The purpose of this paper is to contribute with knowledge about how the school’s digitalization impacts on special education. Two aspects will be studied; one is the usage frequency of digital tools in special education, another is the special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCOs) perceptions of school’s digitalization.

With society getting increasingly digitalized comes rising expectations of the school to educate children for being able to work in and contribute to the digitalized society. Several arguments about the effects of this development have been published stating that school is going through a change of epistemology (e.g. Lankshear, 2003; Lund & Aagaard, 2020), a change that challenges the traditional ways of teaching and learning (e.g. Mishra & Koelher, 2006; Bates, 2019).

If the view on knowledge and the ways of teaching and learning are changed, it is not bold to argue that the conditions for identifying, and organizing teaching and learning for, students experiencing difficulties are changing as well. In school today, learning can both be aggravated by lack of digital competences and amplified by strong digital competences because of the new ways of teaching, presenting, and assessing knowledge. The remote education that followed the Covid-19 pandemic in many countries, accentuated the importance of students’ digital competences as conditions for successful learning even more (Barbour et al., 2020). The set of skills required for living in and contributing to today’s digital society, including attending school, partly might change the criteria for how we from now on define the ‘student with special needs’ in education. 

The body of research claiming that use of digital technologies can have positive outcomes in special education is broad and still growing. Some examples are Florian (2004) who writes that digital learning technologies and ICT can, if adequately used, be beneficial for students with learning disabilities and/or special needs. Assistive technology (the term here regards both physical, cognitive, and socio-linguistic technology aids) have proven ability to have a compensatory function for students with disabilities (Parette & Peterson-Karlan, 2010). Technology and ICT can also be used to include otherwise excluded students in the ordinary classroom (Rahamin (2004); SPSM, 2011).

Despite major efforts in the last decades, the Swedish school system is still at the beginning of its digitalization (SKR, 2019). Some educational voices have been heard about the digital development, for example teacher educators (Amhag, Hellström & Stigmar, 2019), teacher students (Demoskop, 2016), teachers (Teachers National Association, 2020) and school leaders (Håkansson Lindqvist & Pettersson, 2019). These voices have by no means spoken to the point but have at least begun to formulate their views on the existence and significance of digitalization from their perspective. A voice that not yet has been heard about the digitalization of the school is the special educational voice expressed by the SENCOs. This gap is what present study aims to create knowledge about, using three research questions:

RQ1: How frequent does SENCOs use digital tools their profession?

RQ2: What competences are needed for using digital tools in special educational practices?

RQ3: How do SENCOs express what impact the digitalization of the school has on special education?

Theories

The study will have a relational perspective on education, where a human is understood by its relations to the context (von Wright, 2002; Persson, 2008). With this view, analyses of both the educational (e.g. pedagogy, instructions, individual adaptions, social relations,) and the physical (e.g. classroom settings, teaching materials, audio-visual conditions) learning environment are important for understanding how and why special needs occur (Nilholm, 2007). The framework for analysing the interviews is not yet decided. One idea is to use activity theory (Engeström, 1987; Vygotsky, 1978).

The study will use a mixed method, including a survey and interviews. A web-based survey about the frequency of use of digital tools was conducted in the autumn of 2020. This part of the study was distributed in collaboration with the municipality of the area and was sent to all SENCOs in the public schools. The municipality provides all schools with a number of digital tools that the school strategists see as useful for educational purposes, 12 of them were investigated in the survey. 36 answers was gathered and analysed by dividing the tools into different areas of use, e.g. tools for collaboration, communication or subject skills learning etc. The qualitative part of the study will consist of semi-structured interviews (Kvale, 2007) with around five SENCOs. This part is planned for spring of 2021. An interview guide will be constructed with themes and questions about how the informants perceive and talk about digitalization and the competences needed in special educational practices. The questions will start with focusing on the outcomes of the survey and then shift focus towards RQ 2 and 3. Due to Covid-19, the interviews will be made via telephone or Zoom. In order to focus on the informant during the interviews, and not on taking notes, all interviews will be recorded. This also makes it possible to return to the data, to clear potential misunderstandings or uncertainties. The research will be conducted in Sweden, where the direction of the school system in terms of its digitalization has been debated and discussed since at the early 1980’s. Additions to, and revisions of, the curriculums with the ambition to boost and guide the digitalization process of the school system has been launched by different governments ever since (Fransson, Lindberg & Olofsson, 2018). The latest attempt is dated to 2017 when the Swedish Ministry of Education launched a digital strategy for the school system (Swedish Ministry of Education, 2017). The strategy states that digital competence is an essential ability for students, teachers, and school leaders, a statement that harmonises well with the European Commission’s recommendation on “Key Competences for Lifelong Learning” (European Union, 2019).

One expected outcome of this study is knowledge about how frequent SENCOs use digital tools in their profession. The following interviews aim to shed a light regarding the informants’ opinions about possible benefits and disadvantages with using the digital tools in their profession. Also, the result will indicate if, and how, the SENCO profession is affected by school’s increasing level of digitalization. This can point out new or changed competences needed for working in special education, knowledge which in the longer run is of interest for special teacher educations. Thus, this study can contribute with knowledge about how higher education can adapt to ensure that we train SENCOs capable of working in a digitalized school. The results are also of interest for school strategists, school leaders and special teacher educators as important actors in the process of digitalizing schools and education.

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