Constellating AI Literacies: Illuminating the Sociocultural and Pluralistic Dimensions of AI in Education

Introduction: Beyond the Black Hole of Positioning AI Literacy as a Binary

Discussions of artificial intelligence (AI) in education are often pulled toward what might be described as a gravitational center: the search for a single, monolithic definition of “AI literacy.” Much like a black hole, this gravitational pull collapses diverse practices, perspectives, and possibilities into a singularity. The result is a technocratic conception of AI literacy as a checklist of skills, one that risks obscuring the complex, situated, and relational ways that educators and learners actually engage with AI. Such framings promise simplicity but in practice compress the plurality of experience into rigid binaries—literate or illiterate, competent or incompetent, included or excluded.

The metaphor of the night sky provides a more generative frame. Human history has long been marked by the search for singularity in the heavens: the one star that might orient us, the one fixed point by which to navigate uncertainty. Yet what gives the night sky its meaning is not a solitary star but the patterns we perceive among them—the constellations that help us situate ourselves in relation to the vastness. Literacy studies have undergone a similar reorientation. Early theories of literacy reinforced what Collins & Blot (2003) describe as the literacy thesis: the assumption that literacy is an autonomous skill tied exclusively to reading and writing, serving as a diagnostic marker of social and cultural progress. This perspective produced what McCarty (2005) termed the “great divide” between literate and illiterate, privileging literacy over orality and ranking societies along an evolutionary schema. The New Literacy Studies (Street, 1984; Gee, 1999) rejected this universalist framing, emphasizing literacies in the plural: socially situated, ideologically embedded practices shaped by culture, identity, and power. Ethnographic work by Heath (1982, 1983), Finnegan (1988), and Gilmore (1986) substantiated these claims by documenting the richness of local practices that defied deficit framings.

This paper extends that lineage into the domain of AI by introducing the concept of constellating AI literacies. Constellating literacies are both a noun and a verb: a constellation refers to a recognizable grouping of literacies observed in practice, while to constellate describes the process of bringing literacies together in evolving and relational ways. The metaphor is intentionally plural, emphasizing not a singular definition of AI literacy but the multiple, overlapping, and co-emergent literacies that appear across contexts. Just as constellations vary depending on when and where one looks at the night sky, so too do constellations of AI literacies shift across time, role, and geography.

This conceptual contribution is grounded in both theory and empirical evidence. Theoretically, the study builds on the sociocultural lineage of literacy studies and on Belshaw’s (2014) Eight Essential Elements of Digital Literacies, which emphasized pluralization, context, and meaning-making. Belshaw argued that literacies should be understood along a spectrum rather than as discrete skills, reflecting their responsiveness to technological and cultural change. This framing has been remixed into the Dimensions of AI Literacies taxonomy (Gunder et al., 2024), which articulates eight interrelated literacies—cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical, and civic—that provide a plural vocabulary for describing engagement with AI.

Empirically, the study draws on qualitative research commissioned by UNESCO IITE and Shanghai Open University, which collected insights from over fifty educators across twenty countries and six continents. The project employed portraiture methodology, supported by surveys, interviews, written reflections, and digital ethnography, to document how educators are observing, enacting, and imagining AI literacies in their contexts. Analysis combined inductive and deductive approaches, surfacing patterns that reveal how AI literacies appear in combination rather than in isolation.

The research was guided by three questions:

1. Which AI literacies are educators observing, using, and/or developing within their teaching and learning contexts—for themselves, their colleagues, their learners, and their leaders?
2. How are these AI literacies clustering into constellations of usage and development?
3. Are there differentiations in the AI literacies constellations formed across different sociocultural contexts?

Addressing these questions allows the paper to surface both the temporal and geographic variability of AI literacies and their relational, co-emergent character.

The paper proceeds in six parts. Following this introduction, the literature review situates the study within the intellectual lineage of literacy and digital literacies, emphasizing the sociocultural turn and the need for plural vocabularies. The methods section outlines the qualitative, portraiture-informed design of the study, including sampling, data collection, and analysis. The findings section presents temporal, geographic, and role-based constellations of AI literacies observed across the dataset. The implications section considers how educators, institutions, and policymakers can leverage constellations for reflection, strategy, and policy. The conclusion returns to the metaphor of the night sky, emphasizing that constellating AI literacies provide not a single guiding star but a map of plural patterns that can orient us as we navigate an uncertain future.

