2026/07/01 by Brady L. Nash, Brady Nash, Sarah K. Burriss
Computer Science · Arts and Humanities · #Digital Education and Society #Literacy, Media, and Education #Teaching and Learning Programming
paper · doi:10.1002/rrq.70136
ABSTRACT Generative AI tools such as large language models are, as their name suggests, fundamentally language tools, not only in their design but also in the way they operate for users. As such, they have particularly powerful implications for literacy education. This qualitative study investigates how undergraduate literacy preservice teachers developed classroom policies about AI to be employed in their own secondary English classrooms. Recognizing the ubiquity of digital technologies in writing education, this study is framed using postdigital theory, which emphasizes the already omnipresent (yet still malleable) influence of the digital and advocates for critical examination of digital technologies in relation to schooling and larger social discourses. The authors analyzed 27 course policies using grounded theory methods. The findings highlight the ways in which participants framed AI use in relation to literacy education, including elements of the writing process such as idea generation, text generation, checking, citing, and feedback, as well as reading comprehension and research conducted by students in class. The authors discuss these findings in relation to larger societal discourses around issues such as plagiarism and technodeterminism, as well as in relation to scholarly discourses related to the postdigital, writing processes, and English education.