Understanding and mapping digital literacy for students with disability

Abstract

Digital literacy capability is important for all students, particularly for those with disability, as it can enable access to learning. The challenges in understanding what this capability means for students with disability, and how their learning in this area progresses, has created difficulties for teachers in supporting these students to become digitally literate. To address this challenge, this study sought to define the construct of digital literacy for students with primarily intellectual disability, with the aim of developing an assessment of digital literacy capability. By incorporating the knowledge of those with subject matter expertise, such as experienced specialist teachers, and the assessment data from 1,413 students with disability, the study applied partial credit item response modelling (Masters, Psychometrica 47:149-174, 1982) to develop a progression of digital literacy for these students. The strong evidence drawn from reliability indices, item and person fit statistics, and differential item functioning support multiple arguments for validity. The results may assist teachers to understand the digital literacy capability of students with disability and what they are likely to be ready to learn next, for the purpose of targeting teaching for learning.