Robert Dykes
About
Research Map profile: https://researchmap.jp/robertd 1st edited book: Artificial Intelligence in Our Language Learning Classrooms (https://www.candlinandmynard.com/genai1.html) 2nd edited book: Artificial Intelligence in Japan’s Language Learning Classrooms (out soon!) Book #3: early proposal phase, looking for chapter authors. The book will focus on AI intersection with 3 key areas: Learner Identity, L2 Self, and community. If you are interested in submitting a chapter proposal, contact me.Sessions
Poster Presentation Generative AI as an External Cognitive Scaffold: Reflections from an ADHD Language Educator more
This poster reflects on how generative AI has supported my work as a language educator with ADHD, and how these same supports may reduce learning barriers for a wide range of language learners. While generative AI is often discussed in terms of productivity and content generation, less attention has been paid to its role in easing cognitive friction such as task ambiguity, task initiation difficulty, working-memory overload, and attention regulation. Drawing on autoethnographic reflection, the poster identifies recurring AI-mediated behaviors that emerged in daily academic and instructional work: task clarification and instruction reframing, task chunking and sequencing, cognitive warm-up through drafting and outlining, real-time idea externalization, attention recovery, and low-stakes feedback. Although these behaviors align with ADHD-related executive-function challenges, they also address difficulties that non-ADHD learners experience intermittently, particularly in complex, high-cognitive-load language tasks. A key observation concerns availability: generative AI provides continuous, on-demand access to cognitive support, lowering help-seeking barriers and enabling frequent, context-sensitive use. Using a light Universal Design for Learning lens, the poster argues that generative AI can reduce barriers by externalizing cognitive processes in ways that benefit many learners, not only those with diagnosed learning differences. Implications for CALL pedagogy and accessibility-oriented design are discussed.
Poster Presentation When AI Participates: Generative AI and the Sociocultural Conditions of Language Learning more
Generative AI is increasingly embedded in language learning contexts as a language-producing system that interacts with learners, models, amplifies, and in some contexts actively reshapes linguistic norms, while influencing language across educational and digital spaces. This poster examines the sociocultural consequences of generative AI when it functions in the role of a participant rather than solely as a mediating tool. Here, participation is understood as a functional and relational role in interaction, not as evidence of intention, consciousness, or autonomous agency. From a sociocultural perspective, AI participation reshapes communities of practice and speech communities by contributing to norm-setting, authority, and legitimacy. In some contexts, AI stabilizes dominant registers and tones; in others, it amplifies, introduces, or accelerates emerging norms, including slang, euphemism, and ideologically charged language. When AI produces language alongside learners, assumptions about effort, authenticity, and developmental trajectories are reconfigured. Learner identity, investment, motivation, and affect are shaped through altered experiences of belonging, safety, anxiety, and recognition as legitimate speakers. By foregrounding AI participation, this poster isolates how sociocultural effects emerge through norm circulation and co-construction, offering a conceptual entry point for examining how participation itself is being redefined in AI-mediated language learning contexts.
