Artificial Intelligence Applications in K-12 Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Education is a vital part of the development of society and it is changing over time in terms of methods, content, concepts, and models. Recently, it has been increasingly prevalent to benefit from the potentialities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in addressing educational issues. In this research, the current state of the art of the integration of AI in K-12 education was provided. Specifically, different parts of education in which AI was employed along with the related AI categories were discussed according to different K-12 grades and courses. Additionally, technologies and environments that contributed to employing AI in education were discussed. To this end, a systematic literature review was conducted on articles and conference papers published between 2011 and 2021 in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. As the result of the initial search, 2075 documents were extracted and based on inclusive criteria and 210 documents were identified for further investigation. AI applications were categorized into Student performance, Teaching, Selection, and Behavior tasks, and Other. Machine Learning (ML) and Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) were the most common approaches among AI categories. Furthermore, high school-related applications were more frequent and STEM courses were substantially targeted by AI. In conclusion, the remarkable impact of AI on education was concluded. The current study reveals information about the potentialities offered by AI in K-12 education which aids researchers in implementing AI-based education systems. As for future works, other databases such as ACM library and Google Scholar can be investigated as well. Furthermore, exploring the 95 papers that were excluded due to inaccessibility to their full texts can be taken into account. Finally, the papers can be also investigated in terms of pedagogical approaches or development tools.