Investigating the Needs of Middle School Educators in Teaching Artificial Intelligence

Danielle Boulden, Jessica Vandenberg, Alex Goslen, Veronica Cateté, Wookhee Min, Bradford W. Mott

Abstract: Widespread and accessible use of artificial intelligence (AI) has escalated dramatically in recent years, with teachers being among those who need to understand, use, and teach these concepts and technologies. However, teachers' access to training and their interest in learning and using AI vary, often due to limited opportunities to attend rigorous, out-of-school training and to receive on-going classroom support. In this work, we report on thematic findings from a contextual analysis of teacher responses to open-ended survey items as well as interviews with them, which informed the design of a customized and relevant professional development (PD) experience for a group of middle school teachers. Our findings have implications for teacher PD in K-12 AI education.