The past decade has seen a growth in the development of educational technology and specifically, in technology for second language instruction. The current research examines the integration of iTaLAM - the artificial intelligence-based curriculum for Hebrew second language instruction in elementary schools in three international communities. As the research commenced, the corona pandemic broke into our lives, closing schools across the world and sending the students and teachers home. The transition to emergency distance learning demanded that the teachers make drastic changes in their current instruction and assessment practices (Hodges et al., 2020; Whittle et al. 2020). Schools were required to pinpoint the central elements that define the essence of school culture and ensure that all these are preserved in distance learning as in classroom routine learning (da Silva Vieira & Barbosa, 2020). This offered a unique opportunity to compare the ways in which the same technology, curriculum and training is applied in different cultures and situations of routine learning versus emergency learning settings.

Together with the widespread use of technology-enhanced learning in the classroom, research focused first on when and then how technology was being integrated in the learning process. Two types of barriers to technology integration in classrooms are commonly referred to in educational research (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2013) -  First-order barriers, are external barriers such as infrastructure, training and support, whereas second-order barriers, are teachers’ internal barriers such as beliefs, knowledge and skills regarding educational technology integration. Although in many schools some barriers still exist, a general effort has been made to remove them through infrastructural investment in technology in the education systems and changing the paradigm of teacher trainings. Despite this, there seems to be only partial success in the context of meaningful and student-led pedagogical use of innovative technology tools (Heitink et al., 2017; Koh, 2019).

In order to achieve a full picture of the various factors that impact technology integration within the learning, Warr, Mishra and Koehler (2019) suggested the “The Five Spaces for Design” framework that recommends examining all educational design processes through the lens of five spaces in which educational discourse and design is played out – Culture, Systems, Experiences, Processes and Artifacts. Teaching strategies implemented by teachers are influenced by the various design spaces where local culture dictates values ​​such as learning style, student independence and academic innovation, and education systems implement these values ​​(Hongboontri, 2014). A 3-level classification of technology-enhanced teaching strategies clarifies the pedagogical distinction between the various strategies teachers implemented in the classroom (Blau et al., 2020). This classification ranks the strategies according to the degree of teacher centrality in the classroom versus practical and intellectual independence of the students in the learning process and the degree of creativity required of them.

The goal of this research is to explore the contribution of the local learning culture to technology integration in daily routine learning versus emergency learning. The research examines the challenges and opportunities presented by various learning cultures and how they reflect the teaching-learning processes in second language acquisition. Accordingly, the research will be able to suggest improvements and enhancements to the training and support that can be adapted to the particular culture and country in which the curriculum is applied.

Consequently, the research examined the following questions while comparing the learning cultures in three international communities: 1. Which technology-enhanced instructional strategies are utilized by teachers in routine learning and in emergency learning and Why? 2. Which technology-enhanced assessment strategies are utilized by teachers in routine learning and in emergency learning settings and Why?

The study combined a qualitative approach that enabled an in-depth examination of investigated phenomena and a quantitative approach that allowed the examination of differences between groups of participants and instructional strategies. The study focused on three central communities from different world regions. Each community contains a large and diverse concentration of schools that teach Hebrew as a second language and represent a unique regional teaching culture: Eastern Europe, Western Europe (with emphasis on Italy) and North America. The participating teachers were all experienced educators, teaching the iTaLAM digital curriculum in the three areas described above, at least 3 times a week and have access to whole-class technology in the classrooms as well as personal one-to-one technology devices. Thirty-two elementary teachers participated in this research - 9 from Eastern Europe, 10 from Western Europe and 13 from North America. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers via the Zoom videoconferencing platform. The interviews, lasting about an hour, were recorded and transcribed. In the interviews, teachers described their technology-enhanced instruction and assessment strategies used in routine classroom learning and the factors that led to using those strategies. Likewise, they were also requested to detail the strategies used in emergency distant learning. During the interviews, clarification and in-depth questions were added in accordance with the answers and information received in the interview (Marshall & Rossman, 2014). The transcribed interviews were coded thematically. Interviewees' statements were sorted according to main categories and sub-categories. Teaching strategies were analyzed according to three levels of teaching strategies that examine the degree of teacher centrality and the degree of independence and creativity required of the student in the learning process (Blau et al., 2020). An inter-reliability test revealed a broad consensus among the raters (Cohen's Kappa=0.8). Chi-square goodness of fit tests were performed in order to test the significance of the differences in the number of statements between the three groups in each sub-category.

The findings show that the teachers in Eastern Europe apply mainly Level 2 pedagogical strategies (54%) that enable the students a certain degree of independence. Western European teachers reported mostly Level 1 strategies (43%), in which the teacher was central to the instruction. The main use of Level 3 - independent and creative strategies was observed in North America. During the transition to emergency distance learning, teachers largely abandoned Level 3 strategies (5%) and there was a general move towards Level 2 strategies (62%). It seems that even teachers with experience in using Level 3 strategies found themselves in a place of challenge and difficulty, reverting to strategies which enabled them to have more control over the learning process (Reinders & Balcikanli, 2011; Aliyyah et al. 2020). Regarding the second research question, the findings generally show low usage of digital assessment, especially during the emergency learning period. Only teachers in Eastern Europe, where there is a weekly requirement to submit assessment grades to the school administration, reported consistently utilizing digital assessment in routine learning setting. This supports previous findings regarding the use of digital summative assessment as a tool for accountability rather than a formative tool for leveraging the classroom instruction (Kippers et al. 2018; Lockton et al. 2019; Schildkamp et al. 2016). In conclusion, though all teachers were utilizing the same digital curriculum and received the same training, the unique cultural characteristics of the communities examined were reflected in the teaching strategies applied during the routine learning. In emergency distance learning, however, the same tendency was observed in all communities to converge on Level 2 teaching strategies. We recommend that the five design spaces of the study’s framework - culture, education system, school and teachers all work cooperatively to support student-centered, independent learning strategies in routine and emergency-learning settings.

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