Cultivating the AI-Augmented Scholar: Social Sensemaking and Practice Co-Construction in Graduate Student Communities / Cultivar al investigador asistido por la IA: construcción de significado social y coconstrucción de prácticas en comunidades de estudiantes de posgrado

This paper traces the concept of Communities of Practice (CoPs) of graduate students’ negotiation and co-construction of norms around generative AI-augmented scholarship, a change in perspective of individual adoption to social normalization. Based on CoPs theory, Social Shaping of Technology and organizational sensemaking theories, we did a comparative qualitative multi-case study among graduate disciplinary graduate programs ( N = 60–75 interviews, six months of participant observation). The major findings include: heterogeneity in AI adoption following the disciplinary epistemologies and methodologies; peer-mediated learning is more relevant than formal institutional instruction in developing AI competencies; and localized and negotiated ethical guardrails can take the form of shared artifacts and narratives. These micro-social processes indicate that technological disruption induces collective sensemaking with divergent and discipline-specific routes of scholarly augmentation. The results add to organizational learning theory since the practice co-construction in digitally saturated settings is empirically documented and the results have an impact on designing adaptive mentorship and graduate curricula frameworks.