NSF FF: Planning: Co-Designing Teacher-Governed AI for Collective Sensemaking in Middle School Science

Award ID: 2627412

This FINDERS Foundry award helps middleschool students build stronger scientific models through feedback that is clear, supportive, and easy for families to understand. Students often settle on the first explanation they create and do not revise their thinking. This project will design a teacherguided AI system that gives prompts to help students think more deeply, test ideas, and improve their models. The AI will be governed by teachers so that feedback matches classroom goals and remains safe and transparent. Families will be able to see how the AI is used, helping them understand the learning process. By supporting revision and reasoning, the project aims to help students build better scientific explanations and feel more confident working through complex ideas. This FINDERS Foundry award collaboratively develops AI literacy practices through co-created wireframes and design rules for a teacherauthored prompt bank, a studentmodeling surface, and a parentfacing view aligned to curricular standards. The project investigates how AI meaningfully interprets student models, how teacherbounded scaffolds shape productive smallgroup work, and how trustbuilding communication channels can be structured for families. Throughout the co-design process, educators, learners, technologists, parents, and researchers will co-create wireframes, categorized promptbank exemplars, and design rules aligned to science of learning (SOL) modeling practices in effort to enhance student learning. The resulting framework will support educators in integrating AIsupported modeling while maintaining bounded, transparent, and developmentally appropriate classroom use. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Lindsay Portnoy