Educational Technologies to Support Linguistically Diverse Students, and the Challenges of Classroom Integration

Though one of the main benefits of educational technologies is their ability to provide personalized instruction, many systems are still built with a one-size-fits-all approach to culture. In our work, we’ve demonstrated that there may be learning benefits when technologies use the same non-standard dialects as students, but that educators are likely to be initially resistant to technologies that bring non-standard dialect practices into the classroom. Based on what we have uncovered about teachers’ needs and expectations regarding this type of classroom technology, our future work will investigate how systems designed to align with these needs may be able to support both students and teachers in this complex educational problem and promote a positive classroom culture.