Call for Participation

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in the infrastructure of K–16 education, shaping how students explore interests, interpret feedback, and imagine future STEM careers. As AI systems begin to influence advising, pathway exploration, and access to opportunity information, important questions arise about how these technologies should be responsibly designed, governed, and evaluated—particularly when deployed at scale across diverse educational contexts.

This workshop invites researchers, educators, designers, and policymakers to examine the role of AI in supporting STEM career development while maintaining learner agency and avoiding the reproduction of structural inequities. Participants will engage in lightning talks, interactive activities, and interdisciplinary discussions to collaboratively identify key challenges, governance principles, and research priorities for responsible AI in career exploration across the K–16 continuum.

Submission Formats

To participate, please submit either:

• a motivation essay (1–2 pages) describing your background and interest in the workshop
• a short paper (2–4 pages, excluding references) presenting research contributions related to one or more workshop topics.

Submissions should follow the ACM template in single-column format and will be reviewed by the organizing committee based on relevance and diversity of perspectives. Accepted submissions will be shared with participants prior to the workshop to support meaningful discussion.

We aim to host approximately 25–35 participants (excluding organizers), primarily selected from co-authors of accepted workshop submissions. This size is intentionally designed to balance diversity of perspectives with depth of interaction. A group of this scale allows for sustained small-group dialogue, structured synthesis, and meaningful exchange across roles and research communities.

Participants will be selected to ensure representation across developmental stages (middle school, high school, undergraduate) and stakeholder perspectives (students, families, educators/advisors, institutions/industry). We will also aim to include attendees from multiple disciplinary backgrounds, including Learning@Scale, Educational Data Mining, AI in Education, Human-Computer Interactions, learning sciences, STEM education, and educational policy. Including both researchers and practitioners is a priority, as the workshop seeks to bridge system-level research with real-world advising and implementation contexts.

During registration, participants will indicate their primary area of expertise and preferred discussion focus. Final group composition will be adjusted onsite to ensure balanced discussion and interdisciplinary exchange.

• Submit your paper on time and get it accepted (most papers should be accepted unless we receive more than ~35 submissions, which is the capacity the venue can accommodate).
• Register for the Learning Festival—the workshop is included at no extra cost.
• Join us in person in South Korea for the workshop.

Accepted submissions will be non-archival. All accepted position papers will be published on the workshop website prior to the conference to support early engagement among participants. With authors' permission, papers will remain publicly accessible as a resource for the broader community. Authors will be encouraged to upload their work to arXiv or similar repositories and may revise and submit their work to future peer-reviewed venues.