Co-designing lesson plans for supporting human-centred AI literacy in K-12 education

The fast AI development has resulted in governments as well as national and international organizations calling for “AI for all”, highlighting the need for AI-related competences. At the same time human centered approaches to AI are underscored, in order to protect human rights, promote sustainable development, and equip individuals with the necessary values and skills for effective human machine collaboration in everyday life and work. Still, AI in education remains a nascent field, with no clear guidelines on what to teach or how to pedagogically leverage AI. Introducing AI competences, or AI literacy, in K-12 education poses additional challenges as the topic is unfamiliar to most teachers and seldom has a clear space in the curriculum. In this paper, we describe a human-centered process of co-designing AI lesson plans for grades 3–6 (students aged 9–13) together with students, teachers, IT educators, class teacher students, and teacher trainers. The paper presents the phases involved and lessons learned when creating educational experiences that 1) are suitable from both a teacher and student perspective, 2) can fit learning objectives in the current curriculum, and 3) prioritize the ethical, social, and human dimensions of AI.