Conference Agenda

Digital technologies have become an indispensable part of the inclusive discourse, in terms of their unexploited potential for improving education for all students (Panesi et al., 2020). The use of digital technologies in formal educational processes can indeed contribute toward increasing learning and participation possibilities for all students and especially for the ones at-risk of exclusion and underachievement (UN, 2020).

The recent experience of the COVID-19 pandemic shed light on several barriers related to distance learning and digital technology use, which resulted in a lowering of education quality and in the exacerbation of pre-existing inequalities for some learners, specifically the ones with disabilities and the ones coming from sociocultural disadvantaged backgrounds (Bešić & Holzinger, 2020; UN, 2020). A reason for this is also that this period of forced distance learning was characterized by the mere transposition of traditional teaching into digital environments, which constituted a substantial obstacle to the learning and participation in class activities for students with disabilities (Ianes & Bellacicco, 2020).

A research project emerged out of the described situation, aiming to strengthen teachers’ profiles in four different European countries (Austria, Italy, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) by professionalizing them in the field of inclusive digital education. Its main objective is to enable teachers to create inclusive settings able to enhance, through digital technologies use, learning and participation opportunities for all students (with and without disabilities/SEN).

The symposium will discuss the outcomes of the project focusing specifically on the national perspectives of the four countries involved according to three main research questions:

1. How is digital and inclusive education addressed and systematized in the four different national education systems?
2. What are school principals, teachers, and students’ views on digital technologies use for teaching, learning, and assessment practices in inclusive schools?
3. What digital practices do teachers perceive as effective for inclusive purposes (i.e., to foster learning and participation for students with and without SEN) in their classrooms?

For the first research question we refer to a literature review conducted as a preliminary stage of the project for each project country about current definitions and level of implementation of digital and inclusive education within the different school systems at a normative level. Questions (2) and (3) refer to two different phases of the project, respectively the data collected within an online survey and the collection of lesson examples.

The quantitative data was collected by using an online survey tool developed by the European Commission (Castaño Muñoz et al., 2021). This tool enables schools – specifically school leaders, teachers, and students – to self-evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in digital technologies use and inclusive practices. Overall, 19 inclusive schools (primary and lower secondary school level) from the four countries took part in the study, for a total of 68 school principals, 588 teachers, and 3907 students (including students with disabilities/SEN).

The collection of good practice examples, instead, involved 23 teachers, who were asked to describe successful practices on the use of digital technologies to foster inclusive processes in their classrooms. In total 20 examples were created (five per each country), obtained either by means of face-to-face interviews or written descriptions based on specific guidelines developed by the research team.

The project results allow comparisons between the outcomes of the research carried out in the different national contexts to stimulate a scientifically-supported reflection on how inclusive digital education needs to be designed and implemented both at the policy and practice level.

The contribution of digital technologies to inclusive teaching and learning relies on one hand on the user (different actors) at different education system levels (i.e., individual, institutional, regional/national) and on the other on their context (i.e., the conditions under which they are employed). A key factor for shaping digital transformation in inclusive education is the regional/national governance of the education system, which can be considered responsible for guaranteeing the necessary technological and cultural infrastructure to implement inclusive digital education (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2022). For this reason, the current paper refers to the first stages of an international project where a literature review was conducted to explore to what extent inclusive digital education is systematically included in the different strategies and policy documents of the project countries. Considering that both – the policy and practice level – differ with respect to school digitalization and inclusive education, it was crucial to first explore similarities and differences among the four education systems and, therefore, among the respective contexts for digital technologies use in inclusive teaching and learning. Two main areas were thus addressed in the literature review: (1) how digital education and digital competence are conceptualized and regulated in the school policies in the four countries, and (2) if and how inclusive education is considered within national strategies and policy documents tackling digital education (in schools, but not exclusively), that is whether students with disabilities/SEN are specifically mentioned in these documents, what kind of measures are specifically foreseen for this student group, etc. To perform the literature review and draw comparable findings among the four countries, a template with guided open questions was prepared and agreed to by the project team, which allowed the partners to explore more in-depth the most relevant aspects identified. Based on this template, each project team in our partner organizations produced a descriptive report summarizing the policy documents and relevant literature in their country in relation to the two main areas. Through thematic analysis (Flick, 2014) of the reports, it was highlighted that, although the first stages towards digitalization of education across the four countries were made (such as providing the necessary infrastructure), specific indications about measures and strategies to foster inclusive processes through the use of digital technologies are still missing at the normative level.

European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (2022). Inclusive Digital Education. (H. Weber, A. Elsner, D. Wolf, M. Rohs and M. Turner-Cmuchal, eds.). Odense, Denmark. Flick, U. (2014). An introduction to qualitative research. Oaks: Sage.

