The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving innovation across diverse sectors, including culture, industry, and education. In this context, critical thinking is an essential competency for democratic citizens to explore the complex soci...
The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving innovation across diverse sectors, including culture, industry, and education. In this context, critical thinking is an essential competency for democratic citizens to explore the complex social issues arising from AI and to seek desirable alternatives.
Although various efforts to teach the social impact of AI are currently being conducted under the guise of AI ethics education, existing research has primarily focused on recognizing AI’s technical limitations or addressing individual-level moral judgments, such as the trolley dilemma in autonomous vehicles. Such approaches are limited in that they result in only a superficial understanding of AI’s limitations and remain confined to individual ethical choices, failing to extend to a multi-faceted exploration of complex socio-structural problems or the search for practical alternatives.
However, citizenship in the AI era encompasses the capacity to go beyond individual moral judgment and actively engage with the social issues raised by AI. Therefore, AI education must be designed to allow learners to experience the process of critically examining alternatives and logically establishing their own stances within a social structure where diverse values conflict, based on an understanding of AI’s operating principles and inherent uncertainties.
Accordingly, this study reviewed existing instructional models for controversial issues and integrated the perspective of AI integrated education to propose the necessity of “AI-Integrated Controversial Issue Instruction,” which allows learners to explore both the technical principles and social impacts of AI in an integrated manner. The purpose of this study was to develop an instructional model and teaching strategies to apply this instruction in actual educational settings, and to verify whether the applied instruction effectively improves learners’ critical thinking skills.
The research questions of this study are as follows: First, what are the instructional model and teaching strategies for AI-Integrated Controversial Issue Instruction aimed at fostering critical thinking? Second, when the developed model and strategies are applied, do learners establish their stances on controversial issues by integrating subject knowledge with AI knowledge? Third, is this instructional model effective in improving learners’ critical thinking skills?
To address these questions, a design and development research methodology was employed. First, a draft of the instructional model and teaching strategies was derived through a literature review. To ensure the validity of the initial model, validation was conducted twice by a panel of seven experts in educational technology and subject education. To examine the field applicability of the derived model and strategies, classes were conducted with 108 first-year students taking society class at a general high school in Seoul. After field application, the model was revised and supplemented based on surveys, interviews, analysis of learner outcomes, and pre- and post-test results. The final instructional model was categorized into six main stages: “0. Preparation,” “1. Presenting the Controversial Issue,” “2. Presenting Value Conflict,” “3. Facilitating Alternative Exploration,” “4. Facilitating Value Conflict Resolution,” and “5. Supporting Reflection,” with a total of 27 teaching strategies derived.
Measuring critical thinking skills before and after the instruction, statistically significant improvements were confirmed in all domains: “Fact,” “Logic,” and “Perspective.” It was also found that the degree of improvement in critical thinking did not differ significantly based on the learners’ prior experience with AI. This confirmed that the model and strategies proposed in this study contribute to the enhancement of learners’ critical thinking skills.
The AI-Integrated Controversial Issue Instruction in this study led to a significant improvement in critical thinking. Learners were able to cultivate civic competencies by analyzing AI issues from a socio-structural perspective and deriving rational alternatives by considering diverse viewpoints. This study is significant in that it applied AI knowledge within the practical context of controversial issues and empirically and statistically verified the effect of critical thinking improvement by applying the developed model to an actual high school setting.