Literature Review: A Sociocultural Lineage of Pluralistic Literacies

To understand why the concept of constellating AI literacies matters, it is essential to situate it within the longer history of scholarship on literacies in the plural. Across decades, researchers have pushed against reductive notions of literacy as a singular, autonomous skillset, arguing instead for literacy as socially and culturally situated, historically contingent, and always plural. This intellectual genealogy reveals not only the harm caused by treating literacy as a universal standard, but also the emancipatory potential of reframing literacies as diverse practices that emerge through contexts, communities, and identities. Mapping this trajectory allows us to see how AI literacies inherit the same tensions—and why only a pluralistic, constellational approach can adequately account for them.

The Social Turn in Literacies Studies

For much of the twentieth century, literacy was prominently situated as a singular, autonomous phenomenon, closely tied to reading and writing and often regarded as a universal marker of progress. This perspective, later described by Collins & Blot (2003) as the literacy thesis, positioned literacy as an evaluative threshold that divided societies into those deemed “literate” and those rendered “illiterate.” Webster (2006) highlighted that within this harmful frame, orality was subordinated to literacy, with oral cultures erroneously and discriminatorily positioned as deficient or less advanced than those centered on textual practices. As Collins & Blot (2003, p. 3) note, “Research in this field has often presumed dichotomies such as literate versus illiterate, written versus spoken, educated versus uneducated, and modern versus traditional.” In particular, Goody and Watt, Olson, and Ong (as discussed in Collins & Blot, 2003) reinforced this divide, generating what McCarty (2005) has termed the “great divide.” The implications of this binary were not merely theoretical; they codified discriminatory hierarchies that marginalized communities, obscured cultural richness, and legitimated the ranking of societies according to a presumed evolutionary schema. As Collins & Blot (2003, p. 49) warn, the use of literacy as a diagnostic category “demonstrates the dangers of employing literacy as a diagnostic category for making generalizations about types of societies or, more perniciously, using it to rank them in some evolutionary schema.”

Against this backdrop, the 1980s and 1990s marked the emergence of the New Literacy Studies (NLS), a field that systematically dismantled the assumptions of the literacy thesis and reframed literacy as plural, situated, and ideological. Brian Street’s (1984) influential distinction between autonomous and ideological models of literacy challenged the presumption that literacy could ever be abstracted from its sociocultural and political contexts. James Paul Gee (1999), who described this shift as the social turn, articulated how literacies are embedded within integrations of language, practice, identity, and power. Shirley Brice Heath’s (1982, 1983) ethnographic research illuminated how children’s narrative and discourse practices at home shaped their positioning in school contexts, while Ruth Finnegan’s (1988) Literacy and Orality demonstrated the interdependence of oral and written traditions. Perry Gilmore (1986) extended this empirical base by showing how peer cultures develop and sustain their own forms of literacy, challenging deficit framings of children’s practices. Together, these studies provided both theoretical and ethnographic evidence that literacy is never singular or universal but rather a heterogeneous set of practices bound up with culture, identity, and social relations.

The collective repositioning advanced by NLS reframed literacy as literacies—dynamic, plural practices inseparable from the contexts in which they are enacted. This was not merely a matter of semantics but of epistemology and ethics. By moving away from binaries such as literate/illiterate or oral/written, scholars emphasized that meaning-making must be understood as culturally embedded, ideologically charged, and socially negotiated. As Gee (2015, p. 23) asserts, “…I argue that what words should mean often matters and matters deeply. People are hurt (and often badly) by bad theory and bad meaning. Theory and meaning are moral matters.” The social turn thus marked a profound intellectual and moral shift: away from universalist claims and toward recognition of the plural, contextual, and power-laden nature of literacy practices.

From Digital Literacies to AI Literacies

As the social turn reshaped the study of literacy, a parallel transformation unfolded with the emergence of digital literacies. Early definitions of digital literacy were primarily functionalist, situating literacy as a matter of technical competence. Paul Gilster’s (1997) influential formulation described digital literacy as the “ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers” (p. 1). While broad in scope, this definition nonetheless placed emphasis on operational skills and technological fluency, framing digital literacy as an autonomous skillset rather than as a socially situated practice. In doing so, it echoed the problematic assumptions of the literacy thesis by abstracting literacies from their cultural, political, and communal contexts.

