Students need confidence, ethical judgment and the capacity to grapple with complexity rather than outsource the struggle of learning to AI. Integrity-resilient learning depends on students remaining actively and ethically engaged when learning feels uncertain, uncomfortable or difficult. In an increasingly AI-enabled environment, academic integrity requires more than rules about misconduct or acceptable AI use. Assurance of learning is strengthened when it makes visible the processes through which students test ideas, collaborate, reflect and develop ethical academic practice. Rather than positioning discomfort as a barrier, we explore how “messy ambivalences” and “sticky discomforts” can become pedagogically generative revealing students’ thinking, uncertainty and developing understanding (Chadwick, 2021, p. 559). This disorientating learning environment can help to “not only jostle, but propel” students towards ethical agency (Harbin, 2012, p. 277).

The poster presents a field-tested, cross-disciplinary approach to assuring Academic Literacies through Professional Actor Pedagogy. Students apply attention, imagination, responsiveness, collaboration, risk-taking, improvisation and reflective action as they grapple with concepts and construct meaning together. Evidence of learning is seen through students’ active listening, productive failure and persistence. These visible behaviours enable tutors to identify misconceptions, refine teaching, and support deeper meaning-making, engagement and cognitive retention (Kuhn, 2022; Nathan, 2020; Dall’Alba & Thuy, 2024).