LLMs to Support K-12 Teachers in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: An AI Literacy Example

Abstract: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) is vital in K-12 education, yet teachers struggle to implement CRP into practice due to time, training, and resource gaps. This study explores how LLMs can address these barriers by introducing CulturAIEd, an LLM tool that assists teachers in adapting AI literacy curricula to students' cultural contexts. Through an exploratory pilot with four K-12 teachers, we examined CulturAIEd's impact on CRP integration. Results showed CulturAIEd enhanced teachers' confidence in identifying opportunities for cultural responsiveness in learning activities and making culturally responsive modifications to existing activities. They valued CulturAIEd's streamlined integration of student demographic information, immediate actionable feedback, which could result in high implementation efficiency. This exploration of teacher-AI collaboration highlights how LLM can help teachers include CRP components into their instructional practices efficiently, especially in global priorities for future-ready education, such as AI literacy.