Teachers’ Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Designing Science Lessons to Support Environmental Science Agency

• In Event: Science Teaching and Learning Across Contexts

Abstract

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is highlighted as a tool to assist teachers in addressing specific instructional design and implementation tasks. This study explores how teachers in a master’s-level elementary science methods course used Large Language Model GenAI, to design lessons fostering students’ environmental science agency (ESA). Findings, derived through constant comparative analysis of data generated from the course context, highlight three main ways of teachers’ GenAI usage: deepening teachers’ conceptual understanding; developing detailed content of lesson components; and integrating ESA into science instruction. Teachers also reported the challenges they encountered and addressed. These findings were discussed in terms of teacher effort to take responsible authorship in GenAI-assisted environmentally conscious instructional design, and their broad implications for teacher education practices.

Author

• Won Jung Kim, Santa Clara University