Michel DeGraff
MIT-Haiti
Initiative
Technology and Pedagogy
Promoting active learning and Kreyòl language in science,
technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines, to help Haitians
learn in the language most of them speak at home.
A project for
the development, evaluation and dissemination of active-learning
resources in Kreyòl to help improve Science, Technology, Engineering
and Math (STEM) education plus leadership and management in Haiti.
Dr. Michel
DeGraff is a professor of Linguistics at MIT, and the Principal
Investigator of the MIT-Haiti Initiative. He is a leading expert in
enabling science and engineering pedagogy within educational systems
throughout Haiti and concentrated Kreyòl speaking population
settings around the world. His collaborations with Google and other
research sponsored entities are educational breakthrough achievements
in allowing young people to learn STEM related technologies taught in
the classrooms where their native language Kreyòl is the primary
language of learning.
Professor
DeGraff is the Director of MIT-Haiti Initiative, Founding Member of
Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen. His research interests are in Syntax,
Morphology, and Language Change.
MIT-Haiti,
Google team up to boost education in Kreyòl
Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
October 30, 2017
Excerpt from Published Article
In recent years, MIT scholars have helped develop a whole lexicon of
science and math terms for use in Haiti’s Kreyòl language. Now a
collaboration with Google is making those terms readily available to
anyone — an important step in the expansion of Haitian Kreyòl for
education purposes.
The new project, centered around the MIT-Haiti Initiative, has been
launched as part of an enhancement to the Google Translate program.
Now anyone using Google Translate can find an extensive set of Kreyòl
terms, including recent coinages, in the science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines.
“In the past five or six years, we’ve witnessed quite a paradigm
shift in the way people in Haiti talk about and use Kreyòl,” says
Michel DeGraff, a professor of linguistics at MIT and director of the
MIT-Haiti Initiative. “Having Google Translate on board is going to
be another source of intellectual, cultural, economic, and political
capital for Kreyòl,” he notes, adding that the project will aid
“anyone in the world now, if someone is interested in producing
text in Kreyòl from any language.”
MIT-Haiti
Initiative
The
Challenge
In Haiti, 95
percent of the population is fluent in Kreyòl only; at most 5% of
the Haitian population speaks French fluently. “In Haiti’s
classrooms,” said Guerda Jean-Guillaume, professor at the Training
Center for Fundamental Schools in Haiti, “most children do not like
to ask or answer questions. They are constantly struggling to
translate from Kreyòl into French or from French into Kreyòl.”
French is the
primary language of instruction in Haiti’s classrooms. School exams
as well as national assessment tests are mostly conducted in French,
rather than Kreyòl, and STEM course materials for high schools and
universities have been available almost exclusively in French —
until recently when the work of pro-Kreyòl educators both in Haiti
and abroad, including work by the MIT-Haiti Initiative, started
showing the key benefits of a Kreyòl-based education at all levels
of the education system.
The Response
This Initiative
meets a crucial need in Haiti. It introduces modern techniques and
tools for interactive pedagogy in STEM while contributing to the
development, by Haitians and for Haitians, of digital resources and
curricula in Kreyòl.
“The basic
premise of our initiative,” DeGraff explains, “is that using
Kreyòl for Haitian education is an essential ingredient to improving
quality and access for education for all.”
Select
Research, Publications, Educational Initiatives and Implementation
English
“A
Haitian Creole program for preschoolers arrives in Mattapan”
In
Boston
Globe,
September 7, 2017
“How
Discrimination Nearly Stalled a Dual-Language Program in
Boston.”
In
The
Atlantic Monthly, April
7, 2017.
“Haiti’s
“linguistic apartheid” violates children’s rights and
hampers development”
In
openDemocracy,
January
2017
Kreyòl
Education:
University of
Pennsylvania
Doctor of
Philosophty (Ph.D.), Computer Science and Linguistics
1986-1992
City University
of New York City College
Bachelor's
degree, Mathematics and Computer Science
1982-1985