In this paper the results from a quantitative study will be presented. Inclusive schools in four European countries (Austria, Italy, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) were asked to self-reflect on their practices contributing toward digitalization of teaching, learning, and assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses with the goal to improve the wide integration of digital technologies in their schools. The quantitative data was collected with a tool developed by the European Commission as open resource tool, based on the European Framework for Digitally-Competent Educational Organisations – DigCompOrg (Castaño-Muñoz et al., 2018). The tool gathers anonymously the views of school leaders, teachers, and students about the extent to which and the way how digital technologies are implemented in schools. The tool contains core and optional questions structured into eight areas, that are evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale from “1=Strongly disagree” to “5=Strongly agree” (Costa et al., 2021). Three out of the eight areas are referring to teaching, learning, and assessment: “Pedagogy: Supports and Resources”; “Pedagogy: Implementation in the classroom”; and “Assessment practices”. The findings presented within this paper will focus only on these areas. In total 19 inclusive schools (68 school leaders, 588 teachers, and 3907 students) from the four countries, participated in the survey between September 2021 and March 2022. After finishing the survey detailed descriptive analysis was conducted with SPSS. Insights were gained into the practices that were reported as most commonly used as well as about the ones in need of improvement. Furthermore, a non-parametric U-Test on item level was counted with the goal to compare the agreement level of school leaders, teachers, and students to explore if there are statistically significant differences in their perceptions. The results show that in all four countries (independently of the different level of digitalization of the education system) digital technologies are mostly used by teachers for preparation of the teaching and learning activities, and at the least for performing digitally based assessment. Statistically significant differences were mainly found between teachers’ and students’ perceptions.

Castano Munoz, J., Costa, P., Hippe, R., & Kampylis, P. (2018). Within-school differences in the views on the use of digital technologies in Europe: evidence from the SELFIE tool. In EDULEARN18 proceedings (pp. 10417–10426). IATED Academy. Costa, P., Castaño-Muñoz, J. and Kampylis, P. (2021). Capturing schools’ digital capacity: Psychometric analyses of the SELFIE self-reflection tool. Computers & Education, Vol. 162, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104080

International studies have shown that an increase in the equipment and application of digital technologies in schools does not automatically translate into an improvement of students’ learning processes – when not accompanied by a clear vision of their contribution for achieving the defined learning objectives and corresponding mediation by teachers (Hattie, 2009; Higgins et al., 2016). The same is true for the inclusive potential of digital technologies, that is the extent to which they can create opportunities for enhanced learning and participation for all students. As highlighted by Vivanet (2020), it is a matter of identifying the conditions – e.g., students’ needs, purposes, teaching strategies, etc. – under which digital resources can foster inclusive processes (in this sense the author talks about “effectiveness of the uses of technologies”). On these premises, this paper presents the analysis of 20 lesson examples (directly provided by the teachers who implemented them) on the use of digital tools in class from an inclusive education perspective. These were collected in four European countries (Austria, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia) to outline promising strategies and identify improvement areas to enhance inclusive teaching and learning through digital technologies. Participant selection was done via personal contacts of the research team and following a snowball procedure. The examples were obtained either by means of face-to-face interviews or written descriptions according to a shared protocol developed by the research team, which also guided the analysis. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Written reports were collected per email (all necessary information for teachers were included in the template sent), followed up by individual feedback asking for integrations and/or revisions (when needed) to ensure quality. All examples were analyzed through directed qualitative content analysis (Flick, 2014). For the analysis, deductive coding was used and a coding list with explanations of the categories was created before the analysis began. The category system was based on literature addressing different aspects of inclusive and digital education (such as Puentedura, 2013) and on the dimensions included in the collection template. Firstly, each research team coded the examples for their country; the respective results were then summarized in a common matrix for cross-analysis. During the symposium, identified common patterns and divergences emerged from the collected examples for the different countries will be presented and discussed to draw useful indications and outline effective strategies for the creation of inclusive digital learning environments for students with and without disabilities/SEN.

Flick, U. (2014). An introduction to qualitative research. Oaks: Sage. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning. A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. NewYork, NY: Routledge. Higgins, S. et al. (2016). The Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit. London: Education Endowment Foundation. Puentedura, R. R. (2013). SAMR: Moving from enhancement to transformation [Web log post]. Available at: http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/000095.html (last accessed 28th December 2022) Vivanet, G. (2020). Tecnologie per l’inclusione: ovvietà, evidenze e orizzonti da esplorare. In A. Calvani (Ed.), Tecnologie per l’inclusione: quando e come avvalersene (pp. 39-69). Roma: Carocci Editore.