From mathematics word problems to great literature to science texts, being able to read and write is of paramount importance to academic success. In addition, with the Federal mandate of "no child left behind" an increasing national priority is learning objectives that prepare students to do well on national standardized tests, and many of these learning objectives rely on literacy skills. Yet literacy remains a critical unsolved issue in our educational system, with national test scores showing that non-white children (e.g., African Americans and Hispanics) still score well below their Caucasian counterparts. Increasingly, approaches to this problem derive from the recognition that primary school education is based on a set of mainstream oral practices and literacy-preparation skills. Because many children do not share the same cultural experiences typical of mainstream culture, educational practitioners have applied a cultural-historical approach to identify common characteristics of ethnic groups, and then designed cultural supports for literacy learning by children of diverse backgrounds. But while classroom practice has been influenced by this approach, and training programs for parents have been instituted along these lines, it has been rare to see technological learning environments that leverage diversity in any but the most superficial ways (for example identical content characters with different skin color, or content based on traditional associations such as the Anancy myths). The PI believes she can do much better. To this end, in the current project she will first conduct an in-depth investigation into African-American peer-oriented oral language and literacy practices, in order to understand how cultural practices support individual learning and development in this population. Using these findings, she will then design a virtual peer that engages in authentic cultural practices with African-American children as a bridge to school-based literacy. As the technology is developed, the PI will bring it into classrooms and community centers, formatively evaluating and iteratively redesigning as necessary until the virtual peer is capable of being like African-American children in important ways, can exploit that affinity to establish rapport, and can leverage this rapport and linguistic interaction to help the child acquire literacy skills. Project outcomes will include a rich comparative description of the language and nonverbal practices of African-American and Caucasian children in peer-emergent literacy interaction, a set of behaviors that allow a virtual human to establish rapport with users (including local-level moment-by-moment interactional behaviors and larger scale culturally specific practices), and a Flash virtual peer and set of virtual peer behaviors that have been shown to improve literacy in the children interacting with the virtual peer, both for Standard American English (SAE) speakers and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) speakers. A summative evaluation will address transfer from interaction with the virtual peer to other standard literacy contexts and tests.
Broader Impacts: This project addresses fundamental issues relating to acquisition of literacy skills by young children who are members of an underserved population, and will lead to new technology for improving their literacy readiness. The PI will pursue an innovative program of dissemination of results and research practices that involves undergraduates from HBCUs, local schools with high populations of African Americans, and local churches and community centers, in order to broaden in the short term participation by African-American undergraduates in the engineering research behind this project and in the longer term participation in STEM by young African-American school children.
