Abstract
As schools shift to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to support disenfranchised populations and keep issues of equity at the center of our response. In this study, we focus on supporting one of the few urban-based Indigenous language schools in the United States because language revitalization (reversing the decline of a language) is critical for Native American communities. We explore the extent to which two remote instruction approaches, videoconferencing and flipped classrooms, support the development of a community of speakers. The study focuses on a single classroom of 16 students in 1st through 3rd grade. We use a digital decolonization framework focused on empowering local communities in conjunction with design based research methodology to explore contextualized remote instruction solutions. We report on results that identify the extent to which educational technology supports the development of a community of speakers considering the two aforementioned remote instruction modalities. We report on benefits for the development of a community of speakers from remote instruction that come with costs in reduced efficacy of language learning. Finally, we distill those results into preliminary design principles for pivoted language revitalization lessons.
Presenters
Christopher ButtimerPost-doctoral Associate, MIT, Massachusetts, United States Garron Hillaire
postdoctoral associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2021 Special Focus: Considering Viral Technologies: Pandemic-Driven Opportunities and Challenges
KEYWORDS
Digital Decolonization, Universal Design for Learning, Native Language Revitalization, COVID
