Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Teaching Practices using Artificial Intelligence

• In Event: AI as a Co-Pilot in Science Education: Reimagining Instructional Practice

Abstract

Objective
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a tool with potential for STEM education to create curricula meeting the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students and assisting teachers in meeting those needs. While AI is a powerful tool, there are valid concerns about the potential to replicate and exacerbate existing systemic inequities and biases in our society (Avraamidou, 2024; Price & Grover, 2025).
AI is a new emerging tool quickly integrating within the classroom. Research is needed to better understand how teachers use it to support their instructional practice. This study presents findings of how teachers describe, through social media, innovating with AI for culturally and linguistically sustaining practices.

Theoretical Framework
Educators have been using AI to automate labor-intensive tasks such as creating personalized learning environments, developing adaptive lesson plans, and providing personalized feedback for evolving needs of students (Heeg & Avraamidou, 2023). These AI support applications allow educators more time to focus on meaningful engagement with students. The intersection of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy (CR&SP) framework with AI can address persistent and historical inequities for marginalized groups who continue to face barriers to accessing equitable STEM education, and ideally prevent compounding entrenchment (Avraamidou, 2024).
CR&SP offers a transformative framework recognizing, honoring, and fostering cultural pluralism and dynamism of students by adapting teaching practices to be meaningful and reflective of their cultural knowledge, literacies, languages, and identities – promoting an equitable and inclusive environment (Tzou et al., 2024). This study is based upon CR&SP, establishing an understanding of constant evolution and renegotiation of a person’s identity as well as cultures in which they live. Broken into four parts – fluidity of culture, centering learners' humanity, honoring students’ cultural knowledge, and fostering critical consciousness through political conocimiento – all deeply interrelated, feeding into and influencing one another.

Methods
To capture public discussions, strategies, and reflections teachers share about AI tools in their classrooms, this project analyzes data scraped from Reddit social media platform, focusing on subreddits whose topics of interest center on education, teaching, and schools, starting from January 1, 2022. Data were aggregated and coded according to CR&SP framework.

Results
Preliminary findings indicate a discussion about cheating prevention, teaching AI literacy, advantages and disadvantages of AI in classrooms, and creating practice worksheets or short quizzes. Conversations about CR&SP with AI are minimal, with results focusing on adapting materials from the dominant language for ESL educators. Further analysis will reveal trends in AI perception and implementation, highlighting common practices and challenges, as well as its role in helping teachers navigate linguistic diversity and adapt lessons to culturally relevant frameworks.

Scholarly Significance
By grounding the study in CR&SP frameworks, this research will identify current practices, challenges, and opportunities for using AI as a tool for equitable science education. This study contributes to the field of science education research by exploring and documenting how teachers describe their innovation with this emerging tool that is quickly integrating into our lives.

Author

• Melinda Crystal Lopez, University of Colorado - Boulder