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768 – ExPAND in Practice: Supporting Young ESL Learners with Scaffolded AI Integration

The ExPAND framework provides a structured, classroom-informed model for integrating AI literacy into English language teaching (ELT) for young ESL learners in Hong Kong. Recognizing critical gaps in existing models such as TPACK-SAMR and IPMLL—which either lacked discipline-specific scaffolding or underestimated students' critical engagement needs—ExPAND responds by explicitly targeting five core developmental areas: building AI confidence, enhancing prompting skills, fostering critical evaluation, promoting ethical AI literacy, and cultivating self-directed learning.

Piloted with 23 high-proficiency Secondary 1 students, ExPAND structures AI use into five progressive stages—Explore, Prompt, Apply, Navigate, and Develop—aligned with cognitive and linguistic development milestones. Students engaged in hands-on AI exploration, crafted genre-specific prompts, applied AI support in authentic writing tasks, critically analyzed AI-generated outputs, and reflected on personal growth using AI analytics.

Results showed marked improvements: students' writing samples displayed stronger organization, vocabulary depth, and genre adherence; surveys reported a 91% AI re-use intent rate, signaling high engagement and motivation. However, limitations in prompt iteration and critical AI interrogation emerged, underlining the need for explicit, sustained scaffolding across all stages.

Uniquely, ExPAND elevates teachers as active AI literacy co-learners and ethical guides, embedding blended learning strategies and genre-based writing instruction to align AI use with real-world communication tasks and assessment frameworks. This ensures that AI enhances—rather than replaces—core educational objectives.
In an age of rapid technological change, ExPAND offers a replicable, sustainable, and context-responsive model that strengthens both language acquisition and responsible digital citizenship among young learners. It positions AI not as a shortcut, but as a catalyst for deeper thinking, creativity, and lifelong learning.

In an age of rapid technological change, ExPAND offers a replicable, sustainable, and context-responsive model that strengthens both language acquisition and responsible digital citizenship among young learners. It positions AI not as a shortcut, but as a catalyst for deeper thinking, creativity, and lifelong learning.

The accelerating integration of generative AI into education highlights both vast potential and significant pedagogical risks, particularly in second language acquisition. Surveys conducted among Hong Kong English teachers revealed critical concerns: while AI was recognized as a useful tool, 65% of teachers feared that uncritical reliance could undermine students’ independent writing abilities, critical thinking, and ethical understanding. Furthermore, observations indicated that despite students' familiarity with digital devices, many lacked the strategic skills necessary to use AI for disciplined academic development.

The ExPAND framework emerged from the recognition that general models like TPACK-SAMR provide useful integration scaffolds, but insufficiently address the discipline-specific challenges faced by ESL learners—especially in high-stakes, exam-oriented environments like Hong Kong's. ESL learners particularly need support to move beyond surface-level technological use towards critical, reflective, and genre-appropriate application of AI outputs.

The central hypothesis underpinning ExPAND is that AI integration must be scaffolded in developmentally progressive stages, each building key competencies in prompting, critical evaluation, ethical awareness, and independent goal-setting. Without these layers, AI risks reinforcing cognitive dependency rather than empowering autonomous learning.

Pilot findings validate this hypothesis: post-intervention data showed significant increases in learner confidence, writing performance, and critical AI awareness. Students began to appreciate AI not as an answer machine but as a dialogic partner requiring strategic input and reflective use. Teachers also reported heightened engagement and deeper metacognitive reflection among students.

By explicitly linking AI use to both language development and critical digital literacy, ExPAND addresses a fundamental educational need: preparing young ESL learners to navigate a future where human judgment, not mere tool operation, will distinguish successful digital citizens.

Not Applicable

The ExPAND framework is built on a hybrid technical and pedagogical architecture that merges cutting-edge AI technologies with a human-centered, scaffolded teaching approach. ExPAND uses readily available AI platforms (e.g., ChatGPT, Poe) alongside Google Classroom as the primary LMS, supported by Google Workspace tools (Docs, Forms, Sheets) for assignment submission, peer collaboration and formative assessment.

Students interact with AI tools through scaffolded tasks mapped to real-world communicative purposes, in line with Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) principles. Each ExPAND stage—Explore, Prompt, Apply, Navigate, Develop—is underpinned by genre-based writing templates, iterative prompting frameworks, and AI critique activities that are assigned, monitored, and reviewed through AI platforms and Google Classroom. Teachers facilitate critical prompt design, guide output analysis, and scaffold ethical reflection, ensuring AI outputs are not simply accepted but refined through cycles of human judgment and task-based learning. Formative feedback is delivered via in-class comments and rubrics.

