AI Literacy for Swedish Teacher Education – A Participatory Design Approach

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will continue to play a central role in the continued digitization of society. The introduction of AI technologies in classrooms raises concerns related to school teachers’ and teacher educators’ understanding of how these technologies work in theory and practice. Further, the ways AI could inform teachers’ practices are still poorly understood. In this context, teacher educator’s AI literacy becomes of central importance for the ways teacher students will later adopt, relate to and teach about AI in their profession. This project addresses emerging technologies in teacher education (TE), and more specifically examines what AI literacy is in this context. The proposed project’s attention on AI literacy in TE is unique and provides an important contribution by focusing on opportunities and challenges of AI in the field of education and critically examining the content, pedagogy, technology and ethics for teaching sustainable AI literacy. This four-year project builds on a partnership between two universities in Sweden Linköping University and Stockholm University, as well as the Swedish EdTech industry. This aim is explored through two research questions: RQ1. What is AI literacy and what does it mean in theory and practice in TE? This involves consulting the literature and engaging with experts in examining the components of AI literacy in this area and RQ2. How can the design of sustainable AI literacy content be developed and evaluated in TE? This research question is explored through a series of workshops with a range of stakeholders to develop components of AI literacy in TE. The results could potentially provide pedagogy and content of value for other TE programmes across Sweden, but also beyond.