The purpose of this paper presentation is to share findings from a qualitative study on the use of GenAI by elementary school teachers. The research question was, “how do elementary teachers use their knowledge of their students’ diverse racial and economic backgrounds to create stories that reflect children’s unique racial and socioeconomic experiences?” The researchers in this study presented scenarios involving elementary students to three groups of teacher candidates, each with 5 participants. Teacher candidates followed a standard list of instructions to simulate the use of GenAI to create stories that reflect many children’s unique racial and socioeconomic experiences. Each group then used a template to create a plan for modeling for students how to use GenAI to create these stories. Finally, the researchers conducted a 30-minute semi-structured interview with each participant to learn more about their thought processes while completing the simulation. Using observation notes and interview transcripts, the researchers identified and interpreted themes, which constitute the findings of this study.
The study findings in this paper presentation will help elementary educators begin to develop schema for the use of GenAI to create stories that reflect their students’ unique racial and socioeconomic experiences. These types of stories are often unavailable to children in the U.S. due to book bans, even though they could strengthen students’ desire to read. Moreover, the study findings will help other researchers of elementary education to develop working hypotheses to test in their own empirical research on the impacts of GenAI on children’s reading abilities.

Authors:
Timothy Mattison, University of Southern Indiana, United States
Jill Raisor, University of Southern Indiana, United States
Deeksha Thonta Aradhya, University of Southern Indiana, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Mattison is an Assistant Professor in Teacher Education at the University of Southern Indiana. His research focuses on educational equity and social justice movements in secondary schools. He is currently studying student trust in AI.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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