By the early 2000s, scholars began to articulate a richer vision of digital literacies, emphasizing their inherently social, cultural, and ideological character. Lankshear and Knobel (2006) defined digital literacies not as discrete technical proficiencies but as “socially recognized ways of generating, communicating, and negotiating meaningful content” (p. 28). In this view, digital literacies were embedded in practices of participation, collaboration, and negotiation, reflecting broader shifts in learning and identity in digitally mediated environments. Their work challenged technocratic framings that risked reducing digital literacy to a checklist of competencies and instead positioned it as an ongoing practice shaped by context, culture, and community. Importantly, Lankshear and Knobel (2006, 2008) emphasized that literacies are best understood as dispositions and habits of mind rather than static skills to be mastered.

Building on this reframing, Doug Belshaw (2014) advanced the Eight Essential Elements of Digital Literacies, which emphasized that literacies are not fixed skills but plural, context-sensitive, and overlapping domains of practice. Belshaw also stressed that literacies must be viewed along a spectrum or continuum of abilities, reflecting the constant evolution of technologies and practices. His work reinforced that digital literacies are not endpoints but processes of adaptation, negotiation, and meaning-making, always responsive to change.

The push toward pluralization, context, and meaning-making in digital literacies is foundational for understanding AI literacies. Just as digital literacies cannot be reduced to the mere operation of digital tools, AI literacies cannot be collapsed into technical fluency with machine learning systems. Instead, they must be understood as plural practices that combine skillsets and mindsets, shaped by social, cultural, and ethical contexts. Extending this intellectual lineage, the Dimensions of AI Literacies taxonomy (Gunder et al., 2024) remixes Belshaw’s framework into eight interrelated literacies—cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical, and civic. Together, these dimensions provide a pluralistic vocabulary for understanding how learners and educators engage with AI, underscoring the need to treat AI literacies not as a singular achievement but as constellating practices that emerge through context, culture, and participation.

Towards a Sociocultural Situating of AI Literacies 

AI necessitates a sociocultural lens, as its educational implications cannot be reduced to the mastery of discrete technical competencies. Just as literacy has long been recognized as relational rather than transactional, so too must AI literacies be understood as dialogic, contextual, and participatory. Gee (2015), drawing on Freire’s critique of transmission-oriented pedagogies, reminds us that learning is not simply the transfer of information from one agent to another. Rather, it is constituted through action, dialogue, and the production of knowledge situated within social worlds. When generative AI tools are framed narrowly as answer engines within an interface in which a prompt elicits a singular, definitive response, this reductionist perspective replicates the very limitations that literacies studies scholars have sought to dismantle. Such framings obscure the interpretive, cultural, and negotiated character of engagement with AI and risk recasting literacies as static skills rather than evolving practices.

This danger is evident in deterministic or checklist-driven approaches to “AI literacy,” which mirror earlier autonomous models of literacy that treated competence as an endpoint rather than as a process. To resist such reductionism, the Dimensions of AI Literacies taxonomy was developed as a plural and relational vocabulary rather than as a prescriptive framework (Gunder et al., 2024), foregrounding the ways in which literacies emerge in combination and interdependence. By articulating these as dimensions rather than as competencies or stages, the taxonomy underscores that AI literacies must be recognized as socioculturally situated, socially negotiated, interconnected, and dynamic.

This inquiry thus extends the intellectual trajectory inaugurated by the social turn in literacy studies. Just as scholars in the 1980s and 1990s produced empirical evidence to refute the literacy thesis and to demonstrate the plurality of literacy practices, so too does the study of AI literacies require attention to how educators and learners enact and combine literacies in context. The research underlying the Dimensions of AI Literacies taxonomy was designed not only to identify discrete practices but also to trace their constellations: the patterned ways in which literacies appear together and shape one another in practice. By situating AI literacies within this sociocultural lineage, we emphasize that they must be understood not as technical endpoints, but as evolving, plural practices embedded within a plurality of contexts.

Methods: Mapping the Global Sky

The preceding literature underscores that literacies must be understood as plural, situated, and sociocultural in character. To examine how these commitments extend into the study of AI literacies, this research employed a qualitative, ethnographically informed design. This line of inquiry was conducted in parallel to a research study commissioned by UNESCO IITE and Shanghai Open University, with three principal deliverables: (a) a series of case examples, (b) an analytical report, and (c) an open course. The design of the study was structured to produce both conceptual and empirical insights, while also yielding openly licensed resources that could inform practice globally.

