A culturally responsive guide to abstract writing: Resisting AI over-reliance through the pedagogy of Al-Ta’dib

Given concerns about over-reliance on AI, this chapter outlines a step-by-step guide for constructing a research paper abstract. It introduces a culturally responsive rubric rooted in the Arab pedagogy of Ta’dib to guide higher education students in developing abstracts. The Ta’dib-driven rubric advocates for discipline, moral character, and integrating knowledge as action and intellectual responsibility in academic writing attuned to responsible AI use. It presents a structured abstract-writing blueprint incorporating ethical considerations and discouraging reliance on AI tools. Not only does this approach contribute to maintaining standards of academic integrity in the face of evolving AI technologies, but it also frames culture as practice-oriented towards achieving academic goals. Culture, therefore, emerges as a practical tool, a mode of intercultural competence, rather than merely a collection of values or abstract ideas. It reflects not only what a society believes or values but also how those values are put into practice. Moreover, by providing a framework (CREST: Choose, Review, Explore, Structure, Tweak) for developing the content of a research paper, Ta’dib serves as an antidote to the rise of machine-generated writing. It recentres human intention, ethical responsibility, and the cultivation of character in the act of authorship.