ICT and Special Educational Needs: Using Meta-synthesis for Bridging the Multifaceted Divide

We elicit some critical views on how the applications of information communication technology (ICT) can be approached for people with special educational needs (SEN). The findings, based on a number of concrete casestudies, clearly confirm that, despite of the huge research and developmental effort having been made for advancing ICT applications in education, ICT as a whole is surprisingly lacking a systematic discourse with educational domains, even much less concerning those who have learning difficulties. Whilst well known technical tools such as word-processors, screen-reading software and problem-solving software packages still provide useful “snapshots” of ICT applications from particular points in time, we argue that these pictures now require updating. To enable the ICT development crossing multi-disciplinary boundaries, a meta-synthesis approach is innovated. The approach consists of four inter-operated components through ICT, i.e., assistive, sensory, communicative and interactive component.