Assistant Professor So Jung Kim, in the School of Teacher Education (STE) at the College of Education, was awarded a $10,000 grant from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Scholarship. Her proposal, Bridging Teaching Practice and Research: Pre-service Teachers’ AI-Supported Lesson Planning in Early Childhood Classrooms, was selected as part of the 2026 Mentoring Grant for Summer Undergraduate Research and Creative Work.
Kimʻs project will investigate teacher candidates’ ethical use of AI in lesson planning and material development. The goal of the project is to understand how early childhood preservice teachers critically evaluate AI-generated content and reflect on its appropriate integration into their teaching practice.
“This funding is meaningful to me because it allows me to mentor my cohort students as they move beyond course assignments and engage in deeper inquiry into their own teaching practice,” Kim said. “It creates opportunities for them to reflect on their classroom experiences from more critical perspectives and begin to see themselves not simply as students, but as emerging contributors to the field of early childhood education.”
Over the course of a year, students will explore: opportunities and challenges they encounter when critically evaluating AI-generated instructional content; ways in which they integrate AI-generated content into their instructional planning while maintaining pedagogical soundness; and how they negotiate the balance between AI-generated input and their own professional judgment when using AI tools, like ChatGPT, for lesson planning.
“This project will provide teacher candidates in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) program with meaningful opportunities to engage with COE learning standards as they critically examine ways to thoughtfully and responsibly integrate emerging AI technologies into their professional practice,” Kim said.
Kim will mentor a small team of undergraduate students as they design and implement classroom lesson plans and develop their work into scholarly projects for presentation at local conferences and potential submission to peer reviewed journals. She will continue to work with them to analyze the data, interpret the findings, and connect their work to broader research conversations in the field.
“I hope to support my cohort students in strengthening the connection between theory and classroom practice while gaining early experience in research and scholarly writing,” Kim said. “I also hope this project will help them develop confidence in using emerging technologies thoughtfully while beginning to see their classrooms as spaces for inquiry and professional growth.”
