The Research Problem
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as chatbots, machine translation systems, and automated writing assistants are becoming increasingly common in language education. While these technologies offer new opportunities for access, communication, and learning, they also raise concerns related to inequality, bias, authorship, and fairness. Many AI systems privilege dominant languages and cultural contexts, which can marginalize learners and educators working in under-resourced or non-dominant settings.
This project addresses the need to understand how students and teachers engage with AI in real educational contexts and how Critical AI Literacies can support ethical, equitable, and inclusive uses of these technologies. Guided by the principles of Design Justice, the project treats AI not as a neutral tool, but as a socio-technical system shaped by power relations, institutional conditions, and cultural norms.
Research Design
The project brings together three WUN member universities: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), and University of Leeds (United Kingdom). Along with Université de Sousse (Tunisia), these institutions represent Portuguese-, Spanish-, English-, Arabic-, and French-speaking contexts, offering a comparative perspective across Global South and Global North realities.
Using a qualitative, comparative research design, the team will investigate how AI is perceived and used in language education by students and teachers in each context. Data will be generated through surveys, interviews, and focus groups conducted locally by partner teams, followed by cross-institutional analysis. An international hybrid symposium will complement the research, bringing together students, educators, and researchers to discuss AI, inequality, and justice in language education. All sessions will be recorded and made openly accessible.
Project Objectives
The project aims to examine how students and teachers in diverse linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic contexts engage with AI in language education, and how Critical AI Literacies can foster more ethical and inclusive practices.
The specific objectives are to:
- Generate comparative evidence on how AI tools are used and perceived in language education across Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom;
- Identify key tensions, opportunities, and inequalities emerging from AI use in different contexts;
- Co-produce an open-access position paper with shared principles and practical recommendations for ethical and inclusive AI adoption;
- Disseminate findings through an international symposium and a peer-reviewed academic publication.
Support from the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) enables this cross-regional collaboration, comparative research, and the open dissemination of results, amplifying the project’s academic and social impact across the network.