Upgraded literacy: teacher training approaches to integrating corpus data and AI tools for school text readability adaptation

This study examines how an inductive learning approach can foster e-literacy, defined as the ability to critically and effectively use digital and AI tools to support literacy. It presents the outcomes of a teacher training program carried out in Romania within a national professional development initiative, involving 56 in-service teachers across primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary levels. The training combined theoretical input with hands-on activities, introducing participants to corpus-based readability analysis and AI platforms for text adaptation. Teachers worked with tools such as LEMI, Text Inspector, ARTE, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. The corpus-based linguistic analysis indicates that teachers most often addressed challenges of vocabulary complexity and cognitive load. Participants used readability and AI tools to simplify syntactic structures, reformulate dense passages, and adapt discourse to students’ linguistic proficiency levels. Reflections further indicated that teachers came to view literacy-related digital and AI platforms in complementary roles: as simplifiers that made texts more accessible, as co-designers that supported creativity in instructional planning, and as validators that confirmed their professional judgment. The training strengthened the teachers’ digital pedagogical awareness and metalinguistic insight, positioning e-literacy as a key competence within an updated literacy paradigm capable of supporting inclusive, level-appropriate education.