Technology's Role in Creating an Inclusive Classroom Community

• In Event: Teaching as Inquiry: Learning With and About Students

Abstract

Technology’s Role in Creating an Inclusive Classroom community


Purposes
While working at a school that placed a large value on technology and used computers very regularly, I began to wonder what impact this had on all of my students, but particularly on those with autism. This research explores technology’s effect on student questioning and discussion. It calls attention to how some students with disabilities, particularly those with autism, communicate. It looks more generally at what we can learn about students through their online communication versus in person communication, and how doing this can be leveraged to improve their in person participation.

Research Questions
My questions were at first broad:
How does the use of technology impact all our students and do they benefit in the same ways?
I eventually focused on the ways particular students discussed and disagreed, on line and in person, and how this ability evolved especially for one student with autism.

Methods and data sources
My research follows two online discussion platforms used by all students at our school and compares the online posts to transcripts of in-class discussions. It follows three students with varied learning styles and abilities with regard to communication. I explored online discussion posts for each student through the year. I also recorded the majority of our Socratic Seminar discussions (a focus in all classes at our school) and used the transcripts from those recordings for comparison to the online discussion posts.

Results
This work affected my practice and my thinking about teaching in three major areas.
The first is that I got to know students on a deeper level due to existing records of students’ thoughts. Online discussion boards are more casual than the majority of writing students turned in to teachers, so seeing their thoughts on this platform allowed me to pick up, and reflect on, some of the emotions and interests of my students I would not have seen otherwise..
Second, the technology allowed us to build an intellectual and social community. Students took ownership of the classroom websites and used them to work with each other both during school and outside of school. It changed the way that students collaborate.
Finally, and most important, I was able to help students who did not participate easily in class carry their online talk into their in-person discussions; I was then able to bring their on line ideas and emotions to the attention of others in the classroom. The class became more patient with each other in class and these students in particular became a stronger part of the community. I will present examples and my reflections in each of these areas. While our use of technology was certainly not perfect, I do believe the benefits outweighed the drawbacks, and I discuss both throughout the paper.

References
Pollock, Mica. (2016). “Smart Tech Use for Equity,” in Teaching Tolerance, no. 52, Spring 2016
“Data Divide” in Education Week, June 15, 2017

Author

• Kathleen Boyle, Teachers College, Columbia University