Postdoctoral position, Artificial Intelligence in K-12 Classrooms

Job Summary

The Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher to join a national research effort that aims to develop, deploy, critique, and study state-of-the-art artificial intelligence in support of K-12 classroom learning. This effort brings together a geographically distributed team of researchers from nine universities with partners from K-12 school districts, industry, and nonprofits to address the central challenge of how to promote deep conceptual learning via rich socio-collaborative learning experiences for students. In this position, you will lead efforts to develop, enact, and study new participatory engagement models that enable students, teachers, parents, and community members to participate in the development and critical analysis of AI technologies for classrooms. You will also conduct fundamental research related to these efforts that will advance our understanding in related policy areas such as responsible innovation, ethics, and equity. This position warrants a motivated, creative individual who shares our commitment to promote equity through the development of learning environments that center the interests, hopes, and concerns of Black, Latinx, Native American, female and gender nonbinary, neurodiverse, and emerging multilingual students and their communities.

This position provides an exciting opportunity to be involved with a multi-institution team working on the responsible and ethical integration of AI into classrooms.

Who We Are

This position is co-sponsored by the National AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming and the Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences (CIRCLS).

The Institute for Student-AI Teaming, funded by National Science Foundation (NSF), will develop and study AI Partners that interact with students and teachers in classrooms and in remote learning settings. In particular, the Institute seeks to understand the possibilities and limitations of using AI partners in promoting collaboration in classrooms. The AI partners will be designed with students, teachers, family, and community members with an effort to center responsible and ethical innovation. The Institute is also collaboratively developing curricula that support students to learn about AI, develop a critical lens to understand the risks of AI, and envision uses of AI that are responsive to their visions of justice. This 5-year, $20 million research collaboration is led by the University of Colorado Boulder, with partners at Colorado State University, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, Brandeis University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and UW Madison.

CIRCLS is a community-based hub for NSF-funded researchers who explore and investigate technologies that will be available to learners in 5-10 years. CIRCLS focuses on synergistic activities that engage researchers across multiple universities and projects, such as developing research primers, roadmaps or syntheses. CIRCLS is hosted by Digital Promise, a nonprofit organization that fosters productive connections among researchers, educators, and technologists in order to advance powerful and equitable learning.

What Your Key Responsibilities Will Be

The postdoctoral researcher will help design, organize, and lead national workshops that bring together teachers, families, community members, activists, and thought leaders as curriculum co-designers and as partners in responsible innovation toward ethical uses of AI in learning.

Additionally, the postdoctoral researcher will play a central role in producing collaborative whitepapers and/or other publications that represent the perspectives of these various partner groups.

The postdoctoral researcher will work closely with researchers from the Institute and CIRCLS. They will be supervised by Thomas M. Philip at UC Berkeley and Jeremy Roschelle at Digital Promise. The position offers outstanding postdoctoral training experience and publishing opportunities within multi-department and multi-institution grant-funded projects.

The postdoc will be encouraged to strengthen their research portfolios via peer-reviewed publications, gain interdisciplinary experience by working with a diverse team, and develop leadership skills by mentoring students.

What You Should Know

• Initial employment will be for one year. Based on performance, employment could be extended.
• The start date is negotiable but anticipated for early

Salary and Benefits

• A competitive salary commensurate with experience and full

What We Require

• D. in Learning Sciences, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Information Studies, Education or a related field.
• Demonstrated ability to successfully publish and present peer-reviewed scientific articles.

What You Will Need

• Experience in developing, studying, and/or analyzing AI models based on contemporary machine learning and/or natural language processing approaches
• Strong writing and communication skills and the ability to conduct research in interdisciplinary
• Experience working with students, teachers, families, and community

What We Would Like You to Have

• Experience organizing and facilitating working group meetings with educators, students, community members, scientists, and/or
• A scholarly background that includes a mix of expertise in (a) AI or strong knowledge about AI concepts and approaches, (b) the study and design of teaching and learning within schools and/or other learning environments, and (c) responsible, ethical and equitable use of technology in teaching and

Application Instructions

To apply, please submit the following materials:

• Resume/CV
• Cover Letter
• List of References
• Professional Publications: one or two representative publications

Please email your application material to Thomas M. Philip (tmp@berkeley.edu) and Jeremy Roschelle (jroschelle@digitalpromise.org ) with the subject line “AI Postdoc Application.”

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis starting immediately until the position has been filled.