Supporting Teachers in Integrating Machine Learning into Science Instruction

As artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly being adopted and used in society, it is imperative that teachers feel supported to integrate AI and computer science (CS) into their coursework. To help support teachers to integrate CS and AI into their instruction, we designed and developed an innovative AI curriculum, [TITLE], for in-service science teachers accompanied with a robust professional development and learning community. [TITLE] is designed for middle school students grades 6-8, and the curriculum blends CS and paleontology as young people are guided in building and evaluating their own machine learning models they use to classify fossil shark teeth. In this paper, we describe the curriculum model, teacher (mis)conceptions about AI, teacher’s perceived self-efficacy and attitudes regarding the curriculum material and on teaching STEM, and student outcomes from the project that are the ultimate reflection of the curriculum design and implementation.