[Edling] student agency as focus of GenAI response

Sun Jul 20 10:41:45 UTC 2025

Hello all,

Thank you, Francis, for sharing the "AI Refusal" document, and to others on this list for thoughtful questions and responses it has generated thus far.

I wanted to share a book chapter I wrote with a brilliant scholar at U of Rochester,  Whitney Gegg-Harrison, who has been teaching writing courses centered on AI for several years now, and has one of the most nuanced and pedagogically relevant approaches I have seen. I begged her to write this with me because I wanted to learn, and because I was concerned about the dichotomization  was seeing in the conversations.

The title is "From Policing to Empowerment: Promoting Student Agency in the Context of AI Text Generators and AI-Detection Tools."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19S5MTZ8nnNzqSYJ4MSJdr4wfZOzcTDMI/view?usp=sharing
You'll note that this is a PDF with permission to COMMENT-- and there are comments there from people in the CLA Collective, which hosted a Salon event back in June centered on this chapter.

And it's part of a new book from Routledge entitled Rethinking Writing Education in the Age of Generative AI, edited by (the also brilliant) Chaoran Wang and Zhongfeng Tian. https://www.routledge.com/Rethinking-Writing-Education-in-the-Age-of-Generative-AI/Wang-Tian/p/book/9781032727653?srsltid=AfmBOorBA5G3LlZSABvIvCoAzfhFgw4iirA7WBhNqhxup3ILVPoVAaVY

Whether or not you read the chapter or the book (there's another one they put together focused on language education by the way- also with Routledge), I hope we will take up the frame of STUDENT AGENCY as our central focus when talking about Generative AI. Whether we embrace it (with a critical lens, of course) or "reject it" (with an understanding that rejecting it fully is very difficult these days, since it's now being forced on us through software and internet browsers), what matters is that we and our students experience a sense of agency, and can make informed decisions based on what we know about language and power (i.e., Critical Language Awareness 😉 More info on that at https://cla.middcreate.net/)

Hope this is helpful!
-Shawna
PS- One fun way I'm trying to get students "off screen" in my classes this Fall is by giving them slim "travel journals" in which they can free-write, plus fun stickers they can use to decorate their journals and nice pens to write with. ❤ That's agency, also!

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Today's Topics:

   1. Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies (Francis M. Hult)
   2. Seeking AAL Language Policy (Johnson, David C)
   3. Re: Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies (Martin P.J.  Edwardes)
   4. Re: Seeking AAL Language Policy (InterpreterMan)
   5. Re: [EXT] Re:  Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies (Curry, MJ)

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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2025 04:49:45 -0400
From: "Francis M. Hult" <fmhult at umbc.edu>
To: Educational Linguistics List <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Subject: [Edling] Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies
Message-ID:
        <CAEs-vYF23PSz2vFJBYEMrT3WFZqizU9du-YFaG=qZ5OoZ-8cPg at mail.gmail.com>
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Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies

This guide positions refusal as a disciplinary and principled response to the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI)3 technologies in writing studies. We created this guide to add to ongoing efforts to think through approaches for responding to GenAI in writing studies, and in higher education more broadly. When we say GenAI ?refusal,? we are talking about the range of ways that individuals and/or groups consciously and intentionally choose to refuse GenAI use, when and where we are able to do so...To situate refusal as a disciplinary position, we offer ten premises that ground refusal as a disciplinary response to GenAI technologies.

Full text:
https://refusinggenai.wordpress.com/
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2025 20:17:43 +0000
From: "Johnson, David C" <david-c-johnson at uiowa.edu>
To: "edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu" <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Subject: [Edling] Seeking AAL Language Policy
Message-ID:
        <MW4PR04MB7172D9B604A4BBE3ED660ADBA954A at MW4PR04MB7172.namprd04.prod.outlook.com>

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Seeking language policy examples: Hi all. We're wondering if anyone is willing to share example U.S. school district language policies that deal with African American Language.

David Cassels Johnson<https://education.uiowa.edu/directory/david-c-johnson>, Ph.D.
Professor, Multilingual Education
Associate Department Chair, Teaching & Learning Coordinator, Literacy, Culture, and Language Education

University of Iowa
N244 Lindquist Center
240 S. Madison Street
Iowa City, IA 52242
(319) 335-6175

