EAGER: Collaborative Research: Building Capacity for K-12 Artificial Intelligence Education Research

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Artificial intelligence (AI) will profoundly impact society in the US and around the globe. It is beginning to permeate every aspect of our daily lives and is fundamentally reshaping our workforce. Because AI will dramatically impact both the economy and national security, it is imperative that we develop a thoughtful national response to this phenomenally disruptive technology. This response must include a meaningful approach to introducing K-12 students to AI. However, despite the accelerating pace of AI technology development both in the US and abroad and the rapidly growing interest in a strategy for K-12 AI education, there is no research foundation on which such a strategy can be readily based. It is therefore essential to develop an evidence-based approach for K-12 AI education, which calls for a concerted capacity building effort within the education research community to address this significant need. The objective of the project is to begin building an interdisciplinary research community to address the critical challenge of creating a national K-12 AI education strategy by convening two interdisciplinary workshops. This project is funded by the STEM + Computing (STEM+C) program, which supports research and development to understand the integration of computing and computational thinking in STEM learning.The project will bring together experts in education research, AI, industry, and K-12 educational practitioners to develop a shared understanding and create a research agenda to bring evidence-based AI education to K-12 classrooms. Education researchers will include leaders from AI in education, the learning sciences, STEM education (including science education, mathematics education, computer science education, and computational thinking), teacher education, and developmental psychology. The workshops will play a central role in establishing the connections that are essential to the success of a national K-12 AI education initiative. Collectively, leaders in these fields will create a research agenda for developing best practices for AI education for K-12 student populations. The project team will also conduct broad analyses of how K-12 AI education research should respond to AI's far-reaching societal impact. These analyses will both be informed by and will guide the workshops. The findings will be presented in reports in publications prepared by the project team. Together, the workshop series and analyses hold significant transformative potential to address the urgent need to catalyze a research community that will guide curricular design and implementation for K-12 AI education. As a long-term objective, the project will be conducted to most effectively inform, shape, and define a national strategy for K-12 AI education.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.