From Chromebooks to AI-driven platforms in classrooms, technology plays a big—and often controversial—role in students’ lives.
The question of the extent to which tech can support one specific group of students in particular, English learners with disabilities, has become a focus in some school districts, as part of their efforts to help classroom educators working with the population.
Tech’s capacity to help or distract from student learning was one of the key discussion points in a recent Education Week webinar on practical strategies district and school leaders and teachers should consider in supporting English learners with disabilities.
Some teachers working in special education have begun using AI to help them write individualized education programs, or IEPs. They told Education Week that this technology has allowed them to write personalized reports with greater detail and speed. Yet it has also raised an array of legal, ethical, and practical concerns.
Education Week also recently reported on how school districts are experimenting with AI to overcome language barriers and communicate with the families of English learners on health issues and other matters, even while recognizing its limitations.
Sara Kangas, an associate professor at Lehigh University’s college of education and one of the panelists during the Oct. 15 webinar, suggested teachers consider whether the technology being used is hurting or helping peer-to-peer interactions among English learners with disabilities.
“We’re losing some of the language richness that we want in a classroom when children are working on devices in isolation,” said Kangas.
One barrier that appears to stand in the way of schools’ efforts to support English learners with disabilities is staffing. About 75% of educators say the number of staff in their district or school who are trained to serve these students is insufficient, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey conducted earlier this year.
Adding technology to the mix could, if not done carefully, make teachers’ efforts to support those students worse, said Kangas.
“I have sometimes seen [multilingual learners] working on tablets quietly,” she said, “and maybe that’s a useful activity, but then over time, you see that that’s how they’re spending the majority of their day, and we’re losing that interaction with peers.”
The other participants in the webinar were Lizdelia Piñón, an education associate at the Intercultural Development Research Association, and Silvia DeRuvo, a director of multilingual learners with disabilities services at WestEd Center for Education Systems.
Language and disability are often viewed in silos
English learners with disabilities need to learn both the English language and have access to specific instruction designed to accommodate their disability.
But research shows that dually identified students tend to get access to English-only special education programs, not dual language classes. Additionally, parents of English learners with disabilities are told to speak only in English with their child.
“Their language, culture, identity, disability—all of these are interconnected, but our schools often separate how these needs are taken care of in different departments,” said Piñón.
This split support can be perpetuated by technology, Piñón said, if dually identified students are given access to devices that operate only the English language too.
So when districts are selecting a tech tool, they need to make sure it’s linguistically valid and culturally responsive, participants said during the webinar.
DeRuvo said that technology could have the potential to support students in upper grades, in particular. Devices could help older students “access the content in a different way, in their own language—or in a simplified way,” she said.
Still, participants agreed that district and school leaders need to take a cautious approach when they’re considering whether to take up tech tools for English learners with disabilities.
“I think my biggest caution is that it would take away opportunities for students to practice the language they’re learning,” said DeRuvo.
AI-powered tools have drawn scrutiny and skepticism among many school leaders and researchers partly because of the potential to introduce bias.
“Has this tool been validated with real multilingual learners who have disabilities?” said Piñón. “We haven’t done enough research, so how are we making sure that [the device has] no bias and inaccuracies?”
