences, perspectives and practices of young people who are underrepresented in the burgeoning research devoted to AI and literacies.

This chapter highlights Freire's history and ideologies allow the text to act as in introduction work for those interested in looking at education from a Freireian perspective, and as such it also helps pull together the many aspects of Freire's life and ideas. These points are important because a lot of existing texts and journal articles tend to view Freire from very distinctive perspectives. For example, far and away his most popular text is Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but this chapter explores what he wrote about in the 20 other books and dozens of journal articles he wrote. Freire wrote about oppression in education, but also in government, by race and language, and throughout these explorations is a myriad idea about how oppression works, and why the oppressed let themselves be controlled by a minority. Highlighting these facts is a key starting point to the book.

The purpose of this paper is to share findings from empirically driven conceptual research into the implications for English teachers of understanding generative AI as a “tool” for writing.

The paper reports early findings from an Australian National Survey of English teachers and interrogates the notion of the AI writer as “tool” through intersectional feminist discursive-material analysis of the metaphorical entailments of the term.

Through this work, the authors have developed the concept of “coloniser tool-thinking” and juxtaposed it with First Nations and feminist understandings of “tools” and “objects” to demonstrate risks to the pursuit of social and planetary justice through understanding generative AI as a tool for English teachers and students.

Bringing together white and First Nations English researchers in dialogue, the paper contributes a unique perspective to challenge widespread and common-sense use of “tool” for generative AI services.

Misunderstanding and harmful stereotyping have become commonplace amongst people in the United States and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region since 2001, if not earlier. If universities are the locus of transformative education, work remains towards remedying these issues.One non-profit organisation, “Natafaham (pseudonym, Arabic for « we understand each other”), works to undo this negativity student by student. It brings participants from the MENA and Europe/North America into dialogue via Zoom each week. The inter-cultural dialogue availed to participants is empowering to actors, including the dialogue facilitator. This narrative is an autoethnographic exploration of my experience as an intercultural dialogue facilitator. Yet reviewing contemporaneous notes and reflections revealed structural aspects of this programme that empower voices from the MENA region, while facilitating learning amongst participants on both sides of the Atlantic. Such aspects include the format and the location of the programme, its focus on individuals rather than institutions or groups, its mixed top-down and bottom-up approach, and the opportunities it avails for ascension to positions of authority. This narrative analyses these aspects through several lenses and academic traditions, including those of global citizenship, critical internationalisation, (reciprocal) global service learning, and socio-cultural frameworks of second language acquisition. The chapter urges that these aspects are recognised as key catalysts of (more) equal relationships between youth in the MENA region and the United States, which merit widespread replication. It concludes by envisioning a still more equal relationship predicated upon more equitable language usage.

While most language departments of the university offer service-learning (SL) subjects based on language teaching, such as “Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in Local Schools” and “Serving the Community through Teaching English,” this paper aims to argue that teaching students to teach language(s) is yet to be the best strategy to serve the service recipients.

SL is widely understood as an experiential learning pedagogy that integrates academic focus, reflection and community service and is shown to be impactful. In Hong Kong, the first university that has made SL a graduation requirement is the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the University). Considering this, new SL courses have proliferated over the past decade. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, this paper examines personal narratives from a new SL subject aiming to raise awareness of refugees in Hong Kong. The data includes students’ reflective journals, co-created personal narratives and podcasts and semi-structured interviews.

This paper finds that crafting and recording narratives of shared experiences deepens cultural understanding, cultivates empathy and facilitates language learning in a genuine setting.

Ultimately, this paper advocates a well-designed SL that combines language, content and technology as a powerful, transformational experience for both college students and service recipients.

This paper focuses on a brand new SL course, “Storytelling for Understanding: Refugee Children in Hong Kong,” offered in Semester 1, 2022–2023. The subject was developed by the two authors from a language division affiliated to the University. The deliverables were podcast recordings, co-authored and co-edited by the students and the children.

The purpose of this study is to examine the formation of sustainable development competencies (SDCs) in future primary school teachers during English for specific purposes classes, and to assess the correlation between English proficiency and the development of SDCs, including Collaboration, Strategic thinking, Critical thinking, Modelling sustainable behaviour, Systems thinking and Future thinking.

The research experiment involved the application of content and language integrated learning and facilitation methods in three higher education institutions in Ukraine. The students’ level of English language proficiency was assessed based on the results of the online Cambridge English Language Assessment test, while the level of SDC formation was measured using research methods adapted to the Ukrainian context.

The experiment revealed positive changes in the levels of SDCs and English language proficiency through integrated learning and the application of facilitation methods.

The study established a correlation between the level of English language proficiency and the formation of competencies, such as Collaboration, Strategic thinking, Critical thinking, Modelling sustainable behaviour, Systems thinking and Future thinking, all of which are vital for sustainable development.

Legislators continue to label Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other race-based concepts as divisive. Nevertheless, CRT, at its core, is committed to radical transformation and addressing issues of race and racism to understand how People of Color are oppressed. Through rhetoric and legislative bans, this current anti-CRT movement uses race-neutral policies and practices to limit and eliminate CRT scholars, especially faculty members, from teaching and researching critical pedagogies and other race-based topics.

Through semi-structured interviews using Critical Race Methodology (CRM), the authors sought to understand how 40 faculty members challenged the dominant narratives presented by administrators through their responses to CRT bans. Additionally, this work aimed to examine how administrators’ responses complicate how faculty make sense of CRT bans.

Findings describe three major themes: (1) how administrators failed to respond to CRT bans, which to faculty indicated their desire to present a neutral stance as the middle ground between faculty and legislators; (2) the type of rhetoric administrators engaged in exemplified authoritarian approaches that upheld status quo narratives about diversity, exposing their inability to stand against oppressive dominant narratives; and (3) institutional leaders’ refusal to address the true threats that faculty members faced reinforced the racialized harm that individuals engaging in CRT work must navigate individually.

This study is one of the few that provide empirical data on this current anti-CRT movement, including problematizing the CRT bans, and how it affects campus constituents such as faculty members.

Our goals were to explore the pedagogies applied by instructors that supported Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) student learning in a leadership course and the leadership behaviors BIPOC students identified as being applicable after the course.

Through survey research and qualitative data analysis, three prominent themes emerged.

High-quality, purposeful pedagogy created opportunities for students to learn. Second, a supportive, interactive community engaged students with the instructor, each other and the course material to support participation in learning. As a result, students reported experiencing big shifts, new growth and increased confidence during their leadership courses.

We discuss our findings and offer specific recommendations for leadership educators to better support BIPOC students in their leadership courses and classrooms and for further research with BIPOC students.