Disability, Evidence, and Policy: Reappraising Research on Restricting Student Laptop Use

How should we appraise pedagogical research when designing course policies? This workshop explores course policies that restrict student use of electronics, including so-called “laptop bans”. Many have argued that these policies impede flexibility in learning, and that they discriminate against disabled students and others for whom electronics can be important accessibility tools. In defence of these policies, many gesture to personal experiences and research which suggest that restricted-use policies actually support learning. In this session, we will survey some of this research and its limitations, including how the persistent exclusion of disability from study reports raises challenges to the apparent usefulness and persuasiveness of that research for inclusive policy design. Finally, we’ll turn from these specific policies to discuss general issues in appraising evidence, and the potential of designing Critical Appraisal Tools (CATs) for pedagogical research.

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C Dalrymple-Fraser
University of Toronto
Department of Philosophy and Joint Centre for Bioethics