Emergent gendered AI learning ecologies in AI-mediated writing tasks: a critical comparative case study

This study investigates how generative AI shapes participation, authorship, and gendered agency in two parallel first-year English cohorts at a Saudi public university. Adopting a critical comparative case study design, one male and one female class engaged in an identical translanguaging-oriented intervention incorporating structured ChatGPT use in drafting and revision. Data comprised pre- and post-AI texts, online discussions, reflections, and focus groups. Findings indicate that AI improved linguistic accuracy while amplifying certainty and recasting culturally grounded concerns into abstract fairness discourse. Students accepted surface-level enhancement but resisted revisions that diluted religious obligation, moral positioning, or gendered risk. Despite identical curriculum and technological affordances, the cohorts exhibited distinct configurations of aspiration, scrutiny, and accountability, revealing differently organised participation conditions. Translanguaging operated as a resource for maintaining culturally situated meaning when AI outputs generalised lived realities. The study positions AI as an active discursive participant and underscores the need for pedagogies that prioritise critical engagement and student authorship in AI-supported writing.