Last month marked the beginning of the new academic year and the beginning of year two of From Chalkboards to AI. A big thank-you to NSTA and the hardworking staff for their support in bringing our online content to life. We also extend our gratitude to all our readers who have engaged with our monthly blog posts, shared their stories, and provided valuable insights.

With the landscape of artificial intelligence evolving rapidly and an influx of new tools, reports, and research emerging weekly, this month's blog post delves into the key highlights from these domains that have surfaced during the 2024–2025 year. Stay tuned for the top takeaways that have shaped our understanding and our AI journey. 

What follows is by no means an exhaustive list of every report and tool, but rather represents those that we believe are important contributions to the field of science education as teachers consider how and when to use AI.

1. What should students be able to do with AI? UNESCO finally gave us a student-facing AI skills roadmap.

   UNESCO’s new AI Competency Framework for Students has 12 competencies across four dimensions (mindset, ethics, techniques, and data). For K–12 science, this is gold: It legitimizes teaching AI within content areas (think model limits during inquiry, data literacy in labs, ethical use of AI images) rather than treating AI as a one-off unit. The report also provides language for learning goals (e.g., students evaluate AI outputs against empirical evidence). The takeaway for teachers—You can align AI and incorporate it into existing activities with standards without reinventing your curriculum. Use the framework like a checklist for lab reports, projects, and argumentation. (UNESCO 2024)

2. What should the focus of AI usage be? According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), AI helps most when the focus is on being teacher-centered, not tool-centered.

   The WEF’s Shaping the Future of Learning: The Role of AI in Education 4.0 synthesizes case studies showing when AI is best used: cutting admin load, personalizing practice, and giving timely feedback with a key caveat—Teachers are in the driver’s seat. The report’s approach is pragmatic: Start with pain points in the teacher’s daily workload (planning, differentiation, formative checks), pick low-risk workflows, and measure time saved. For science teachers, the practical benefits include AI-assisted item generation (with your edits), quicker feedback on CER (claim, evidence, reasoning) writing, and automated pattern identification from exit tickets. The caution—Governance and equity must ride alongside convenience. Translation—Set guardrails (privacy, bias checks, human review) and talk openly with families about what AI does and doesn’t do. (World Economic Forum 2024)

3. How do we make decisions regarding the adoption of AI tools? U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) AI Toolkit outlines what to adopt and what to avoid.

   ED’s Empowering Education Leaders: A Toolkit for Safe, Ethical, and Equitable AI Integration is the most classroom-practical federal guidance yet. It frames AI adoption like any instructional initiative by defining use cases, conducting a risk assessment (accuracy, privacy, bias), and recommending the piloting of small tasks before scaling up. The toolkit includes prompts, sample policies, professional development ideas, and “do/don’t” checklists. For science, it provides a ready-made structure for tasks such as AI comments on lab notebooks or AI-generated phenomena prompts, as well as guidelines on documenting consent, data flows, and usage. (U.S. Department of Education 2024) 

4. What can AI tackle and what should humans still be doing? Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Education Spotlight

   The OECD’s What Should Teachers Teach and Students Learn in a Future of Powerful AI? reframes curriculum around humans and AI complementing one another. In science, this means doubling down on problem framing, modeling, experimental design, and ethical reasoning, all areas in which human judgment matters and AI tools can assist, but not replace. The report also emphasizes metacognition, meaning students should explain when to trust an AI output (and when not to), justify claims with evidence, and critically examine data. (OECD 2025)

5. How do we ensure that equity is part of the use of AI? The Potential Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Equity and Inclusion in Education. 

   The OECD’s 2024 brief on AI’s impact on equity and inclusion is a reminder that without considering and implementing some policy guardrails, AI can deepen existing gaps (access, language, and bias). This is important to science education because of potential uses for AI such as providing feedback and developing materials. We need to remember that we have students who are multilingual learners and students with IEPs, and therefore we must review the output for potential bias both in general and within scientific contexts (e.g., images, datasets). The report provides users with mental checklists regarding transparent data use, accessibility by design, and support for low-resource schools. (Varsik and Vosberg 2024)

6. What is the impact of AI on learning? There is no definitive answer, as there are mixed results based on different studies.

   While the results are mixed depending on which study one reads, one of the main studies that rises to the top of the pile regarding the use of AI in education is one related to the use of AI within tutoring mathematics. A large high school study (nearly 1,000 students) tested GPT-4 –based math tutors. When students used a plain, answer-giving AI, they did worse on later tests without AI. This suggests that using a hint-driven AI tutor might mitigate these results and assist with student reasoning and understanding, but a careful design would need to be considered. Another review of AI-driven Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) in K –12 found generally positive learning effects—strongest when comparing ITS to “business-as-usual” teaching—but mixed results against other digital tools. What can science teachers take away from this study? The message for science classrooms is clear: AI that tells answers undermines durable learning; AI that coaches students through misconceptions (scaffolded hints, error analysis) supports learning. There will be many more studies published as AI continues to be applied in novel ways for educational purposes. (Bastani et al. 2024; Létourneau et al. 2025)

