This paper describes an AI Book Club as an innovative 20-hour professional development (PD) model designed to prepare teachers with AI content knowledge and an understanding of the ethical issues posed by bias in AI that are foundational to developing AI-literate citizens. The design of the intervention was motivated by a desire to manage the cognitive load of AI learning by spreading the PD program over several weeks and a desire to form and maintain a community of teachers interested in AI education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each week participants spent an hour independently reading selections from an AI book, reviewing AI activities, and viewing videos of other educators teaching the activities, then met online for 1 hour to discuss the materials and brainstorm how they might adapt the materials for their classrooms. The participants in the AI Book Club were 37 middle school educators from 3 US school districts and 5 youth-serving organizations. The teachers are from STEM disciplines as well as Social Studies and Art. Eighty-nine percent were from underrepresented groups in STEM and CS. In this paper we describe the design of the AI Book Club, its implementation, and preliminary findings on teachers' impressions of the AI Book Club as a form of PD, thoughts about teaching AI in classrooms, and interest in continuing the book club model in the upcoming year. We conclude with recommendations for others interested in implementing a book club PD format for AI learning.
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Preparing teachers to teach artificial intelligence in classrooms: An exploratory study.
The rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) necessitates educating all students
about AI. This, however, poses great challenges because most K-12 teachers have limited prior
knowledge or experience of teaching AI. This exploratory study reports the design of an online
professional development program aimed at preparing teachers for teaching AI in classrooms.
The program includes a book club where teachers read a book about AI and learned key
activities of an AI curriculum developed for middle schoolers, and a 2-week practicum where
teachers co-taught the curriculum in a summer camp. The participants were 17 teachers from
three school districts across the United States. Analysis of their surveys revealed an increase in
teachers’ content knowledge and self-efficacy in teaching AI. Teachers reported that the book
club taught them AI concepts and the practicum sharpened their teaching practices. Our findings
reveal valuable insights on teacher training for the AI education field.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2048746
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10493290
- Publisher / Repository:
- International Society of the Learning Sciences.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2023
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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