학술논문
Saharaline: A Collective Social Support Intervention for Teachers in Low-Income Indian Schools
Document Type
Working Paper
Source
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI2024)
Subject
Language
Abstract
This paper presents Saharaline, an intervention designed to provide collective social support for teachers in low-income schools. Implemented as a WhatsApp-based helpline, Saharaline enables teachers to reach out for personalized, long-term assistance with a wide range of problems and stressors, including pedagogical, emotional, and technological challenges. Depending on the support needed, teachers' requests are routed to appropriate domain experts -- staff employed by educational non-profit organizations who understand teachers' on-the-ground realities -- who offer localized and contextualized assistance. Via a three-month exploratory deployment with 28 teachers in India, we show how Saharaline's design enabled a collective of diverse education experts to craft and deliver localized solutions that teachers could incorporate into their practice. We conclude by reflecting on the efficacy of our intervention in low-resource work contexts and provide recommendations to enhance collective social support interventions similar to Saharaline.