Abstract:

International frameworks such as UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Students and OECD’s AI Literacy Framework define essential knowledge, skills, attitudes, and ethics for learners in the AI era. Despite their growing influence, evidence on how these competencies translate into classroom practice is still emerging, particularly in K–12 education.

This study examines how primary and secondary students engage with generative AI (GenAI) during a structured workshop, and how their learning processes align with international competency frameworks.

Fifty-one students (31 primary, 20 secondary) participated in a five-hour workshop combining lectures on foundational concepts, hands-on activities, ethical reflections, and a culminating project. Data sources included demographics; pre- and post-surveys assessing GenAI attitudes, knowledge, and ethics; pre- and post-quizzes on knowledge and ethics; prompt logs from hands-on activities assessing GenAI skills; and interviews exploring skills and ethical awareness.

Students demonstrated notable improvements across all four dimensions of GenAI competency. In attitudes, participants reported higher confidence in using GenAI, stronger behavioural intention to adopt it in future learning, and high satisfaction with the workshop experience. In knowledge, quiz scores increased significantly, and interview responses revealed a deeper understanding of GenAI concepts and applications. Ethical awareness also strengthened, as evidenced by higher quiz scores and richer discussions of fairness, responsibility, and privacy. In skills, both primary and secondary students successfully completed image generation tasks using prompt engineering techniques. While both groups used similar prompt categories, secondary students produced longer prompts and incorporated more elements from reference prompts, indicating emerging proficiency in more advanced strategies. Interviews further highlighted students’ increasing sophistication in balancing technical prompting with ethical considerations.

By mapping observed behaviours to UNESCO’s and OECD’s competency frameworks, this study operationalizes abstract AI competencies into observable classroom practices. Findings offer actionable insights for curriculum design, ethics integration, and competency-based assessment, helping bridge global policy frameworks with practical pedagogy in K–12 settings.

Keywords:

Generative AI, AI literacy, AI competency, AI education.