Between gadgets and goals: a study of special educators’ work activities in digitalized school contexts

This study explores how digitalization in school changes common work activities of special educators. Drawing on nine in-depth interviews with Swedish special educators framed by local digitalization policy incentives, the results of this study indicate that school digitalization has brought expanded work responsibilities for special educators and that these responsibilities require not only traditional special educational expertise but also advanced and critical knowledge about digital technology. With a cultural-historical activity theoretical approach, the study reveals contradictions and relations that provide insights into the complex interplay between special educators, technology, other actors in the activity, and learning objectives. The study contributes knowledge about the extensiveness and complexity of special educators’ work in increasingly digitalized schools. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the identified changes in work tasks and responsibilities need to be recognized, supported, and trained for if the potential of technology is to be realized more widely in general and special education. To ensure thoughtful and strategic digital integration in special education, the study results can guide initiatives to strengthen the complex knowledge that combines traditional special education knowledge with knowledge about technology’s abilities and inabilities to reduce learning barriers for student diversities.