Topic. Fostering a responsible management of AI technologies among primary school children through new community-friendly and child-generated “curricula for AI”.

Theoretical Framework.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now part of the daily life of children in both social and domestic areas. In fact, AI is the basis of many daily technologies and websites or apps (Greenfield, 2025; Scott, 2024). Moreover, it is estimated that, when the current cohort of primary school-aged children have reached the age of majority, daily technologies and AI-embedded humanoid robots will have increased their accessibility and spread to such a point as to become part of the everyday household (Hertog et al., 2023).

This massive and sudden increase in AI technologies in everyday life entails interesting benefits. At the same time, it exposes human beings (from childhood) to serious dangers: privacy and data protection exploitation, fake news, etc. (Floridi, 2014, 2022).

Both the benefits and dangers depend largely on how AI technologies are managed and, therefore, on the more or less responsible use that is made of them (EC, 2024). This is precisely the reason why the European Community has sought to regulate the use of AI technologies so as to maximize their benefits and reduce the risks and problems stemming from an indiscriminate management that violates the rights and dignity of individuals (EC, 2021a/b). Political guidelines and regulatory norms are not enough to influence individual and collective behavior in a conscious and ethically oriented way. It is necessary to combine guidance and norms with universal, early and systematic training processes (Panciroli and Rivoltella, 2023).

Primary school therefore plays a central role in designing and fostering this training, as it represents the cycle of education par excellence aimed at all children, at an early age, and capable of intervening on the management of AI technologies in a systematic way (Author and Longo, 2023, 2024), thereby establishing the cultural and reflective prerequisites necessary for the appropriate further measures for schools to take in the subsequent cycles (secondary education and university). Despite the centrality of primary school, the training curricula on the theme of AI are (Spiranec, Kos and George 2019):

- designed and implemented only in secondary school,

- mainly focused on developing knowledge and skills regarding the operation and programming of AI,

- only related to STEAM subjects,

- almost exclusively implemented within school classrooms.

There is thus a lack of studies and research on how to structure and develop training curricula for primary schools that would be:

- transdisciplinary (not connected exclusively to STEAM areas),

- focused not only on knowledge/skills about the functioning of AI technologies, but also and especially on fostering "critical thinking for AI" (De la Higuera, 2019) for critical and responsible management in daily life (Jonas,1984),

- developed through community interaction processes (where children practice their competences in managing AI technology and engage with best practices for a critical, responsible, and creative use of AI),

- oriented at training not only users and consumers, but also and above all the future inventors of new AI technologies capable of improving overall life quality.

Research Question.

If the way AI is currently shaping new school experiences and curricula has its limits, then how should AI shape new school-community relationships? More specifically, the research question is: what “curriculum for AI” should be designed to train primary school children in a responsible management of AI technologies with a view to a meaningful school-community relationship?

Research Objective. Define a new community friendly and child-generated "curriculum for AI" to train children of the last two years of primary school at a responsible management of AI technologies (9-11 y.o.).

In order to achieve these research objectives, a participatory action-research (Barbier, 2007; Efrat Efron and Ravid, 2019; Sorzio, 2019; 2003; Stenhouse, 1975) is taking place over the 2024-2025 academic year (from October 2024 to May 2025) involving about 120 children in their final year at the “Gino Strada” primary school in Turin. The research is led by the University of Turin and conducted as part of the LIFE Innovation Lab (Laboratory for Innovation in Philosophy and Education, University of Turin). The research involves four researchers, ten teachers, and groups of up to 25 children. The children do three activities over three different training days: 1. an activity in the classroom introducing them to AI topics through the virtual exhibition “The AI Adventure” (https://www.school4thinking.unito.it/virtual-exibition), 2. an activity carried out at the LIFE Laboratory involving interaction with the robot Pepper, programmed to present children with questions and answers on three topics related to AI: the history of AI (how it was born), functioning of AI, and the problems of a non-responsible management of AI, 3. an activity carried out at the LIFE Laboratory that entails semi-immersion in an aesthetic-type virtual environment to reflect on and discuss interaction between human being and technologies (from prehistory to today) in view of developing the local and planetary community in which students live (Latour, 2020; Lovelock, 2016, 2020, 2021). To collect, analyse, and discuss the data needed to achieve the objectives, the following analysis and research instruments will be used: - a content analysis of the qualitative pre and post questionnaires filled out by the children on the educational topic (Bagnasco, Ghirotto and Sasso, 2015; Mayring, 2021; Winkle-Wagner, Lee-Johnson and Gaskew, 2019) before and after the training experience, - a content analysis of the pre and post quali-quantitative questionnaires filled out by the children on the cognitive bias surrounding AI technologies, - a reflexive thematic analysis of the dialogue (among children-teachers-researchers) recorded during the educational activities (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Braun, Clarke, Hayfield and Terry, 2018; Terry and Hayfield, 2020), - reflexive thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with the participating teachers conducted after the formative experience.

The analysis of the collected data will allow us to: - understand children’s actual questions about AI issues in everyday life, - understand children’s misconceptions, biases, and prejudices about AI issues in everyday life, - define what knowledge about AI should be promoted (considering the misunderstandings, biases and prejudices identified in the research), - define the areas of critical thinking for AI to be targeted in educational initiatives, - define the training activities to be offered in the classroom, - define the learning experiences to be carried out in relationship with the community. These experiences will be defined in partnership with the “Regola” Company (https://en.regola.it), member of the Frequentis Group, a global supplier of communication and information systems for control centres with safety-critical tasks. These findings will allow us to discuss and identify an effective educational curriculum for AI directed at primary school children to enable them to manage AI technologies in their communities in a critical and creative way on an everyday basis. All these findings will be collected and analysed at the end of the educational process (from June to August 2025) and presented at the EERA/ECER Conference.

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