Research Design

The study employed portraiture methodology (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997), which combines ethnographic attention to context with narrative representation of participant voices. Portraiture was selected for its capacity to surface strengths and contextual richness while maintaining analytic rigor. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling (Goodman, 1961), beginning with educators active at the intersection of AI and education and extending through their professional networks. This approach enabled access to diverse voices across geographies and institutional types. The final sample included 62 educators representing 23 countries across six continents.

Data Collection

Data were collected using multiple instruments to capture depth and breadth. Participants completed a Qualtrics survey that documented demographic background, institutional role, and initial perspectives on AI. Semi-structured interviews were conducted via Zoom, enabling dialogic exploration of educators’ practices and beliefs. Written reflections were solicited from participants who preferred asynchronous engagement. In addition, the research team conducted digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2016) by analyzing publicly available talks, reports, and media authored by global educators whose perspectives were otherwise not represented in the primary dataset. This triangulation of instruments supported the development of rich, contextualized portraits of practice.

Data Analysis

Analysis combined inductive and deductive strategies. A grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) guided open coding of transcripts and reflections, enabling emergent categories to surface from the data. At the same time, the team applied a priori codes (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014) derived from Belshaw’s (2014) essential elements of digital literacies. These codes—cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical, and civic—were used to track observed dimensions of AI literacies across cases. Through iterative cycles of comparison and refinement, these codes were synthesized into the Dimensions of AI Literacies taxonomy (Gunder et al., 2024), which articulates AI literacies as plural, relational practices rather than discrete competencies.

To strengthen rigor, the analysis incorporated procedures for interrater reliability (Cole, 2024), with multiple coders independently analyzing subsets of data and reconciling discrepancies through discussion. Member checks (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) were conducted with participants to confirm the accuracy of portrait narratives and thematic interpretations. These procedures enhanced the trustworthiness and validity of the findings.

Longitudinal Extensions

Given the evolving nature of AI literacies, the project also initiated a longitudinal extension through the development of a public database hosted by Opened Culture. This resource documents “constellations” of AI literacies as they appear in practice and invites educators worldwide to contribute their own case examples. The database and its submission portal function as a living archive and participatory research tool. By enabling ongoing contributions, the database ensures that the taxonomy can be continually tested, extended, and refined across diverse contexts.

Findings: Temporal and Geographic Patterns of Constellating AI Literacies

The methodological approach described above generated a dataset of global practices that illuminated not only discrete engagements with AI but also patterns of literacies that emerged in relation to one another. In the same way that the New Literacy Studies challenged the assumption of literacy as an autonomous skill, the present study demonstrates that AI literacies cannot be meaningfully examined as isolated competencies. Rather, they appear in constellations—clusters of practices and dispositions that co-occur, evolve, and take shape within particular sociocultural contexts. The findings presented in this section advance both a conceptual vocabulary and a set of empirical observations that underscore the plural, relational, and dynamic character of AI literacies.

Defining Constellating AI Literacies

To interpret the findings of this study, it is first necessary to establish what is meant by constellating AI literacies and how this framing differs from narrower conceptions of “AI literacy.” The term constellating AI literacies is used here both as a noun and as a verb. As a noun, a constellation refers to a patterned grouping of literacies that can be observed in practice: combinations such as constructive, critical, and civic literacies that together form a recognizable orientation toward AI. As a verb, to constellate denotes the ongoing process of combining, enacting, and developing literacies in relation to context, role, and intention. In both senses, constellating AI literacies highlight the inherently plural, interconnected, and evolving nature of engagement with AI.

The analysis presented in this paper draws on the Dimensions of AI Literacies taxonomy (Gunder et al., 2024), which was developed as a remix of Belshaw’s (2014) Eight Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. The taxonomy articulates eight interrelated literacies:

• Cultural: recognizing the connections between people, AI-informed resources and tools, and points of engagement within AI-enabled environments.
• Cognitive: expanding intellectual capabilities by engaging with AI-enabled processes and environments.
• Constructive: utilizing AI tools to build, remix, and generate new content.
• Communicative: leveraging AI technologies to convey ideas effectively.
• Confident: developing the ability to solve problems and manage learning within AI-driven contexts.
• Creative: engaging in ideation and generative actions using AI.
• Critical: examining the power dynamics and ethical considerations inherent in AI practices.
• Civic: employing AI knowledge and skills to contribute positively to society.

