Empowering the Underserved Classroom: Web Technology as a Conduit for STEAM and Inquiry-Based Learning

Abstract

This dissertation follows past research that analyzes and proposes solutions to improve learning outcomes and mitigate educational inequality in America’s inner-city and rural public schools. The belief is that in doing so, the affected students are better prepared to succeed socially and economically as adults. After analysis, a public-school student’s access and experience with EdTech, highly effective creative pedagogies, and student-centered learning often depend on her parent’s income, where she lives, her ethnicity, or her race. If her parents are middle-class and own a home in a middle or upper-class neighborhood, she is much more likely to receive the most effective public education America can provide. If her parents are working-class, newly immigrated, or racial minorities, she often learns in an underserved classroom that provides a sub-standard education and lacks the tools, strategies, and experiences that make learning highly effective. Besides worsening inequality, this reality poses two other possible results. The first is to the underserved child’s success as she matriculates through school, and the second is her potential upward mobility. There are, of course, competing ideas for rectifying educational inequality. These fixes include charter schools, vouchers, cultural sensitivity training, privatization, and eliminating teachers’ unions, to name a few. However, this essay offers less disruptive approaches that teachers can use in the classroom. The primary argument is a social determinist view of technology which holds that when used as a conduit for instituting creative pedagogies and Inquiry-Based Learning, 21st-century education technology (EdTech) web-based platforms can be a valuable tool for mitigating education and technology inequality for underserved students. The direct result is that underserved students receive engaging, well-rounded curricula that inspire them to own their learning while also maximizing their critical and creative thinking skills. Moreover, by becoming Masters of Technology, they are empowered to mobilize upward in American society.

First Advisor

Sean O’Callaghan

Date of Award

1-1-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

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