STEM Familia Talk: A bilingual language acquisition smart speaker app to improve academic vocabulary, engagement and long-term education and health outcomes for Latino students and their families

Oregon Res Behavioral Intervention Strat, Springfield OR

Investigators

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Talk STEM Familia: A language acquisition smart speaker-based app to improve English language acquisition and family engagement and promote long-term educational and health outcomes among first- and second-generation Latino families. A project to enhance the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) proficiency of Latino elementary students to prepare them for success in secondary- and college-level STEM content courses, and in STEM fields after graduation. While STEM fields account for most U.S. economic growth, Latino students are less likely to enroll or complete degrees in undergraduate and graduate STEM programs. Given well-established research linking grade completion, economic success, and overall health and well-being, this trend portends serious, negative, long-term physical and mental health outcomes for Latinos. Access to higher education generally, and to enrollment in STEM programs in particular, is hindered by lagging academic literacy and especially by unfamiliarity with abstract words that make up the scientific academic vocabulary (SAV). Words such as dimension, evidence, magnitude, integrate, mechanism, parameter, and component are fundamental to STEM and higher content-area learning, but are uncommon in everyday conversation, particularly in lower-SES homes where English is not the first language. To promote Latino students? SAV proficiency, we propose a smart-speaker-based approach to acquiring and practicing SAV in natural family settings. We will build technology that schools can share with upper- elementary students and their families to increase students? exposure and practice with evidence-based SAV instruction. Talk STEM Familia, a Spanish-English app for more widely used smart-speakers will provide a school-to-home bridge that enables families? engagement in their child?s academic language acquisition. Smart-speaker technology can be used to deploy rich audio learning strategies, including (1) bilingual instruction in definitions of target words and their pronunciations, (2) on-demand audio games that stimulate vocabulary recognition, pronunciation, usage practice, and recall, and (3) brief audio dialogues that model the use and prompt practice of target words in culturally appropriate family and STEM contexts. Talk STEM Familia will leverage limited classroom instructional time by enabling content-area and ELD teachers to provide synchronous practice opportunities and feedback on SAV learning. Phase I will establish proof of concept by testing a Talk STEM Familia prototype. This will involve the participation of 135 participants in: focus groups, design and testing of an interaction design, usability testing, and program evaluation. The latter will involve a pilot study of 50 dyads of Latino 4th/5th grade students and one of their parents. In Phase II we will build the full program and subject it to a randomized controlled study with a large and adequately powered sample of students and their families.