How does writing with generative AI transform our experiences as thinkers, learners, and communicators? This study investigates the question through threshold concepts, transformative ideas that prove troublesome yet shape disciplinary participation, previously identified in writing studies through retrospective analysis. We propose that technological disruption creates conditions for observing new concepts as they emerge within communities of practice. To test this approach, we designed an experimental “AI and Writing” course. Across two iterations (Fall 2023 and Fall 2024), 38 undergraduate students from 22 majors engaged in scaffolded challenges and self-directed projects, developing strategic approaches to AI-assisted composing. Analysis of students’ final reflections, using Meyer and Land’s characteristics as sensitizing criteria, revealed three concepts essential for productive AI engagement: writing with AI is an experimental process; writing with AI requires expertise and dialogue; and writing with AI should augment rhetorical agency. These transformations prove troublesome because they contradict expectations shaped by prior experience: better tools should require less effort, linguistic fluency signals substantive knowledge, and assistance either wholly helps or harms learning and development. The findings show how AI transforms perennial questions in writing studies and composition, and they offer insights for navigating the threshold between productive collaboration and problematic dependency.

Supporting the professional development of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) is a strategic necessity for both English studies and higher education. At many academic institutions, GTAs represent a significant proportion of instructional staff for first-year composition courses (Young and Bippus 116). These courses serve a crucial institutional mission as an academic entry point for the majority of undergraduate students and have been closely linked with student retention, graduation rates, and academic performance (Garrett, Bridgewater, and Feinstein; Holmes and Busser). Based on a recent national study, Amy Cicchino found most rhetoric and composition programs offer intensive, but condensed, GTA training programs that typically include a preservice orientation, semester-long teaching proseminar, and peer or faculty mentorship (93). Yet, time is a significant constraint—most programs take place over a single semester or academic year and end just as GTAs gain enough teaching experience and confidence to become more interested in composition theory and professional development (Obermark, Brewer, and Halasek; Reid).