Implementation Timeline
• Week 1: Finalization of scaffolded task libraries and teacher training
• Weeks 2-4: Initial classroom pilots across TBL-aligned writing units
• Week 5: Data collection, critical reflection analysis, iterative framework refinement
• Week 6 onwards: Scaling implementation across additional classrooms with continuous peer-supported teacher development

Performance Metrics
• Improvement in prompt revision cycles and prompt quality
• Writing performance assessed using genre-specific rubrics (content, coherence, appropriateness)
• Ethical literacy growth (bias detection, originality awareness)

Function Point ----------------------------- Technical Application ----------------- Progress
Scaffolded Prompt Design ------------ ChatGPT/Poe and Google Docs ------- Fully operational
Real-world TBLT Task Integration -- Google Classroom ---------------------- Fully operational
Ethical Reflection Activities ------------ Google Forms ---------------------------- Ongoing classroom trials
Progress Tracking and Feedback ---- Google Forms and Docs ------------- In continuous refinement

The ExPAND framework advances AI integration in education through an innovative, discipline-specific, developmental approach that redefines how AI can support—not replace—human learning processes. While prior models often generalized technology integration across disciplines, ExPAND is uniquely tailored to the linguistic, cognitive, and motivational needs of young ESL learners.

At its core, ExPAND reframes AI not as a passive output generator but as an interactive, dialogic partner. Students are explicitly taught to view prompting as a critical thinking and metacognitive process: crafting, refining, interrogating, and adapting AI responses to meet communicative, genre-specific goals. This iterative, reflective engagement marks a significant departure from more transactional AI use models.

Furthermore, ExPAND creatively embeds genre-based writing instruction and task-based learning principles within AI-supported activities. Students learn not only linguistic structures but also discourse conventions, audience awareness, and ethical responsibility, transforming AI from a mechanical aid into a scaffold for authentic meaning-making.

Teachers are reimagined as critical co-learners, engaging in hands-on exploration and modeling responsible AI use, thus creating a dynamic classroom culture of ethical inquiry, creativity, and reflective practice. Blended learning designs allow for asynchronous AI exploration and synchronous human interaction, capitalizing on the strengths of both modalities.

Creativity is further enhanced through open-ended tasks where AI outputs serve as starting points for brainstorming, genre manipulation, collaborative revision, and ethical critique. This approach empowers students to become not passive consumers of AI content but active shapers of meaning.
Through these innovations, ExPAND fosters a transformative model of AI integration: one that champions creativity, ethical literacy, cognitive autonomy, and deep engagement with both language and technology.

Through these innovations, ExPAND fosters a transformative model of AI integration: one that champions creativity, ethical literacy, cognitive autonomy, and deep engagement with both language and technology.

ExPAND has been purposefully designed for both scalability and long-term sustainability, ensuring it can evolve alongside emerging educational and technological landscapes. Its modular structure allows teachers and schools to adopt the entire five-stage model or tailor specific stages to their unique contexts, curriculum demands, and technological readiness.

Scalability is facilitated by the future development of open-access AI implementation resources: prompt libraries, blended learning templates, genre-specific writing task banks, and professional development modules. Online platforms will host training videos, exemplar models, and teacher-peer collaboration forums to support wide-scale adoption without heavy centralized infrastructure.

To address bottlenecks such as uneven teacher readiness, ExPAND emphasizes peer mentoring and collaborative professional development models. It also proposes phased rollout strategies, starting with low-risk Explore/Prompt activities before moving toward more sophisticated Navigate/Develop stages.

Sustainability is ensured by embedding AI literacy into existing curriculum outcomes, particularly writing and critical thinking standards aligned with the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE). ExPAND integrates environmentally sustainable practices by promoting digital documentation, online feedback loops, and blended classroom models that reduce reliance on physical resources.

Long-term user engagement is nurtured through reflective goal-setting cycles and self-directed learning practices, allowing students to internalize critical AI literacy as a lifelong competency rather than a project-specific skill.

Additionally, the framework’s agile architecture allows it to incorporate new AI tools and adapt to changing educational priorities through regular review cycles, stakeholder feedback, and pilot iteration.

In sum, ExPAND offers a robust, flexible, and future-proof model that can meet the demands of increasingly complex digital learning environments at scale.

The ExPAND framework addresses urgent social challenges surrounding educational equity, responsible technology use, and digital citizenship in an AI-driven world. In particular, it responds to the widening digital divide that threatens to marginalize students with limited access to critical AI literacy training.

By providing structured, scaffolded pathways into AI-enhanced learning, ExPAND ensures that young ESL learners from diverse linguistic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds are equipped to engage thoughtfully and ethically with new technologies. It democratizes access to powerful learning tools, transforming AI from a potential barrier into an enabler of inclusive academic achievement.

Ethical responsibility is deeply woven into ExPAND's DNA. Students are systematically taught to recognize AI biases, question algorithmic outputs, and uphold principles of originality, intellectual integrity, and responsible digital conduct. This anticipates and addresses broader societal risks such as misinformation, plagiarism, and cognitive dependency.

Primary beneficiaries include ESL students, teachers, and broader educational communities seeking equitable and responsible AI integration models. ExPAND also empowers teachers by building their capacity to act as ethical AI facilitators, magnifying its social impact.

Impact will be measured through quantitative and qualitative metrics: improvements in writing quality, prompting proficiency, critical evaluation behaviors, AI literacy self-assessments, and longitudinal monitoring of autonomous learning practices. Stakeholder feedback, classroom observations, and student voice surveys will inform iterative refinement.

By championing equity, ethics, and inclusion, ExPAND contributes meaningfully to broader social goals: building a generation of learners who are not only digitally fluent but also reflective, responsible, and resilient in navigating the complexities of a rapidly changing technological landscape.

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