Project Profile

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming numerous industries and generating enormous wealth. K-12 is the critical stage for youth to develop knowledge of and interest in AI. This project will leverage the interdisciplinarity of AI to create learning opportunities for secondary students from diverse backgrounds. Focusing on natural language-based AI, this project will develop and research a novel AI Across the Curriculum program that integrates AI concepts and practices into the existing high school curriculum. The project team will develop and test a two-hour introductory module and three five-hour modules for mathematics, English language arts (ELA), and history, as well as a 60-hour professional development program for teachers to develop the competencies required to implement the modules. Teachers in math, ELA, and history will implement the modules in a coordinated fashion to offer learning experiences that are coherent across the different disciplines to their students. During the project, 12 teachers and 900 students will directly benefit from participation in the program. The output of the project will advance national prosperity through AI workforce development by enabling high schools to provide high-quality AI education to all students, especially African Americans, Latinx, and females, who are the underrepresented and underserved groups in the field of AI. The project will be led by an interdisciplinary team of AI developers and educators, STEM and humanities educators, learning scientists and designers, and experts on diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Concord Consortium, Carnegie Mellon University, and North Carolina State University. The team will partner with the San Joaquin County Office of Education in California and the Maryland Center for Computing Education and work closely with two school districts, one in CA and one in MD, that serve student populations underrepresented and underserved in the field of AI.

Researchers will address three research questions: 1) How do students? social and disciplinary identities shape their participation in learning of AI knowledge and AI-rich careers? Guided by the intersectional identity theory, the project will capture eight focal students? learning processes with repeated interviews, video, audio, and screencast recordings, and computer logs. These data will be analyzed using the personal narratives framework and ethnomethodological and conversation-analytic approaches. 2) What and how are new ideas generated by teachers as they seek to coordinate their efforts to integrate AI across the curriculum? Based on the community of practice theory, the project will capture teachers? idea generation and transaction processes with Professional Development (PD) recordings, online communications, and interviews. These data will be analyzed using the idea authorship framework. 3) To what extent, for whom, and under what conditions does the AI Across the Curriculum program support students to develop knowledge of and interest in AI-rich careers? The demographic and academic backgrounds of 900 students and 12 teachers will be collected via surveys to determine the impact of this approach. An AI & Machine Learning Core Concepts Questionnaire and an AI-Rich Careers Questionnaire will be administered before and after the curriculum. These data will be analyzed quantitatively to determine to what extent, for whom, and under what conditions the modules are beneficial. Through research publications and professional learning resources, the project will increase the capacity of educators and researchers to advance AI education. All technologies, curriculum modules, assessments, and PD materials will be freely available to the public.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.