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Eduzone: A Framework For Evaluating LLM Safety For K-12 Students And Teachers

Authors
Junyeong Park,
Jieun Han,
Haneul Yoo,
So-Yeon Ahn,
Jinsung Yoon,
Alice Oh
Date
Publisher
arXiv
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used across diverse tasks in K-12 education, yet existing safety evaluations rarely examine how harmful or inappropriate content appears in interactions between LLMs and students or teachers. To address this, we present EduZone, an evaluation framework for LLM safety across diverse educational scenarios. Our framework systematically combines (1) student- and teacher-facing LLM usage contexts, (2) fine-grained curriculum concepts, and (3) 6 risk categories and 28 subcategories spanning both conventional and education-specific harms to generate contextually grounded adversarial interactions. We construct these interactions in three settings: single-turn requests, static multi-turn conversations, and dynamic multi-turn conversations. Using these interactions, we evaluate ten LLMs using four safety levels: refusal, safe assistance, risky assistance with safety guidance, and fully risky assistance. Our results reveal greater vulnerability to education-specific risks and dynamic multi-turn interactions, while existing safety guardrails fail to adequately address these risks. EduZone advances LLM safety in education by providing an automated, scalable evaluation framework that supports the development and deployment of safer LLMs in K-12 education.
Study at a glance
  • Question: How safe are large language models when interacting with K-12 students and teachers across different educational situations?
  • Setting and data: Ten large language models and simulated K-12 student and teacher interactions across curriculum concepts.
  • Method: Automated safety evaluation using single-turn requests and multi-turn conversations across educational risk categories.
Why it matters

Large language models are increasingly used across diverse tasks in K-12 education, yet existing safety evaluations rarely examine how harmful or inappropriate content appears in interactions between LLMs and students or teachers.

Key findings
  • Across ten language models tested in K-12 settings, the AI showed greater vulnerability to education-specific risks than to conventional harms.
  • AI tools were more vulnerable to safety risks during dynamic, back-and-forth conversations than during single requests.
  • Existing safety guardrails failed to adequately address education-specific risks in interactions with students and teachers.

Summary drafted with AI from the paper’s abstract and may contain errors. See the full paper for details.

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