Park, Joonhyeong

Background
In the midst of digital transformation, schools are transforming their classrooms as they prepare students for a world increasingly automated by new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI). During curricular implementation, it has not made sense to teachers to teach AI as a stand-alone subject as it is not a traditional discipline in schools. As such, subject matter teachers may need to take on the responsibility of integrating AI content into discipline-based lessons to help students make connections and see its relevance rather than present AI as separate content. This paper reports on a study that piloted a new lesson package in science classrooms to introduce students to the idea of AI. Specifically, the AI-integrated science lesson package, designed by the research team, provided an extended activity that used the same context as an existing lesson activity. Three science teachers from different schools piloted the lesson package with small groups of students and provided feedback on the materials and implementation.

Findings
The findings revealed the teachers’ perceptions of integrating AI into science lessons in terms of the connection between AI and science, challenges when implementing the AI lesson package and recommendations on improvements. First, the teachers perceived that AI and science have similarities in developing accurate models with quality data and using simplified reasoning, while they thought that AI and science play complementary roles when solving scientific problems. Second, the teachers thought that the biggest challenge in implementing the lesson package was a lack of confidence in content mastery, while the package would be challenging to get buy-in from teachers regarding curriculum adaptation and targeting the appropriate audience. Considering these challenges, they recommended that comprehensive AI resources be provided to teachers, while this package can be employed for science enrichment programs after-school.

Conclusions
The study has implications for curriculum writers who design lesson packages that introduce AI in science classrooms and for science teachers who wish to contribute to the development of AI literacy for teachers and the extension of the range of school science and STEM to students.

This study investigates how to guide students’ drawing diagram activities as constructing explanations in science classrooms from the metafunctions in systemic functional language (SFL). Although a drawing-to-learn approach requires sufficient support, there is still a lack of understanding regarding the pedagogical considerations for guiding students on what and how to draw during their activities. Guided by the metafunctions in SFL, I analysed a case of one teacher’s teaching practices of employing drawing-diagram activities in a general science classroom. I found that the teacher translated the objects to draw from the familiar to the targeted visual meaning for the students (ideational). To provide a clearer understanding of the roles of diagrams, she had reflective discussions with the students about how other people could interpret their diagrams and what would be important to represent iteratively through sharing the diagrams using a visualiser (interpersonal). She also often provided several examples of organising diagrams at the beginning of or during the activities to brainstorm ideas for the compositions (textual). This practical knowledge framed by the metafunctions is aimed at providing a better understanding of how teachers can deploy a drawing-to-learn approach and intervene during drawing activities to facilitate students’ science learning in general science classrooms.

We designed an inquiry activity to investigate the question, 'Is water a lubricant?' Placing the same object on surfaces of three different materials, we observed the effect of adding a small amount of water on the coefficient of static friction, μ_s. Up to 1 ml of water was added. The results of each surface were graphed and compared with one another. In general, our findings show that the addition of water serves to increase μ_s up to a certain point, before decreasing it. The experiment can be easily replicated in a secondary school science lab. It presents two seemingly opposing phenomena, but they both hold because they occur within their respective boundary conditions.