Constellating AI literacies are not discrete competencies but co-emergent practices that take shape in relation to one another. Some actions require educators and learners to use existing literacies, while other actions facilitate the development of new literacies. For example, crafting a prompt may simultaneously draw on communicative literacies while cultivating confidence and creativity through iterative experimentation. This distinction underscores the limitations of checklist-driven approaches to “AI literacy,” which imply static endpoints or universal competencies.

Instead, constellating AI literacies recognize that skillsets (actions) and mindsets (attitudes) evolve together, shaped by the sociocultural contexts in which they are enacted. They are not fixed or universal but contingent, relational, and dynamic. The metaphor of constellations captures this fluidity. Just as the stars in the night sky appear differently depending on when and where one looks, constellating AI literacies vary across time and geography. They shift with the maturity of institutional practices, the availability of technological infrastructures, the roles of educators and learners, and the cultural values that inform their adoption.

Temporally-Situated Constellations of AI Literacies

The first constellation to emerge prominently from the study brought together constructive, critical, and civic literacies. In the early stages of engagement with AI, educators were primarily concerned with three interrelated questions: How does AI work? How is it impacting us? How can it be made just? Constructive literacies reflected the need to experiment with AI systems, to understand their capabilities and limitations, and to generate outputs that could be tested in educational practice. This technical curiosity was inseparable from critical literacies, as participants emphasized the necessity of interrogating bias, accuracy, and the ethical implications of integrating AI into instruction. Civic literacies extended this concern beyond the classroom to questions of societal responsibility, including the environmental impact of large-scale computational systems and the role of educators in advocating for equitable access. Taken together, this early constellation demonstrated that engagement with AI was never purely technical. It was constructive in the sense of building and experimenting, but simultaneously critical in examining power, and civic in seeking to ensure AI’s development aligned with collective well-being.

At the same time, the study revealed the nascence of a second constellation, one oriented toward emerging practices of dialogue, iteration, and creativity. Communicative literacies became increasingly salient as educators described how their interactions with AI were shifting from transactional prompts to dialogic exchanges. Participants noted that effective engagement required not simply issuing commands but cultivating ongoing conversations with AI systems, refining queries, and adjusting expectations as the models evolved. Confident literacies also appeared in these accounts, marked by a willingness to test new tools, to risk failure, and to share in-progress practices with colleagues and students. Confidence was less about mastery than about resilience and adaptability, traits that became essential as AI technologies changed rapidly and unpredictably. Creative literacies rounded out this emerging constellation, reflected in the design of novel pedagogical activities, the exploration of diverse outputs, and the imaginative repurposing of AI beyond conventional applications. Educators described using AI to support multilingual collaboration, to generate scenarios for problem-based learning, and to scaffold student projects in ways that expanded the horizons of classroom practice.

The juxtaposition of these two constellations—constructive–critical–civic on the one hand, communicative–confident–creative on the other—illustrates how AI literacies are not static elements but evolving configurations. The early constellation reflected urgent concerns with functionality, ethics, and justice at a moment when AI tools were first being introduced into educational contexts. As the tools became more widely adopted, however, educators began to experiment with new forms of dialogue, agency, and creative design, producing a constellation that emphasized expression, resilience, and imagination. These shifts were not linear stages but overlapping patterns: constructive, critical, and civic literacies remained present even as communicative, confident, and creative literacies gained prominence.

This temporal perspective demonstrates that constellating AI literacies must be understood as historically situated. They evolve in relation to technological development, institutional adoption, and educators’ collective sensemaking. Just as constellations in the night sky appear differently depending on when one looks, so too do the constellations of AI literacies shift over time, reflecting the interplay of continuity and emergence.

Regionally-Specific Patterns of Constellating AI Literacies

Just as constellations in the night sky vary by hemisphere, the study revealed that patterns of AI literacies are not uniformly distributed but are shaped by the sociocultural and infrastructural contexts of each region. This comparative analysis demonstrates that while the eight dimensions of AI literacies appear across all continents, particular constellations emerge with distinctive emphasis depending on geographic location at a particular moment in time.

