Bridging linguistic knowledge and reading-writing development through AI-supported literacy pedagogy

This study examines how teachers’ linguistic knowledge can be connected with students’ reading–writing growth through an AI-supported literacy pedagogy with culturally responsive design considerations. Guided by design-based research (DBR), the study integrated explicit instruction in morphology and syntax with ethically supervised AI-mediated feedback to support linguistic precision, textual coherence, and reading comprehension within literacy-focused teacher education. The intervention was enacted across three iterative DBR cycles involving 54 pre-service Indonesian language teachers from two teacher education institutions, drawing on classroom observations, reflective journals, and AI feedback artefacts. Descriptive pre–post patterns indicated improvements in morphological awareness, syntactic accuracy, lexical diversity, and reading comprehension within the implemented tasks. Qualitative evidence suggested shifts in teachers’ feedback practices from surface-level transcription toward more meaning-oriented commentary and reflective dialogue. An exploratory analytic model was used to examine patterns consistent with a An exploratory analytic examination was used to describe directional patterns linking morphological and syntactic accuracy with reading comprehension within the enacted tasks, reported descriptively given the design-based scope. The proposed pedagogy positions AI as a reflective scaffold rather than an automated assessor, emphasising human oversight, contextual judgement, and ethical use. The study offers design-oriented considerations for sustainable literacy pedagogy in multilingual contexts, aligned conceptually with SDG 4 (Quality Education).