Using Generative Artificial Intelligence to Support Young Writers: Ethical Stickiness

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Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies are increasingly sold to classroom teachers as solutions capable of addressing teachers’ need to respond to student writing with efficiency and effectiveness. High school English language arts teachers, in particular, face large collections of student writing, the reading and response to which is challenging given burgeoning class sizes and ever-growing, non-instructional responsibilities. In this article, we present an analytic consideration of GenAI as a “solution” to a teacher’s need to respond to student work products as a sticking point. Using a prompt engineered conversation with the GenAI platform Claude (Anthropic) and fictionalized student writing, we complicate this decisional space by highlighting the ethical stickiness of the tensions between the students’ correct use of American Standard English, writing instruction, and writing theories. We advocate for the consideration of the learning costs associated with using GenAI large language model platforms whose generated responses tend to focus on the “correct” use of American Standard English.