In Africa, the constellation most frequently observed combined civic, cultural, and cognitive literacies. Educators described AI initiatives as inseparable from broader struggles for equity and access, particularly in contexts where infrastructural limitations constrained adoption. Civic literacies were expressed in commitments to ensuring that AI supported local needs and linguistic diversity, while cultural literacies were evident in the ways educators sought to situate AI practices within community traditions and values. Cognitive literacies surfaced through efforts to develop intellectual capacity for navigating AI systems in settings where formal training opportunities were limited. Taken together, this constellation reflects the ways in which African educators are leveraging AI not only as a tool for learning but also as a means of empowerment and cultural affirmation.

In Asia, the constellation of confident, cognitive, and communicative literacies was especially prominent. Rapid adoption of AI in diverse educational settings emphasized the need for learners and teachers to develop confidence in experimenting with evolving tools, supported by strong traditions of self-regulated learning. Communicative literacies also played a central role, particularly in multilingual contexts where educators highlighted the affordances of AI for bridging linguistic divides and enabling new forms of collaboration. These practices underscore a relational orientation to AI, where literacy development is tied to dialogic engagement and the capacity to adjust fluently to technological change.

Australia presented a constellation of constructive, creative, and communicative literacies. Educators in this region emphasized adaptive learning technologies and AI-supported problem-solving as means to enhance student engagement and outcomes. Constructive literacies were evident in practices of building and remixing curriculum resources with AI, while creative literacies reflected the design of novel assignments and the integration of generative AI into classroom projects. Communicative literacies completed this constellation, highlighting how AI tools facilitated both student expression and collaborative meaning-making. The emphasis here was less on critical resistance and more on expanding the repertoire of pedagogical possibilities through experimentation.

In Europe, the constellation most often identified combined cognitive, civic, and critical literacies. Personalized learning and ethical AI practices were central concerns, with educators balancing enthusiasm for technological innovation with a strong emphasis on accountability and societal implications. Civic literacies were expressed through commitments to openness and collaboration, often tied to the long-standing European tradition of open educational resources. Critical literacies, meanwhile, were directed at issues of bias, privacy, and regulatory oversight, reflecting the region’s policy emphasis on ethical governance of AI. Cognitive literacies connected these dimensions by equipping educators and learners with the interpretive capacity to navigate rapidly expanding AI environments.

In Latin America, the constellation of cultural, civic, and communicative literacies emerged with particular force. Educators framed AI through questions of cultural relevance and linguistic diversity, seeking to ensure that tools reflected local values and practices rather than importing external models uncritically. Civic literacies reinforced this orientation by emphasizing AI’s role in advancing social justice and access. Communicative literacies appeared in practices that used AI to foster collaboration across communities and to scaffold inclusive dialogue among students. This constellation reflects a deep commitment to leveraging AI in ways that strengthen cultural identity and collective agency.

In North America, the constellation of creative, communicative, and critical literacies was most prominent. Educators highlighted the use of AI for fostering creativity in student projects, developing innovative assessments, and enabling multimodal expression. Communicative literacies supported these practices by emphasizing dialogue between learners and AI systems, as well as among peers engaged in co-design. Critical literacies were also central, with sustained attention to bias, plagiarism, and the ethical dimensions of educational technology adoption. This constellation reveals a dual orientation: on the one hand, enthusiasm for expanding the creative horizons of pedagogy through AI, and on the other, vigilance in addressing its risks and unintended consequences.

Taken together, these regional constellations demonstrate that AI literacies are not uniformly distributed or experienced. Instead, they emerge through intersections of culture, infrastructure, policy, and pedagogy. Civic literacies may be more salient in regions where equity concerns are pressing; communicative literacies may gain emphasis where multilingualism shapes daily practice; creative literacies may be foregrounded where pedagogical innovation is prioritized. The findings affirm that constellating AI literacies are always socioculturally situated, reflecting not only technological affordances but also the histories, values, and aspirations of the communities in which they take shape.

Constellating AI Literacies by Role and Educational Context

In addition to the temporal and geographic variations outlined above, the study surfaced distinctive constellations of AI literacies when analyzed by professional role and educational context. These constellations reflect not only practices currently underway but also aspirations articulated by participants regarding how AI might be meaningfully engaged within their domains of responsibility. In many cases, the literacies described were more prospective than fully realized, underscoring the emergent and experimental stage of AI adoption in education.

For institutional leaders, constellations often emphasized civic, critical, and communicative literacies as guiding priorities. Leaders envisioned AI as an institutional issue of strategy, policy, and accountability, and highlighted the need for civic literacies to align AI adoption with commitments to equity and student success. Critical literacies were aspirationally positioned as safeguards against bias, ethical lapses, and reputational risk. Communicative literacies were invoked as necessary for transparent dialogue across stakeholders to foster trust. These accounts framed AI not simply as a technical innovation but as a cultural and political matter requiring collective stewardship.