7. What are teachers using AI to do? Teachers are using AI now—and getting time back.

   Fresh polling from Gallup shows about 3 in 10 teachers use AI weekly, and those regular users report saving ~5.9 hours per week—roughly six weeks over a school year. That reclaimed time often becomes additional small-group instruction, feedback, and family outreach. For science teams, it means time to prepare materials kits, refine phenomenon sequences, and conduct more talk-rich investigations. The trick is to formalize what’s approved or allowed (e.g., draft generator plus human editing; item banks with your tags) and what’s not (grading without rubrics; answer-giving to students). Pair this finding with your district’s policy, and you’ve got a powerful tool. (Malek 2025; Wagner 2025)

8. How has student use changed since Generative AI emerged? Student behavior is shifting fast with teen use of ChatGPT.

   Pew reports 26% of U.S. teens used ChatGPT for schoolwork by January 2025—double the teen usage in 2023. For science teachers, this doesn’t have to mean more plagiarism headaches; it’s an invitation to teach AI-aware science practices such as those that require process artifacts (planning prompts, drafts, AI feedback received), use oral check-ins, and make “compare the bot to the data” a routine. Also note the perception gap: Many teachers still worry AI does more harm than good. Bridging that gap means explicit norms, opt-in uses (e.g., feedback on clarity, not content), and assessments that value reasoning over output polish. (Sidoti et al. 2025)

   In the end, there are many studies that state similar results and conclusions, and research reports that support these points as well as contradict some of them. Ultimately, it is important that all educators make informed decisions about when, why, and how to use artificial intelligence.

References

Bastani, H., O. Bastani, A. Sungu, H. Ge, Ö Kabakcı, and R. Mariman. 2024. Generative AI can harm learning. The Wharton School Research Paper, University of Pennsylvania/SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4895486. 

Létourneau, A., M. Deslandes Martineau, P. Charland, J. A. Karran, J. Boasen, and P. M. Léger. 2025. A systematic review of AI-driven intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) in K–12 education. NPJ Science of Learning 10 (29). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-025-00320-7. 

Malek Ash, A. 2025, June 24. Unlocking six weeks a year with AI. Gallup/Walton Family Foundation. https://www.gallup.com/analytics/659819/k-12-teacher-research.aspx. 

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2025. What should teachers teach and students learn in a world of powerful AI? OECD Education Spotlights, No. 20. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/ca56c7d6-en.  

Sidoti, O., E. Park, and J. Gottfried. 2025, January 15. About a quarter of U.S. teens have used ChatGPT for schoolwork—double the share in 2023. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/15/about-a-quarter-of-us-teens-have-used-chatgpt-for-schoolwork-double-the-share-in-2023/.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology. 2024. Empowering education leaders: A toolkit for safe, ethical, and equitable AI integration. U.S. Department of Education https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED661924.pdf

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. 2024. AI competency framework for students. UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/ai-competency-framework-students.

Varsik, S., and L. Vosberg. 2024. The potential impact of artificial intelligence on equity and inclusion in education. OECD Artificial Intelligence Papers, No. 23. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/15df715b-en.

Wagner, L. 2025, July 8. Survey: 60% of teachers used AI this year and saved up to 6 hours of work a week. The 74. https://www.the74million.org/article/survey-60-of-teachers-used-ai-this-year-and-saved-up-to-6-hours-of-work-a-week/. 

World Economic Forum. 2024. Shaping the future of learning: The role of AI in Education 4.0. Insight Report. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/publications/shaping-the-future-of-learning-the-role-of-ai-in-education-4-0. 
 

Christine Anne Royce, Ed.D., is a past president of the National Science Teaching Association and currently serves as a Professor in Teacher Education and the Co-Director for the MAT in STEM Education at Shippensburg University. Her areas of interest and research include utilizing digital technologies and tools within the classroom, global education, and the integration of children's literature into the science classroom. She is an author of more than 140 publications, including the Science and Children Teaching Through Trade Books column.

Valerie Bennett, Ph.D., Ed.D., is an Assistant Professor in STEM Education at Clark Atlanta University, where she also serves as the Program Director for Graduate Teacher Education and the Director for Educational Technology and Innovation. With more than 25 years of experience and degrees in engineering from Vanderbilt University and Georgia Tech, she focuses on STEM equity for underserved groups. Her research includes AI interventions in STEM education, and she currently co-leads the Noyce NSF grant, works with the AUC Data Science Initiative, and collaborates with Google to address CS workforce diversity and engagement in the Atlanta University Center K–12 community.

This article is part of the blog series From Chalkboards to AI, which focuses on how artificial intelligence can be used in the classroom in support of science as explained and described in A Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards.

The mission of NSTA is to transform science education to benefit all through professional learning, partnerships, and advocacy.