Research-Practice Partnership Development to Integrate AI Literacies in K-8

Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI tools such as large language models (LLMs) are developing faster than many K-12 schools can keep pace. This issue creates challenges for schools, especially in small districts, to quickly design or adopt resources to help their students and teachers understand AI concepts, use AI responsibly and recognize ethical issues associated with AI. This project partners a small suburban school district and university AI education experts with the goal of creating AI resources and a curriculum to help students and teachers effectively integrate AI into their work. This partnership approach will help ensure a meaningful broader impact of the work on the school and surrounding community, where infusing these 21st century skills into learning will have long-term impacts on the future workforce. All materials developed in the project will be made freely available to the public to adopt or adapt to meet their needs. The partnership model for developing an AI curriculum will also build a greater scientific understanding of how to work together to meet the needs of a community that may be applied to other emerging technologies such as quantum computing and fusion energy. The curriculum developed will also provide a road map to build theory on organizing learning goals around AI, and other future technologies, that use a long-term partnership approach. The long-term outcomes of this project will impact knowledge and practice of building the technological literacy of the American public.

In this Partnership Development proposal, the long-term goal is to build a lasting research practice partnership (RPP) for modern computer science education initiatives. The rapid onset of AI, and generative AI tools such as LLMs, amplify the need for AI literacies, including concepts, practices and ethics, for K-12 schools. Some AI literacy resources, such as AI4K12 and AI4ALL, have emerged, but it may be challenging for schools, particularly those in small districts, to navigate these resources. Furthermore, researchers need further guidance on how to support schools for AI literacy. These challenges for schools and researchers include how to coordinate planning across teachers, school leaders and researchers, how to implement across grade levels, classrooms, and content areas; how to provide training and preparation time to support lesson design and implementation; and how to support teachers in their own AI literacy. To address these needs, district leaders and teachers from Forest Park School District (FPSD) and researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago will engage in a one-year research practice partnership development to build a long-term RPP, co-design an AI literacy curriculum, and support professional development to implement the curriculum. This work will contribute to scientific understanding of how an RPP can be applied quickly to meet the challenges of rapidly evolving technology and provide structured road maps for developing technology literacy curricula for emerging and new learning objectives that can be applied to AI and other emerging technologies. This approach will demonstrate how integrating long-term planning with curriculum maps and scope and sequence guides with day-to-day lesson planning can foster cross-district buy-in for multiple stakeholders. The work will also have broader impacts on the surrounding community by creating curricular materials that benefit students and teachers at FPSD in developing the AI literacy skills essential to building 21st century skills.