Are you a primary school teacher in England, Scotland or Wales interested in AI and data science and how students learn about AI and data in computing?

The Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre is starting an exciting new research project investigating how to teach about AI and data in the primary computing classroom, and we would like you to get involved.

The study will look at:

• How AI and data-driven computing is currently taught (e.g. using Machine Learning for Kids, Google’s Teachable Machine)
• What key ideas about AI and data that young people need to understand
• How young people make sense of working with data in computing

The study involves attending a workshop in Cambridge, co-designing a unit of work, and then teaching it. Where necessary, we can reimburse you for reasonable expenses, such as supply cover, travel, and accommodation.

Our aim for the study is to understand how primary school teachers approach teaching about data-driven technologies, and to find suitable methods for building young people’s confidence in working with data in computing lessons.

What is data-driven computing?

Research has suggested that new data-driven technologies such as AI and machine learning (or ML) require a different approach to teaching about problem-solving in the computing classroom. Instead of defining a set of rules (e.g. if-then-else statements, or a rule-based approach), learners must instead collect lots of data to train a model (a data-driven approach) such as using Google’s Teachable Machine to classify image data.

For educators and resource developers, we still lack a clear understanding of how to teach young people about how rule-based and data-driven systems differ, how we can talk about them, and how we develop young people’ mental models. We hope this study will help us to find practical ways for primary teachers to build young people’s understanding of AI data in the primary computing classroom.

What does the study involve?

If you teach at primary level (Years 4, 5 and 6 or P5–P7) in England, Scotland or Wales and are keen to shape how we teach young people about data-driven computing, we invite you to join our new study.

As part of the study, you will attend a workshop with us in Cambridge to co-design a series of data-driven computing lessons to teach in your classroom.

Following the workshop, you will teach the unit of work in your classroom and we will observe one of your lessons and interview you about your experiences.

How can I take part?

If you are interested in taking part, register your interest by clicking the link below:

If you have any questions about the project, you can email bobby.whyte@raspberrypi.org.