SGER: Multicultural Story Listening Systems

从数学应用题到伟大的文学作品再到科学文本，阅读和写作能力对学业成功至关重要。此外，随着“不让任何一个孩子掉队”的联邦授权，使学生在国家标准化考试中取得好成绩的学习目标日益成为国家的优先事项，其中许多学习目标依赖于识字技能。然而，在我们的教育体系中，读写能力仍然是一个关键的未解决问题，全国考试成绩显示，非白人儿童（如非洲裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人）的成绩仍然远低于白人儿童。解决这一问题的方法越来越多地源于这样一种认识，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。由于许多儿童没有共同的典型的主流文化的文化体验，教育从业者运用文化历史的方法来识别民族群体的共同特征，然后设计文化支持不同背景的儿童识字学习。但是，尽管课堂实践受到了这种方法的影响，而且针对家长的培训计划也沿着这条路线制定了，但除了最肤浅的方式（例如，相同的内容角色具有不同的肤色，或者基于传统联想的内容，如Anancy神话）之外，很少看到技术学习环境以任何方式利用多样性。私家侦探相信她可以做得更好。为此，在目前的项目中，她将首先对非裔美国人以同龄人为导向的口语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，她将设计一个虚拟同伴，与非裔美国儿童一起进行真实的文化实践，作为学校扫盲的桥梁。随着技术的发展，PI将把它带入教室和社区中心，根据需要形成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涌现的识字互动中的语言和非语言行为的丰富比较描述，一系列允许虚拟人类与用户建立融洽关系的行为（包括地方层面的每时每刻互动行为和更大规模的文化特定实践），以及Flash虚拟同伴和一组虚拟同伴行为，这些行为已被证明可以提高与虚拟同伴互动的儿童的读写能力，包括标准美国英语（SAE）使用者和非裔美国人白话英语（AAVE）使用者。总结性评估将涉及从与虚拟同伴的互动到其他标准读写环境和测试的转移。更广泛的影响：该项目解决了服务不足人口中的幼儿获得识字技能的基本问题，并将带来提高他们识字准备程度的新技术。PI将推行一项创新的成果和研究实践传播计划，涉及来自HBCUs的本科生、非洲裔美国人人口较多的当地学校、当地教堂和社区中心，以扩大非洲裔美国本科生对该项目背后的工程研究的短期参与，并扩大非洲裔美国学生对STEM的长期参与。

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.