Can Artificial Intelligence Help Children Better Understand Science?

A new approach shows that artificial intelligence can play a key role in students’ science learning. A recent study explored how an advanced artificial intelligence tool can assess and improve students’ understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed. This ability to reflect on the nature of science, called epistemic understanding, is essential for learning to investigate, interpret data, and build knowledge.

The experiment involved 80 students aged 10 to 11 in South Korea. Their responses to a questionnaire on the scientific method were analyzed both by teachers and by a specially programmed artificial intelligence. The results revealed that the artificial intelligence was able to assess the students’ responses with accuracy comparable to that of humans, achieving an agreement rate of 89%. It also generated personalized feedback to help each student progress.

The feedback produced by the artificial intelligence proved particularly effective in encouraging students to reflect on their own ideas. For example, the tool could highlight the strengths of a response while suggesting ways to improve it, using the student’s own words. This helped to boost their confidence and their ability to engage actively in their learning.

However, some challenges remain. The Korean formulations generated by the artificial intelligence were sometimes unnatural, which could undermine the clarity of the feedback. This highlights the importance of adapting these tools to the linguistic and cultural specificities of students.

This study opens up promising prospects for the use of artificial intelligence in education. It could become a dialogue partner for students, helping them develop a deeper and more critical understanding of science. For teachers, it also offers a new tool for providing individualized feedback and stimulating student reflection. In the future, refining these technologies could transform the way young people learn to reason and explore the scientific world.

Documentation and Sources

Reference Document

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-026-10298-5

Title: Harnessing Generative AI to Facilitate Epistemic Understanding of Students in Scientific Inquiry

Journal: Journal of Science Education and Technology

Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Authors: Jina Chang; Jisun Park; Ju Yeon Sim