Overview
Technology has long been heralded as a great equalizer in education and learning, though history reveals a complex legacy. For every breakthrough that expands access, inequities persist: digital divides, environmental costs of data centers, and surveillance tools that disproportionately burden marginalized communities. Yet AI reveals glimpses of a promising future. Emerging evidence shows that AI can reduce bias in hiring and educational assessments, democratize tutoring support, and expand access to health and educational resources.
These contradictions beg the question: will AI and digital innovation entrench historical inequities in education, or can they be catalysts for greater access and opportunity? We call this challenge tequity: technology in service of equity. But tequity is not inevitable. It requires intentional design and governance to ensure technology fosters inclusion rather than exclusion.
The Stanford Accelerator for Learning’s Equity in Learning Initiative seeks to confront this challenge head-on by funding daring ideas and research at the intersection of technology, equity, and learning. We emphasize the importance of addressing the social determinants of learning — including health (physical and mental), physical and social environments, economic stability, and self-motivation — that fundamentally shape educational opportunity.
Guiding questions include:
- How can digital tools and AI strengthen human connection and community as a foundation for equitable learning?
- How can we design technologies that not only innovate, but also repair and dismantle inequities entrenched by past systems?
- How can interdisciplinary research and community partnerships reimagine both design processes and intended audiences to uncover new pathways for equity in learning?
This seed grant program will fund projects at all stages — exploratory studies, prototypes, interventions, and extant research ready to scale — that push the boundaries of tequity in learning.
Proposals may include (but are not limited to):
- Partnering with communities to co-create solutions that bridge divides
- Anticipating unintended consequences and developing concrete strategies to mitigate harm
- Designing prototypes or interventions that advance tequity while fostering community
- Combining design and empirical work to generate actionable insights
- Investigating hypotheses about AI and digital tools as drivers of or barriers to tequity in learning
Proposals aligned with the Accelerator’s six initiatives are especially encouraged:
- Equity in learning
- Digital learning and artificial intelligence
- Learning differences and the future of special education
- Early childhood learning and development
- Education policy and systems change in K-12
- Adult and workforce learning
Collaboration with community members, such as schools, non-profit groups, and edtech organizations is highly encouraged.