SGER: Multicultural Story Listening Systems

SGER：多元文化故事聆听系统

• 批准号: 0538610
• 负责人: Justine Cassell
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-07-15 至 2006-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0538610&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SGER; Multicultural; Story; Listening; Systems

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.

从数学应用题到伟大的文学再到科学文本，能够阅读和写作对于学术成功至关重要。 此外，随着联邦“不让一个孩子掉队”的任务规定，国家越来越优先重视使学生为在国家标准化考试中取得好成绩做好准备的学习目标，而这些学习目标中有许多依赖于识字技能。 然而，识字仍然是我们教育系统中一个关键的未解决问题，国家考试成绩显示，非白人儿童（例如，非洲裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人）的得分仍然远低于白人。 解决这一问题的办法越来越多地来自于这样一种认识，即小学教育是以一套主流的口语练习和识字准备技能为基础的。 由于许多儿童并不拥有主流文化中典型的相同文化体验，教育工作者采用了文化历史方法来确定族裔群体的共同特征，然后为不同背景的儿童的识字学习设计文化支持。 但是，虽然课堂实践受到这种方法的影响，并且已经沿着这些方针制定了针对父母的培训计划，但很少看到技术学习环境以任何方式利用多样性，但最肤浅的方式（例如，具有不同肤色的相同内容角色，或基于传统协会的内容，如Anancy神话）。 PI相信她可以做得更好。 为此，在目前的项目中，她将首先对非洲裔美国人的同伴导向的口头语言和识字实践进行深入调查，以了解文化习俗如何支持这一人群的个人学习和发展。 利用这些发现，她将设计一个虚拟的同龄人，从事与非洲裔美国儿童的真实文化实践作为一个桥梁，以学校为基础的识字。 随着技术的发展，PI将把它带到教室和社区中心，必要时进行形成性评估和迭代重新设计，直到虚拟同伴能够在重要方面像非洲裔美国儿童一样，可以利用这种亲和力建立融洽关系，并可以利用这种融洽关系和语言互动来帮助孩子获得识字技能。 项目成果将包括对非裔美国人和白人儿童在同伴紧急识字互动中的语言和非语言实践的丰富比较描述，这是一组允许虚拟人与用户建立融洽关系的行为（包括地方层面的即时干预行为和更大规模的文化特定做法），以及Flash虚拟同伴和一组虚拟同伴行为，这些行为已经被证明可以提高与虚拟同伴交互的儿童的读写能力，无论是标准美国英语（SAE）使用者还是非裔美国人方言英语（AAVE）使用者。 总结性评价将解决从与虚拟同伴的互动转移到其他标准识字环境和测试的问题。 更广泛的影响：该项目涉及与服务不足人口中的幼儿获得识字技能有关的基本问题，并将导致采用新技术来提高他们的识字准备程度。 PI将推行一项创新的成果和研究实践传播计划，涉及HBCU的本科生，非裔美国人人口众多的当地学校，以及当地教堂和社区中心，以扩大非裔美国本科生在该项目背后的工程研究中的短期参与，以及年轻的非裔美国学生在STEM中的长期参与。