The IT-folder: IT supported inclusion of Children with reading disabilities in Normal Classes

This paper presents the philosophy and project design of a three year action research project, taking off in September 2007. As a consequence of the consent to the Salamanca Statement on special needs education from 1994, the Danish parliament has recommended that all children with learning disabilities should be transferred from special classes to the ordinary classes in primary schools. This vision is called The Spacious School and the idea of the vision is that these children should be integrated and thus included in the social and learning activities like any other child in the class. The government's vision is to provide the children with an IT-backpack containing a laptop pc. However the IT-backpack is eye-catching and also heavy especially for the younger children.

 

In Rødovre Muncipality, - a suburb to the Danish capital Copenhagen - the pedagogic development centre (PUC) believes that successful inclusion must integrate the political vision with focus on the benefit for the individual subject. Therefore it is necessary to think of IT-support as an everyday, natural substitution at the same level as paper and pencils, rather than a compensational disability aid or a technological fix. Consequently, the PUC invited the Danish School of Education - Århus University (DPU) into a collaborative action research-based development project, where the IT-backpack is substituted by a touch screen tablet pc for children from first to third grade, as they are not part of the IT backpack project. The basic understanding in the project is that IT as a substitution and used as a lever or change agent for the inclusion of children with reading disabilities, affects the full context around the child: the other children, the teachers, the parents, the pedagogy and the activities in class. The tablet it self will contain supporting software and e-learning material, all of which have not yet been decided upon, as we expect that specific user needs and requirements for software will emerge during the project. Consequently, apart from being understood as hardware and software, the tablet must be understood as 1) an artefact that must be included along with other artefacts; 2) an individual attribute that must be including, not stigmatizing; and 3) a social actor in its own right, as the tablet affects the collaborative activities and social interaction.

The paper unfolds the philosophy of the project and presents the corresponding project design.