Resources

Chris Abbott, Kings College, London

The full version of this review is available to download in pdf format - see box below. On this page you'll find the executive summary.

Executive summary

Any examination of the education of all young people, including those who struggle to learn, must first consider the words to be used. The adoption of terms such as learning difficulties within education is not merely an example of changing fashions of terminology; it is an indication of a developing understanding of the extent to which these difficulties are produced by the context in which learners are placed. Learning difficulties has the added advantage of being a term seen as acceptable by many of those to which it has been applied. E-inclusion is the term used here to describe the use of digital technologies to minimise or even remove those learning difficulties.

One major driver of the change of understanding in this area has been the widespread adoption of the social model of inclusion, rather than using the medical model which sees learning difficulties as biologically determined. Within the social model, learning difficulties are seen to be created by the context in which learning takes place.

Writing about e-inclusion will always carry the risk of a slide into technological determinism. The aim throughout this report has been to recognise that the focus should be not just on the pedagogical approach but also the context and conditions in which learning takes place. Most importantly, that focus will not be on the technologies themselves, innovative though they may be.

There is little longitudinal, large-scale research into e-inclusion, such as the five-year study in the USA which showed changing patterns of technology use by students with autism (Mirenda, Wilk and Carson 2000). The vast majority of the research that does exist is small-scale and related to particular products. Only the most expensive and potentially profitable aspects of digital technology for learning difficulties, such as Integrated Learning Systems, have been the focus of major research. Too often, such research has been damaged by the extent of the involvement of resource providers with
pecuniary interest.

Our developing understanding of the negative effects of labelling, and of the effects of pathologising learners, has led to new challenges for producers of digital technologies aimed at assisting with e-inclusion. The mutually beneficial relationship between producers and special schools of the past has been replaced by the need for much greater awareness of e-inclusion among schools in general and across a wide range of
resource providers.

Approaches to using digital technologies for e-inclusion are presented in this report under three categories:

• using technology to train or rehearse
• using technology to assist learning
• using technology to enable learning.

By considering these categories, it is possible to recognise the limitations of drill and practice software and the potential of socially collaborative use of digital technologies. Although computers have been used to some effect to assist learners to practise skills, it is only when they have been employed to enable learning that the full potential of
e-inclusion has begun to be revealed.

Developments in the 1980s that attempted to make use of socially constructed learning around computers were often misunderstood or misrepresented. Expensive and profitable developments such as Integrated Learning Systems or electronic whiteboards have been presented as harbingers of change, in an unholy alliance between technological determinism and politically dogmatic interference.

More recently, truly collaborative uses of digital technologies have often been linked to access, through the internet, to other groups of learners. This development, together with innovative technological advances, is leading to a second wave of e-inclusion which is collaborative rather than individually supportive, holistic rather than skills-based and inclusive rather than separatist. E-inclusion has come of age.

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