Fostering critical thinkers and future designers: Design fiction pedagogy in AI education

• Design Fiction Pedagogy (DFP) enhances AI education through speculative design and narrative creation. • DFP offers an interdisciplinary approach that combines AI concepts with real-world problem-solving. • DFP fosters critical thinking about AI’s technical and societal impacts. • Upper elementary students engaged in hands-on AI prototyping and ethical reflection. • Students explored future AI possibilities through iterative design and storytelling. The pervasive impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on society underscores the critical need for comprehensive AI education, particularly for young students. This study investigates how design fiction pedagogy (DFP) may enhance K-12 AI education by fostering understanding of AI and encouraging critical thinking about its social impact. Grounded in constructivist and constructionist theories, DFP integrates speculative design and narrative learning to provide an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach. The DFP model, which consists of seven pedagogical steps—researching a problem, designing a prototype, creating a future context, building a narrative, sharing with stakeholders, reflecting on ethical considerations, and evaluating and redesigning—was implemented through two separate week-long AI education camps in Ontario, Canada. Using a qualitative case study approach, we examined how DFP supports upper elementary students in grasping AI concepts and AI’s social impact. The findings indicate that, by integrating technical principles, ethical considerations, and futuristic thinking about human-AI interactions, DFP helps students develop a deeper understanding of AI while fostering creativity, critical thinking, and futuristic thinking—skills essential for the responsible development and use of AI. Consequently, DFP emerges as a promising approach for an AI education that integrates technical knowledge with ethical considerations.