Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have profoundly reshaped the environments in which second language (L2) writing is taught and learned. AI-mediated tools are now routinely involved in writing processes, feedback practices, assessment, and instructional design, creating new possibilities as well as new tensions for writing teachers. Much of the emerging discussion has focused on how AI can support writing instruction or enhance efficiency. Far less attention, however, has been confirmed to what these changes mean for writing teachers’ professional expertise as a human, relational, and situated practice. This invited colloquium addresses this gap by foregrounding the humanity of writing teachers as it is lived, strained, and negotiated in everyday teaching under AI-shaped conditions. Rather than treating expertise as a stable set of skills or technical knowledge that teachers either possess or lack, the colloquium conceptualizes expertise as a fundamentally human responsibility as well as a resource—one enacted through judgment, care, ethical accountability, and continual negotiation within institutional and pedagogical constraints. From this perspective, AI does not simply add new tools to teachers’ repertoire; it reshapes the moral and professional terrain of writing instruction by intensifying existing asymmetries, exposing structural limitations, and altering the conditions under which teachers are expected to exercise judgment, sustain relationships with learners, and take responsibility for decisions they do not always control. Across higher education contexts—illustrated in this colloquium through the case of Japanese universities—writing teacher expertise emerges at the intersection of uneven student preparation, institutional designs that marginalize writing expertise, disciplinary differences in beliefs about writing, and employment structures that unevenly distribute authority and responsibility. In such environments, the presence of AI does not resolve long-standing tensions in writing instruction. Instead, it renders visible forms of expertise that are often taken for granted, undervalued, or structurally constrained, while simultaneously increasing expectations placed on teachers. The five presentations in this colloquium examine how writing teacher expertise is reconfigured at multiple, interconnected levels: theoretical, pedagogical, institutional, organizational, and personal. Together, they foreground the humanity of writing teachers by attending to the interpretive, ethical, and affective dimensions of their work—dimensions that cannot be reduced to technological function, instructional efficiency, or tool mastery. By situating AI as a condition rather than a solution, this colloquium addresses pressing questions about how L2 writing can remain a meaningful human practice, and how writing teachers can remain professionally and ethically human, in increasingly AI-shaped educational environments.
Speakers MF
Professor, Osaka Metropolitan University
Program Specific Senior Lecturer, Kyoto University
Ryuichi Sato is a Program-Specific Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences at Kyoto University. His research centers on English writing within the context of foreign language education, examining it through the diverse perspectives of sociology, ecology, and...
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Professor, Meiji University