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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2025 11:52:19 +0100 (BST)
From: "Martin P.J.  Edwardes" <martin.edwardes at btopenworld.com>
To: Educational Linguistics List <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Edling] Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies
Message-ID: <1db22a0a.607c.197fe43b4a4.Webtop.155 at btinternet.com>
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I agree with the principles involved in this initiative. However, I would rephrase the ten premises as follows, to assist comprehension.
?
1.??????????? By personally writing studies, teacher-scholars gain an understanding of the relationship between language, power, and persuasion.?
2.??????????? By personally writing studies, teacher-scholars gain an understanding of the broad purposes and uses of writing in the world.?
3.??????????? Personally writing studies as a discipline maintains the personal aspect of writing and encourages new language practices, both of which are suppressed by GenAI.
4.??????????? Personally writing studies as a discipline reduces the need for punitive approaches to unintended plagiarism and encourages fairer plagiarism surveillance.?
5.??????????? Personally writing studies as a discipline encourages explicitly argued, ideologically fair approaches to writing; technologies, including GenAI, often rely on ideologically non-neutral arguments which are not made explicit.?
6.??????????? Personally writing studies as a discipline relies on understanding the whole history of writing conventions to provide important context. GenAI often relies on internalised and anodyne writing conventions which do not themselves evolve.?
7.??????????? Writing teachers are well-poised to understand the range of writing issues that GenAI introduces into a text.?
8.??????????? As well as the writing issues, writing teachers need to understand the rhetorical and economic contexts surrounding GenAI, including the various ways that GenAI is promoted and marketed.
9.??????????? All technology users need to consider the environmental impacts of using digital technologies that rely on massive datasets, such as GenAI.
10.???????? Refusal to publish texts produced with GenAI is a principled, pragmatic and necessary response to the incursion of GenAI technologies in college writing courses.
?
I hope this helps.
?
Martin P.J. Edwardes
BSc MA PhD, FRAI AKC
?
------ Original Message ------
From: edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu
To: edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu Cc: fmhult at umbc.edu
Sent: Saturday, July 12th 2025, 09:52
Subject: [Edling] Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies ?
Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies
This guide positions refusal as a disciplinary and principled response to the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI)3 technologies in writing studies. We created this guide to add to ongoing efforts to think through approaches for responding to GenAI in writing studies, and in higher education more broadly. When we say GenAI ?refusal,? we are talking about the range of ways that individuals and/or groups consciously and intentionally choose to refuse GenAI use, when and where we are able to do so...To situate refusal as a disciplinary position, we offer ten premises that ground refusal as a disciplinary response to GenAI technologies.
Full text:
https://refusinggenai.wordpress.com/
<https://refusinggenai.wordpress.com/>

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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2025 02:23:49 +0000 (UTC)
From: InterpreterMan <interpreterman at aol.com>
To: "edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu" <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Cc: "Johnson, David C" <david-c-johnson at uiowa.edu>
Subject: Re: [Edling] Seeking AAL Language Policy
Message-ID: <1074885669.1641214.1752546229190 at mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

This is far from my field(s) of expertise, but I studied in South Carolina and I knew two black gentlemen who spoke with regional accents. The older one sounded like an immigrant, but I could understand him. It took me 3 or 4 years to understand the younger man, though. My best guess is that the older gentleman had been on the mainland longer.
Having said that, maybe there's a source in the South Carolina education system that can help you with policies about the Gullah language, if such policies exist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah?
Daniel Steve Villarreal, Ph.D.?(???)Assistant Professor of English (MOE # 036823) Licensed Court Interpreter # 315 (Spanish-English, TX), Master designation ESL & Spanish instructor Spanish-to-English translation

    On Tuesday, July 15, 2025 at 04:35:07 AM GMT+8, Johnson, David C via Edling <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu> wrote:

Seeking language policy examples: Hi all. We?re wondering if anyone is willing to share example U.S. school district language policies that deal with African American Language.

 ?

 ?

David Cassels Johnson, Ph.D.

Professor, Multilingual Education

Associate Department Chair, Teaching & Learning

Coordinator, Literacy, Culture, and Language Education

 ?

University of Iowa

N244 Lindquist Center

240 S. Madison Street

Iowa City, IA 52242

(319) 335-6175

 ?

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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:05:47 +0000
From: "Curry, MJ" <mjcurry at Warner.Rochester.edu>
To: Educational Linguistics List <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Edling] [EXT] Re:  Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies
Message-ID: <09D91E85-59EC-44C0-8E25-C594104AE0AB at ur.rochester.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hi Martin,

the lists of principles you have distilled/rewritten raise a number of problems related to definitions and assumptions. For example, aligning with the enumerated points below:

