Use of digital technologies to meet special educational needs in the teaching training of differential teachers

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze knowledge that students of Pedagogy in Special Education have on Digital Technologies (DT) and their use to attend special educational needs (SEN). The study is based on a mixed method. The sample was intended, consisting of 699 students of pedagogy from eight Chilean universities. The research was developed in three stages: the first "extensive" stage, a sample of 202 students and 12 professors was included, using a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups; the second is a "verification" stage, a questionnaire was applied to 497 students; the third stage is an "intensive" stage, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and non-participant observation were carried out with a sample of 75 students and eight professors from one university. Quantitative data was analyzed by means of a confirmatory factor analysis, a Mann Whitney test, and Kruskal-Wallis test; to analyze qualitative data, triangulation and constant comparison techniques were used. Most students considered that they had educational flaws in the use of DT to meet SEN in their pedagogical areas of specialty. Results give the opportunity to redesign the current teaching training curriculum model, addressed to efficiently teaching content through DT, which permits the students to develop competencies to consider diversity, independently of the contexts where they teach.