AI Literacy in Early Childhood Education: Challenges and Opportunities

Nikita Shaileshbhai Patel, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance and Chemistry, Arihant School of Pharmacy and Bio-Research Institute, Gujarat, India.

AI revolutionising digital literacy

Currently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy is a developing area of study in digital literacy education. AI literacy has certain potential as well as difficulties. There were a few difficulties, such as (1) the lack of teachers’ AI understanding, abilities, and confidence; (2) the absence of curriculum design; and (3) the absence of teaching guidelines.

AI based Teaching Strategies

While establishing AI teaching strategies for preschoolers presents problems for educators, AI learning has the potential to open up new learning possibilities and promote young children’s AI literacy with regard to AI concepts, practices, and viewpoints. Age-appropriate curricula and resources at the Early Childhood Education (ECE) level is anticipated to become more prevalent.

Conclusions

Upon examining the AI curriculum designs in the studies under consideration, we could draw several conclusions.

1. The majority of research used platforms or instruments for learning that were acceptable for young children. The most popular instrument for enhancing young children’s understanding of fundamental AI ideas is robotic kits, particularly PopBots.
2. With regard to the design of pedagogy, researchers provide different educational tasks to broaden children’s awareness of AI ideas. As an example, we built three learning activities to support children’s understanding of these three fundamental AI concepts: systems based on knowledge, supervised machine learning, and generative AI. The majority of studies revealed that AI education is considerably different in kindergarten, primary and secondary school, and higher education.
3. The majority of research looking at young children’s learning outcomes examined how much their knowledge of AI or machine learning had improved as a result of the intervention. Completing the AI curriculum improved children’s abilities in creative scrutiny, emotional scrutiny, and collaborative scrutiny, in addition to enhancing their knowledge of AI or machine learning. Children between the ages of 3 and 8 only comprehend fundamental AI ideas, according to research. For instance, researchers discovered that kids can understand three fundamental AI concepts: generative AI, supervised machine learning, and knowledge-based systems. In addition, a design-based research (DBR) method was used to improve the instructional designs. The use of planning, scaffolding, developing children’s inquiry abilities, teacher-child and peer-peer communications, and assessment and review of the kids’ learning to foster kids’ inquiry was instrumental. Educators, students, and researchers working together can use this strategy for small-scale educational research efforts. It helps teachers improve their instructional design to better support students’ AI literacy.
4. Researchers used three assessment techniques—knowledge and theory of mind tests, questionnaires, and observation—to measure children’s AI literacy in early childhood education (ECE). Although researchers have reported different forms of these assessments, there is currently no widely established set of standardized exams, questionnaires, or surveys for evaluating young children’s AI knowledge and skills. Additional research will use performance-based metrics to assess children’s AI knowledge and abilities.

Bottlenecks and Future Prospects

The present study on AI literacy in early childhood education classrooms also lacks empirical data from implementation and uses less-rigorous research approaches. Researchers anticipate using more empirical and interventional studies in the future, together with well-defined curricular and control groups and a range of data analysis methods (such t-tests and ANOVA).

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Reference:

Su, J., Ng, D. T. K., & Chu, S. K. W. (2023). Artificial intelligence (Ai) literacy in early childhood education: The challenges and opportunities. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 4, 100124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2023.100124

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