Abstract
Dialectal differences are one explanation for the systematically reduced test scores of children of color compared to their Euro-American peers. In this work, we explore the relationship between academic performance and dialect differences exhibited in a learning environment by assessing 3rd grade students’ science performance after interacting with a “distant peer” technology that employed one of three dialect use patterns. We found that our participants, all native speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), demonstrated the strongest science performance when the technology used AAVE features consistently throughout the interaction. These results call for a re-examination of the cultural assumptions underlying the design of educational technologies, with a specific emphasis on the way in which we present information to culturally-underrepresented groups.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Gutiérrez, K.D., Rogoff, B.: Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational Researcher 32(5), 19–25 (2003)
Lee, C.D.: Bridging home and school literacies: Models for culturally responsive teaching, a case for African American English. In: Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, pp. 334–345 (1997)
Michaels, S.A.: Sharing time: children’s narrative styles and differential access to literacy. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (1991)
Atkinson, J.L.: Are We Creating the Achievement Gap? Examining How Deficit Mentalities Influence Indigenous Science Curriculum Choices. In: Cultural Studies and Environmentalism, pp. 439–446 (2010)
Morrison, F.J., Bachman, H.J., Connor, C.M.: Improving literacy in America: Guidelines from research. Yale University Press (2005)
Gann, R.R.: Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In: Handbook of Erly Literacy Research, pp. 97–110 (2001)
Craig, H.K., Thompson, C.A., Washington, J.A., Potter, S.L.: Phonological Features of Child African American English. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 55, 623–635 (2003)
Green, L.J.: African American English: a linguistic introduction. Cambridge University Press (2002)
Rickford, J.R., Labov, W.: African American vernacular English: Features, evolution, educational implications, p. 157. Blackwell, Oxford (1999)
Connor, C., Craig, H.: African American preschoolers’ language, emergent literacy skills, and use of African American English: A complex relation. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49, 771–792 (2006)
Charity, A.H., Scarborough, H.S., Griffin, D.M.: Familiarity with school English in African American children and its relation to early reading achievement. Child Development 75(5), 1340–1356 (2004)
Scarborough, H.S.: Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In: Neuman, S.B., Dickinson, D.K. (eds.) Handbook of Early Literacy Research, pp. 97–110. Guilford, New York (2001)
Ball, A.F., Farr, M.: Language varieties, culture, and teaching the English. In: Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts, pp. 435–445. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah (2003)
Terry, N.P., Connor, C.M., Thomas-Tate, S., Love, M.: Examining relationships among dialect variation, literacy skills, and school context in first grade. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 53(1), 126 (2010)
Connor, C.M.: Language and literacy connections for children who are African American. Perspectives on Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations 15, 43–53 (2008)
Mohatt, G., Erickson, F.: Cultural differences in teaching styles in an Odawa school: A sociolinguistic approach. Culture and the Bilingual Classroom: Studies in Classroom Ethnography 105 (1981)
Gill, M.M.: Accent and stereotypes: Their effect on perceptions of teachers and lecture comprehension (1994)
Webb, L., Webb, P.: Introducing discussion into multilingual mathematics classrooms: An issue of code switching? Pythagoras (67), 26–32 (2011)
Cassell, J.: Social practice: Becoming enculturated in human-computer interaction. In: Stephanidis, C. (ed.) UAHCI 2009, Part III. LNCS, vol. 5616, pp. 303–313. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Eglash, R., Bennett, A., O’Donnell, C., Jennings, S., Cintorino, M.: Culturally situated design tools: Ethnocomputing from field site to classroom. American Anthropologist 108(2), 347–362 (2006)
Gilbert, J.E., Arbuthnot, K., Hood, S., Grant, M.M., West, M.L., McMillian, Y., Eugene, W.: Teaching algebra using culturally relevant virtual instructors. The International Journal of Virtual Reality 7(1), 21–30 (2008)
Pinkard, N.: Rappin’Reader and Say Say Oh Playmate: Using children’s childhood songs as literacy scaffolds in computer-based learning environments. Journal of Educational Computing Research 25(1), 17–34 (2001)
Hayes-Roth, B., Maldonado, H., Moraes, M.: Designing for diversity: Multi-cultural characters for a multi-cultural world. In: Proceedings of IMAGINA, pp. 207–225 (2002)
Moreno, K.N., Person, N.K., Adcock, A.B., Eck, R.N.V., Jackson, G.T., Marineau, J.C.: Etiquette and efficacy in animated pedagogical agents: The role of stereotypes. In: AAAI Symposium on Personalized Agents, Cape Cod, MA (2002)
Baylor, A.L., Kim, Y.: Simulating instructional roles through pedagogical agents. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 15(1), 95–115 (2005)
Cassell, J., Geraghty, K., Gonzalez, B., Borland, J.: Modeling culturally authentic style shifting with virtual peers. In: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, pp. 135–142. ACM (2009)
Ogan, A., Finkelstein, S., Cassell, J.: Starting where the teachers are: Culturally-Sensitive Educational Technology Through a Teacher’s Lens (in preparation)
Finkelstein, S., Scherer, S., Ogan, A., Morency, L.P., Cassell, J.: Investigating the influence of virtual peers as dialect models on students’ prosodic inventory. In: Workshop on Child, Computer and Interaction (WOCCI 2012). ISCA, Oregon (2012)
Linn, M.C.: The knowledge integration perspective on learning and instruction. In: The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, pp. 243–264 (2006)
McNeill, K.L., Krajcik, J.S.: Supporting Grade 5-8 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science: The Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Framework for Talk and Writing. Pearson, Upper Saddle River (2011)
Chi, M.T.: Quantifying qualitative analyses of verbal data: A practical guide. The Journal of the Learning Sciences 6(3), 271–315 (1997)
Renn, J.: Acquiring style| The development of dialect shifting among African American children. Doctoral dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2010)
Schunk, D.H.: Peer models and children’s behavioral change. Review of Educational Research 57(2), 149–174 (1987)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Finkelstein, S., Yarzebinski, E., Vaughn, C., Ogan, A., Cassell, J. (2013). The Effects of Culturally Congruent Educational Technologies on Student Achievement. In: Lane, H.C., Yacef, K., Mostow, J., Pavlik, P. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7926. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39112-5_50
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39112-5_50
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39111-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39112-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)