Faculty and classroom instructors most frequently identified constellations oriented around constructive, creative, and confident literacies. Constructive literacies were described in aspirational terms, as faculty imagined using AI to generate, adapt, and remix curricular materials. Creative literacies appeared in visions of novel assignments and assessments that would leverage AI to expand modes of student expression. Confidence was seen as essential for faculty to feel comfortable testing new tools, learning from missteps, and sharing emergent practices with colleagues. Together, these literacies illustrate how faculty anticipate positioning AI within the immediacy of pedagogy, even if many practices remain in early exploratory phases.

For instructional designers and learning technologists, constellations often emphasized cognitive, constructive, and communicative literacies. Designers described the need for cognitive literacies to interpret how AI systems function and to help faculty understand pedagogical affordances. Constructive literacies were viewed as central to future course design workflows, such as integrating AI into adaptive learning systems or content development. Communicative literacies were described as vital to their intermediary role, translating between technical capacities, pedagogical goals, and institutional priorities. While not all of these practices were yet fully realized, participants consistently framed them as necessary literacies for design work moving forward.

Librarians and information specialists articulated constellations linking critical, cultural, and civic literacies. Their perspectives emphasized aspirational roles in supporting students and faculty to navigate issues of attribution, authorship, and bias in AI-generated outputs. Critical literacies were seen as vital for guiding communities in assessing the reliability of AI tools, while cultural literacies were tied to curating resources that reflect diverse voices and traditions. Civic literacies appeared in their advocacy for openness, transparency, and equitable access to AI knowledge. These aspirations extend librarians’ longstanding commitments to access and accountability into the AI era.

Open education advocates most often described constellations of civic, communicative, and critical literacies. They emphasized the importance of civic literacies in ensuring AI adoption aligns with principles of equity and justice, and communicative literacies in fostering collaborative networks for sharing practices across contexts. Critical literacies were seen as essential in resisting enclosure and commercialization, ensuring that AI use remains aligned with open education values. For advocates, these literacies were largely aspirational but functioned as a roadmap for how AI might be leveraged to strengthen openness.

Finally, perspectives on students reflected educators’ desire to see students developing constellations of communicative, confident, and creative literacies. Communicative literacies were described as central to prompting and iteratively engaging with AI, confident literacies as important for experimentation and resilience, and creative literacies as emerging through multimodal projects and personal expression. While these literacies were not observed directly, educators anticipated their importance in shaping how students would appropriate AI tools for learning and self-expression.

Taken together, these role- and context-specific constellations illustrate the aspirational nature of much current discourse about AI literacies in education. Participants recognized that AI practices remain emergent, but they also articulated literacies that they believe will be critical for educators, designers, librarians, advocates, and students as adoption deepens. These findings reaffirm that constellating AI literacies are always contextual and contingent, reflecting not only temporal and geographic variation but also the professional identities, responsibilities, and aspirations of those engaging with AI.

Implications: Designing Learning with Constellating AI Literacies in Mind

The findings of this study underscore that AI literacies cannot be understood as discrete competencies or static endpoints. Instead, they emerge in constellations—plural, evolving, and contextually situated. These insights hold important implications for educators, institutions, and policymakers seeking to develop approaches to AI that are both pedagogically sound and socially responsible.

For Educators

For educators, the concept of constellating AI literacies offers a framework for professional reflection and growth. Rather than treating AI as a domain requiring mastery of fixed competencies, educators can view their engagement with AI as the ongoing development of evolving combinations of skillsets and mindsets. This perspective encourages contextual fluency—recognizing that literacies manifest differently depending on disciplinary traditions, institutional contexts, and learner needs—over rigid competence models that risk oversimplification.

Educators can also use constellations to critically evaluate how AI is embedded in classroom practices. This includes moving beyond operational fluency to consider how AI engagement might support the cultivation of real-world skills such as adaptability, resilience, and ethical reasoning. Intentional integration of AI within discipline-specific scenarios enables educators to reflect not only on the functionality of tools but also on their pedagogical efficacy and broader impacts. By treating AI literacies as plural and co-emergent, educators are positioned to prepare learners for a future where technical expertise, ethical awareness, and creative expression are deeply interconnected.

