Teachers’ Planned Adaptations of a Justice-Centered Unit about AI (Poster 4)

• In Event: Building STEM Teachers’ Social Justice Teaching Capacities: Future Directions for Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
This study investigates teachers’ planned adaptations of a justice-centered unit in AI education. In this analysis, we focus on the degree to which justice was a focus of adaptations, and, if so, what meanings of justice teachers adopted.

Theoretical framework
Co-adaptation is a form of participatory design that addresses a fundamental challenge in co-design: how to enable educators and leaders not involved in the original design of an innovation to make it their own. Co-adaptation requires open-ended designs that leave room for users to “complete” or adapt designs (Fischer, 2011; Penuel et al., 2017), and of the infrastructures that support their enactments (Penuel, 2019).

Supporting productive co-adaptation of curricular units in professional learning toward justice-centered teaching is a growing edge for our field. For us, justice-centered teaching in STEM education entails: (1) embracing heterogeneity and connecting students’ everyday and disciplinary ways of thinking, and (2) leveraging disciplinary ideas and practices in ways that move toward socio-ecological justice (National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2024). Teachers’ goals and understandings of justice can shape their adaptations in ways that align (or not) with one or both approaches.

Data sources
Three data sources were used in our analysis: 1) field notes from a week-long workshop; 2) slides that teachers generated to describe their adaptations, and 3) video of teachers' public presentation of their proposed adaptations.

Methods
We drew on data gathered from 6 middle- and high-school teachers as they planned to adapt a justice-centered unit about AI. First, researchers reviewed field notes and video to identify whether and how the proposed adaptations: 1) built from students’ everyday expertise, 2) supported learning about AI, 3) explored matters of justice; 4) promoted collaboration; and 5) addressed disciplinary standards teachers normally teach. Second, the researchers generated thematic memos about the varying definitions of justice evidenced in teachers’ talk and compared each to the justice stance introduced through the workshop.

Results
Teachers varied in their overall approach to taking up the unit in their classroom. These included plans to embed the Games unit as-is, to add elements or lessons to the unit, connect it to other units with similar themes, and use it as a bridge between two related units. With respect to their adaptations, four of the six teachers planned adaptations that incorporated goals for justice, but each brought a different meaning of “justice.” These different meanings included views of justice as unpacking how bias is introduced in AI systems, exploring the impacts of harmful AI systems, and justice as cultivating a culture of belonging.

Significance
As anticipated, teachers’ own purposes and backgrounds shaped their adaptations of the unit. However, our study points to the promise of supporting purposeful adaptation when justice is a goal, and for facilitating teachers in making connections between disciplinary content and larger concerns for justice.

Authors

• Mon-Lin Ko, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Nga Hoang, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Collette Heskett, University of Colorado - Boulder

• William R. Penuel, University of Colorado - Boulder