This paper reports on the affordances and constraints encountered in the case of an innovative project designed to support early literacy development in Arabic and English while enhancing father-child wellbeing in Abu Dhabi. The project sought to encourage Emirati fathers to engage in interactive shared book reading at home with their young children. In a context where adult–child home reading is not a traditional practice and where children’s reading proficiency in public schools is often below international standards, the project sought to support families with their children’s early literacy development and to develop positive dispositions towards reading. Fathers (N = 80) of kindergarten children (4–5 years) in state schools in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were invited to participate in interactive workshops about shared parent–child reading. Fathers were provided with selected, high-quality books in both Arabic and English to read aloud with their children at home and were given guidance on ways to read interactively. In this paper, which draws upon survey results, focus group recordings, and researcher field notes from the workshop sites, the affordances and constraints encountered in supporting early home reading and parent–child wellbeing are explored. Recommendations are made for similar reading and wellbeing programs in multilingual contexts. These include providing accessible information to both fathers and mothers on the importance of reading with their children at home, sharing tips and modelling parent–child interactive reading, and the provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate books for families.

GenAI is now capable of producing journal articles that look like human work, raising the question of whether the scholarly credibility might be misinterpreted as evidentiary validity. This research investigates AI-generated scholarship by shifting attention from the detection of AI-generated content to its critical appraisal and evaluation. To achieve this, a split-paper audit procedure was applied to a fully AI-generated mixed-methods manuscript that was independently reviewed by three university faculty members. Findings indicate that the model can simulate academic style and coherence with a high degree of surface plausibility; however, this superficial rigor was combined with ungrounded content, unsupported contextualization, selective reporting, and inconsistent methodological details. Reviewers’ comments also highlighted the formulaic language and narratives that confirmed their prior expectations, and questioned whether prompt structures may be channeling outputs towards pre-existing assumptions and masking areas where evidence is scant. The study defines synthetic scholarship as an epistemic condition where plausibility may supplant verification, and suggests a transparent audit process to facilitate the assessment of AI-mediated scholarship. It argues that ensuring research integrity in the era of generative AI will rely on more than just disclosure of generative AI use; it will also require auditable trails to assist in examining, verifying, and substantiating claims.

Gamified classroom response systems (CRSs) have been studied for student engagement and assessment; however, little attention has been paid to how teachers of Culturally Located Arabic Language and Islamic Studies design, negotiate, and legitimize gamified interaction in discipline- and culture-specific classrooms. This interpretive qualitative study examined the implementation of gamification by 15 Grade 9 teachers of Arabic Language and Islamic Studies in Abu Dhabi public schools through the adoption of a ClassPoint-based process comprising professional development workshops over a 4-month implementation period. Informed by the theory of reflexive thematic analysis, semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers were analyzed. The findings revealed that teachers enacted ClassPoint-supported gamification as a form of pedagogical infrastructure by designing participation routines, embedding formative feedback cycles, and aligning gamified activities with curriculum goals and cultural values. Teachers also reported broader participation opportunities, iterative professional learning, and implementation challenges related to infrastructure, time, and institutional support in the context of pedagogical infrastructure and teacher design agency theories, this paper offers an innovative conceptualization of CRSs as tools for engaging students and as designed interactions between teachers and students. This study provides insights into the dynamic interactions among facilitating conditions, teacher design agency, and classroom enactment in the design, implementation, and sustainment of gamified lessons in culturally oriented contexts.

The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has raised important questions about how learners and teachers regulate their thinking when interacting with AI-supported tools. This study investigates metacognitive regulation during the design of AI-supported educational applications by graduate students (N = 12) in a UAE teacher education programme. The qualitative research adopted a multiple-case study method to analyse six student design teams involved in designing educational applications as part of a technology integration course. Data were collected from three main sources: the educational apps themselves, the corresponding Teacher Guides, and reflective interviews conducted using a semi-structured interview guide. Data analysis combined deductive qualitative coding based on the regulation-of-cognition dimensions of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) framework with inductive thematic analysis of participants’ experiences and conceptualisations of AI. The findings show that AI was used differently across the six cases. It appeared to function more as a cognitive scaffold when participants questioned, checked, revised, or justified AI-generated outputs, and more as a shortcut when outputs were used mainly for convenience with limited further reflection. Planning was the most visible regulatory process, while stronger regulatory engagement was evident when AI-generated outputs were examined, questioned, and refined rather than accepted without further consideration.