For Institutions and Designers

For institutions and instructional designers, the study highlights the importance of mapping institutional constellations of AI literacies. Such mapping involves identifying the combinations of literacies that align with an institution’s mission and values, thereby ensuring that AI adoption reflects not only technical innovation but also cultural priorities. For example, a university committed to civic engagement may emphasize constellations that foreground civic, cultural, and communicative literacies, while a technology-focused institution may highlight constructive, cognitive, and confident literacies.

This institutional perspective also has direct implications for the creation of AI guidelines and policies. Rigid, technocratic policies risk stifling innovation and preventing individuals from adapting to the rapid evolution of AI tools. Instead, guidelines should account for the dynamic interplay among literacies, offering scaffolds for practice while leaving space for contextual adaptation. Instructional designers, in particular, can support this process by creating professional learning experiences that encourage faculty to experiment with AI and reflect on how their constellations of literacies evolve over time.

For Policymakers and Global Partners

For policymakers and global partners, the study provides a strong caution against universalist frameworks. Just as literacy studies have shown that meaning-making is always socioculturally situated, so too must AI literacies be understood as varying across contexts of time, place, and role. Efforts to define AI literacies in universal terms risk bringing back the autonomous model of literacy that the social turn sought to dismantle. Instead, adaptable constellational lenses are needed approaches that resist technocratic reductionism and recognize the dynamic interplay of skillsets and mindsets across contexts.

Particularly pressing is the need to foster civic AI literacies. Positioning AI as a tool for societal good requires policies that prioritize equity, transparency, and participatory governance. Global partners should seek to cultivate civic literacies not only within institutions but also across regional and international collaborations, ensuring that AI is directed toward collective empowerment rather than narrow efficiency.

The longitudinal extension of this study provides a mechanism to support such participatory approaches. The AI Literacies Applied database developed by Opened Culture serves as a living archive of constellations in practice, enabling educators worldwide to document, share, and reflect on their experiences. By exploring the collection of case examples in the database, policymakers and practitioners can observe how literacies take shape in diverse settings, while the submission portal invites ongoing contributions. This resource not only enriches the empirical record but also ensures that future policy and practice are grounded in the situated, temporally and geographically specific realities of educators.

Conclusion

The study of AI literacies presented here extends a long intellectual lineage in which literacy has been reframed from an autonomous skill to a plural, sociocultural practice. Just as the New Literacy Studies revealed the dangers of treating literacy as a fixed diagnostic category, this research demonstrates that AI literacies cannot be reduced to technical competencies or checklist-based models. They appear instead in constellations—plural, dynamic, and evolving combinations of skillsets and mindsets that take shape in response to context, role, and cultural priorities.

The metaphor of constellations underscores the relational and navigational qualities of AI literacies. Each dimension—cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical, and civic—functions like a star: valuable on its own, but most meaningful when connected with others to form recognizable patterns. These constellations shift across time and geography, appearing differently depending on when and where one looks. In early stages of AI adoption, constructive, critical, and civic literacies predominated, reflecting urgent questions of function, ethics, and justice. More recently, communicative, confident, and creative literacies have begun to rise, signaling the emergence of practices oriented toward dialogue, resilience, and imagination. Across regions and roles, additional constellations reflect the situated priorities of educators, leaders, and institutions.

The constellations described in this paper are not endpoints but waypoints—orientations that can guide educators, institutions, and policymakers as they navigate the uncertainties of AI in education. Like stars in the night sky, these literacies do not determine a singular path but provide direction, enabling diverse communities to chart their own courses. The challenge and opportunity ahead is not to fix AI literacies into rigid frameworks but to recognize and nurture the plural, evolving patterns that are emerging in practice.

This orientation also underscores the collective nature of the work. Just as constellations are meaningful only when recognized and shared, AI literacies gain significance through the stories, practices, and commitments of educators around the world. The ongoing effort to document and share case examples through the AI Literacies Applied database provides one venue for such participation, and readers are invited to contribute their own experiences to this living archive.

In the end, constellating AI literacies reminds us that literacies development is never solely about tools or skills. It is about how we orient ourselves toward change, how we make meaning together, and how we ensure that technological futures remain aligned with human values. The stars of cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical, and civic literacies can light the way forward—but only if we attend to them collectively, mapping not a single trajectory but a shared sky of possibilities.