2001 in Review: A Synthesis of the Special Education Technology Literature

Abstract

The challenge of how to stay current is a problem for both scholars and practioners. Whereas innovative applications of the World Wide Web have the potential to filter reading materials of interest and deliver the full-text of documents, professionals continue to rely on professional journals to manage a discipline's emerging knowledge base. The purpose of this study was to examine recent additions to the extant knowledge base in special education technology. Research synthesis methods were used to examine two questions: How widely scattered is the literature on special education technology? and What have we learned lately? The table of contents from each issue of 31 journals in special education technology, special education, and educational technology published in 2001 were studied. The procedures yielded a corpus of 931 articles of which 198 articles (21%) were judged relevant for this review by contributing to the emerging knowledge base on special education technology research and practice. Analysis of the literature scatter revealed relevant literature could be found in 28 journals but that a core set of seven journals contributed 70% of the relevant articles. Content analysis of the relevant articles revealed a number of dominant themes in the literature during 2001: accessibility, assistive technology, implementation issues, Internet use and web resources, technology integration, and universal design. Limitations of the one-year research synthesis methodology are discussed along with the implications of this work for future research.