Compensating the socioeconomic achievement gap with computer‐assisted instruction

Abstract

Background. As educational digital technologies are increasingly being used in schools, past research left unanswered the question of these technologies' impact on the socioeconomic achievement gap even when equal access is guaranteed.Objectives. The objectives of the present study are to examine whether and how the socioeconomic achievement gap can be reduced through the use of computer-assisted instruction (CAI).Methods. We addressed this issue experimentally by comparing CAI to conventional teacherled classroom instruction with more than eight hundred middle and high school students from disadvantaged and highly privileged socioeconomic backgrounds in a range of topics. Results and Conclusions.Both disadvantaged and highly privileged students taught with CAI outperformed those taught with conventional instruction, thus maintaining the socioeconomic achievement gap constant. However, we also found that disadvantaged students receiving CAI performed as well as highly privileged students receiving conventional teacher-led instruction.Takeaways. The positive effects associated with CAI may therefore help compensate the difficulties of students with a disadvantaged background, a still neglected possibility.

On the promise of personalized learning for educational equity

“…Others found that initially low-performing students 46 and students with lower working memory capacity 47 learned less than their more competent peers when using technology-enabled personalized learning systems. Experimentally addressing the question whether computer-assisted instruction can narrow the SES achievement gap, Chevalère et al 48 found that students from low- and high-SES backgrounds benefited equally from such instruction in comparison to conventional teacher-led instruction. Importantly, even though the SES achievement gap remained the same, low-SES students receiving computer-assisted instruction performed comparably well to high-SES students receiving conventional instruction.…”