  1.  what does ?personally writing? mean in the contemporary era of collaborative authorship, which has long been the norm in sci/tech fields, and increasingly in social sciences and humanities (see my work with Theresa Lillis from 2004-2023 on multilingual scholars writing for publication, which overwhelmingly for participating scholars in education and psychology, meant co-authoring, often with multiple partners.) So ?personally writing? implies to me, ?human-only writing?.
  2.  How does writing studies ?give authors an understanding of the broad purposes and uses in of writing in the world?? Many people simply learn to write the specific genres that are needed in their contexts/workplaces?this is not a guarantee that they transfer that knowledge to other contexts;
  3.  What does ?personally writing studies as a discipline? mean?as an academic discipline? As a personal practice that involves discipline?
  4.  I would agree with the original text?s position that we should not adopt punitive approaches to UNINTENDED plagiarism?this seems like a separate topic than AI use. How plagiarism is defined, identified, and handled institutionally varies widely across and within institutions
  5.  I think the phrase ?writing studies? in the original document indexes the current term for rhetoric/composition studies, which broadens to include the considerable work in other, related fields, like the ones I mentioned above?writing studies is possibly the most comprehensive and inclusive term to encompass all of us who teach writing in some way/institutional corner in higher education.
  6.  Unfortunately, many scholars do not know, and would not actually have time to learn ?the whole history of writing conventions,? which in any case seems unnecessary to help students learn the practices of current writing conventions for the particular texts/genres/disciplines they are writing for.
  7.  And I would heartily disagree that writing teachers are ?well poised? on this issue?if anything, there are many Luddite positions floating around.
Jumping to 10?I think that train has left the station. Students are already using AI at all levels. We as their teachers need to be prepared to engage with them on how they are using it, what are the ethical considerations, including environmental, how to document and critique their use of AI, and how to distinguish what they learn from AI from what they learn in our courses and elsewhere through old-fashioned means. Also, let?s please distinguish between undergraduate and graduate writing when we talk about ?college courses?

Best,
MJ Curry

Mary Jane Curry, PhD (she/her/hers)
Emerita Professor of Teaching and Curriculum Warner Graduate School of Education & Human Development University of Rochester
https://rochester.zoom.us/my/mjcurry

Director, Warner Writing Support Services Co-editor, Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation book series, Multilingual Matters Academic writing/publishing/career coach and consultant: http://www.mjcurry.co/<http://www.mjcurry.co/>

Book in process: Curry, M.J. Class notes: A Pittsburgh education

From: Edling <edling-bounces at lists.mail.umbc.edu> on behalf of "Martin P.J. Edwardes via Edling" <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Reply-To: Educational Linguistics List <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Date: Monday, July 14, 2025 at 4:37?PM
To: Educational Linguistics List <edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Cc: "Martin P.J. Edwardes" <martin.edwardes at btopenworld.com>
Subject: [EXT] Re: [Edling] Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies

I agree with the principles involved in this initiative. However, I would rephrase the ten premises as follows, to assist comprehension.

1.            By personally writing studies, teacher-scholars gain an understanding of the relationship between language, power, and persuasion.

2.            By personally writing studies, teacher-scholars gain an understanding of the broad purposes and uses of writing in the world.

3.            Personally writing studies as a discipline maintains the personal aspect of writing and encourages new language practices, both of which are suppressed by GenAI.

4.            Personally writing studies as a discipline reduces the need for punitive approaches to unintended plagiarism and encourages fairer plagiarism surveillance.

5.            Personally writing studies as a discipline encourages explicitly argued, ideologically fair approaches to writing; technologies, including GenAI, often rely on ideologically non-neutral arguments which are not made explicit.

6.            Personally writing studies as a discipline relies on understanding the whole history of writing conventions to provide important context. GenAI often relies on internalised and anodyne writing conventions which do not themselves evolve.

7.            Writing teachers are well-poised to understand the range of writing issues that GenAI introduces into a text.

8.            As well as the writing issues, writing teachers need to understand the rhetorical and economic contexts surrounding GenAI, including the various ways that GenAI is promoted and marketed.

9.            All technology users need to consider the environmental impacts of using digital technologies that rely on massive datasets, such as GenAI.

10.         Refusal to publish texts produced with GenAI is a principled, pragmatic and necessary response to the incursion of GenAI technologies in college writing courses.

I hope this helps.

Martin P.J. Edwardes

BSc MA PhD, FRAI AKC

------ Original Message ------
From: edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu
To: edling at lists.mail.umbc.edu Cc: fmhult at umbc.edu
Sent: Saturday, July 12th 2025, 09:52
Subject: [Edling] Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies

Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies

This guide positions refusal as a disciplinary and principled response to the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI)3 technologies in writing studies. We created this guide to add to ongoing efforts to think through approaches for responding to GenAI in writing studies, and in higher education more broadly. When we say GenAI ?refusal,? we are talking about the range of ways that individuals and/or groups consciously and intentionally choose to refuse GenAI use, when and where we are able to do so...To situate refusal as a disciplinary position, we offer ten premises that ground refusal as a disciplinary response to GenAI technologies.

Full text:
https://refusinggenai.wordpress.com/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/refusinggenai.wordpress.com/__;!!CGUSO5OYRnA7CQ!aZyOL-LVWyMgA813HGp5QC_QtYppxWHToiCXq_TMTNKgx1Zs07MuCR2EpuFi414c8Zk5J6ngLAM81I6s6ZNxFmarepk8agD4mQ$>
________________________________

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