LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 26:7 July 2026
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AI-Mediated Third Spaces: Inclusion and Critical Literacy in Blended English Education

Ashima Puri

Abstract

The integration of generative AI into English classrooms has raised a long-standing, unresolved question: What does inclusion really mean for a learner? Most frameworks answer this by access, meaning give students the tools and the problem is solved. The paper argues that access is not enough, particularly when students face a version of English that is not just a school subject but a socially meaningful language, where the inequalities of class and region are reproduced through the very norms that dominant datasets encode. This conceptual paper draws on Freirean critical pedagogy and Third Space theory developed by Gutierrez et al. (1999) and Moje et al. (2004) to propose the AI-mediated Third Space as a way of rethinking inclusion in blended English classrooms. At the heart of the argument is the premise that true inclusion requires epistemic participation: students' ability to interrogate and co-produce meaning, including the algorithmically generated knowledge that AI increasingly adds to the discourse of the classroom. This paper explores the ways in which generative AI can both facilitate and restrict participation, offering scaffolding for language production and more general access, but also entrenching particular linguistic standards in its training data. Fluent AI-generated text has the power to work subtly against the very learners it claims to support. The framework instead positions AI outputs as texts to be read critically, engaging in the same analytical practices that critical literacy applies to any other text, rather than treating AI as a tool students just use. In the context of NEP 2020's focus on critical thinking in Indian secondary education, the paper contributes to the field of Inclusion Studies by extending Third Space theory to include AI-mediated learning spaces, and provides a conceptual model for educators designing blended English classrooms where all learners are recognized as knowledge-makers.

Keywords:critical literacy, blended learning, AI-mediated Third Space, epistemic participation, generative AI, English language education

Introduction

If a Grade 9 child in a CBSE classroom asks ChatGPT to explain a poem and receives back a paragraph that is grammatically polished and confidently stated, pedagogically something important has happened. What it precisely means, however, depends on your point of view. For those who prioritise access and efficiency, this is scaffolding: a student who might have struggled to frame an interpretation now has a starting point. The question for educators in the Freirean tradition is more uncomfortable: whose interpretive framework does that paragraph carry, and what happened to the student's own encounter with the text?

This paper concerns itself with this specific type of tension. Large language models, adaptive writing tools, and the like have become an integral part of how both teachers and students perform tasks. In India, the use of such technologies has been influenced by post-pandemic digitization and NEP 2020's focus on theories of integrated pedagogy and on the development of critical thinking (Ministry of Education, India, 2020). However, the primary approach to analyzing these technologies in the context of education has been through the lens of efficiency and measurable results. In their systematic research on AI in higher education, Zawacki-Richter et al. (2019) noted that a lot of literature on the field's technologies has been produced, but pedagogy and ethics have been largely ignored. This concern has been extended by Moorhouse (2024) in the context of English language teaching.

In secondary schools in India, the consequences of inequitable access to quality education become much more tangible. For example, English holds a great deal of social capital in CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) schools and the cities in which they operate (e.g., nearly all urban areas); thus making it a means of social mobility and political power for multilingual students attending school in those places. Sah (2022), who examined the use of English medium instruction in South Asian multilingual settings, noted that English is used as a form of linguistic capital, and that the standards for that capital are shaped by largely Western, dominant norms. Therefore, when AI-based educational systems go into classrooms where students already have to deal with using English as a medium of social mobility and institutional power, the unintended consequences of adopting AI without critical consideration are quite evident.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ashima Puri
Research Scholar
Department of English
Jain University, Bengaluru
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