Over the past 30 years, there has been significant development worldwide, particularly in scientific advances and social change. The impact in society, particularly in education, is increasingly evident, as it is in a permanent state of transformation and improvement due to the vertiginous proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (Cózar & De Moya, 2013). The United Nations approved the resolution drafted by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at its General Assembly on 13 December 2006, which establishes that ratifying states must undertake or promote research and development of ICTs accessible to persons with disabilities, as well as their availability and use, including specific technical devices created to improve the daily life of this group. In addition to making information more accessible and empowering people, in the case of people with functional diversity due to disability, technologies have helped reduce their difficulties. In some cases, their limitations were reduced to the minimum. This interest in equality and equity is reflected in numerous international initiatives (European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, etc.).
In the educational field, the project “Using ICTs to achieve the Education 2030 goals” of the UNESCO-Weidong Group Fund will, for four years, help the participating Member States to make use of the potential of ICTs to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 (ODS4). This Goal is the synthesis of education's ambitions to ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education. In this regard, one of the commitments of the roadmap is the use of ICTs to strengthen education systems for quality education for all students. Educational environments can open up to the world with these new resources and interact with other realities, thus providing a new space for access and production while eliminating barriers preventing all people from approaching education. Therefore, technologies can significantly help as an educational tool for admission and participation in the curriculum, especially for students with special needs (Bagon et al., 2018; Foley & Ferri, 2012). ICTs are used as tools and instruments to improve the teaching–learning process and improve students' basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic (Sierra Llorente et al., 2016).
Nowadays, there seems to be a growing interest in the subject generally. Thus, a search with the terms ICT and disability in Google Scholar revealed 139 results between 1988 and 1998, 3150 from 1998 to 2008 and a significant number of results, 15,900, between 2008 and 2018. Not all of these documents are linked to the use of ICT to support the learning of people with disabilities. Still, it is undoubtedly true that this interest has been under investigation for several decades in terms of education. Still, it has become an essential part of supporting students' learning with special needs over the last few years. Thus, a study carried out by Hegarty (2008) reviewing research topics published from 1998 to 2008 in the “European Journal of Special Needs Education”, a medium for a wide range of research in special education, concluded that there is almost no research related to ICT and special education. All this, despite the high demands of ICT about educational transformation. In this regard, Istenic and Bagon (2014), in a review of Web of Science (WoS) indexed educational technology journals (1970 to 2011), highlighted the scarcity of ICT-related jobs in support of people with disabilities. More recently, another review study on the impact of ICTs on students with special needs (Sarasola Sánchez-Serrano et al., 2020) highlights the scarce development of high-impact scientific production internationally in this field of knowledge. Likewise, it is concluded that the results obtained show that most of the research that has been carried out is focused on empirical studies. This indicates that the potential of ICT-supported learning for the inclusion process has not been sufficiently explored.
To overcome this lack of research, initiatives have been developed in the European context to promote such research. In 2010, the project's initial results, “European Research Agenda for Disability Equality”, were published, which encourages the participation of civil society organizations in research with academic institutions, where technology plays a significant role in supporting people with disabilities (Priestley et al., 2010).
Currently, the main lines of research within the field of ICT and disability show the existence of three prominent trends (Sarasola Sánchez-Serrano et al., 2020): (1) the interaction of educational technology with the use of programmes and computers, (2) the relationship of technology with students with special needs, their educational needs and the learning environment, (3) the correspondence established between students with special needs, their participation and the teacher's involvement.
The teacher and their digital competence are a crucial element, as the response to the educational needs of these students will be determined, among other variables, by the design and the extent of training and knowledge of these technological resources (Shin, 2015; Wong, 2015).
In this regard, the professional development of teachers in the use of ICT and educational inclusion is an emerging field of action, as can be seen in studies that report on the development of competencies, both in initial training (Istenic, 2010; Pegalajar, 2017) and in lifelong learning (Roig et al., 2015; Valtonen et al., 2018), to design learning environments that respond to individual needs.
Previous research concluded that teachers feel competent in using ICTs as tools for personal use and/or as resources for transmitting and promoting information and knowledge (Prendes & Gutiérrez, 2013; Prentzas, 2016). However, this does not guarantee meaningful learning (Hatlevik, 2017; Lewthwaite & Nind, 2016; Uluyol & Şahin, 2016). Teachers also reveal a lack of systematized knowledge, not only about the programs and resources that can be used; instead on how to integrate technologies successfully within the classroom (Fernández Batanero et al., 2020; Tondeur et al., 2018; Wong, 2015). This means that there is a discrepancy between the technical abilities of ICT and the knowledge of sound pedagogical practices. This might be due to two main factors: firstly, the training provided is insufficient, and it does not affect the development of teaching practices (Hu & Yelland, 2017; Yusop, 2015). And secondly, the training model, most commonly used in the Spanish context, focuses on more instrumental than pedagogical (Tello & Cascales, 2015).
Teachers, especially in Primary Education, are poorly qualified in using technology and without training according to the classroom demands (Méndez Garrido & Delgado García, 2016). The differences with the teachers of higher educational stages may be due to insufficient resources (Méndez Garrido & Delgado García, 2016) in these centres. In this way, the digital training of teachers is one of the challenges of Primary Education centres.
Despite the concept of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), Koehler and Mishra (2009) suggested that teacher education should focus on using technology and examine how technology intersects with pedagogical and content knowledge. If the level of ICT teacher training is limited and ineffective, the studies regarding ICT training as a resource to support people with disabilities are insufficient. Teachers show even lower activity, regardless of the type of disability referred to hearing, visual, cognitive, motor, etc. (Kersten et al., 2018). Several variables have been identified within the framework of the lack of training for incorporating ICT in the classroom. These variables have been shown influential on teachers' training and use of ICT, such as gender, age, teaching experience, qualifications, technological mastery, teachers' attitude, financial support, beliefs about the meaning and significance of technologies in education (Uluyol & Şahin, 2016), as well as lack of time (Silva & Austillo, 2012).
Another factor has been the gender of teachers, where women perceive more obstacles than men to use technologies (Fernández de la Iglesia et al., 2016; Lane & Lyle, 2011), as well as less digital training (Cabero & Martín, 2014). Another factor is age, because as Tanure et al. (2017) argues, younger teachers have superior knowledge. Studies such as Alqurashi et al. (2017) have shown that recent university graduates feel more confident when incorporating technology. This means that older teachers have a lower level of digital competence. Years of teaching experience are also revealed as a critical factor regarding competencies. In this case, teachers with less teaching experience show a higher level of knowledge for incorporating ICTs to people with disabilities (Fernández & Fernández, 2016).
In the Spanish context, research has been carried out to address the problem of ICT training, and the competencies teachers need (Cabero et al., 2016; Morales & Llorente Cejudo, 2016). Despite this, both studies analyse this training need, focusing their attention on the initial training of teachers, without including active teachers and their corresponding permanent training.
Because of this, it considers it relevant to carry out this study and offer information related to training issues, in which processes of discrimination and social exclusion in the people with disabilities are a matter for special consideration in schools and families. Therefore, it will notice the effectiveness and efficiency factors of ICT pedagogical practices. Thus, it increases communication and strengthens the abilities of people with disabilities, reducing their limitations. Furthermore, the research questions posed in this research were proposed by a group of experts in Special Education and ICT from the public universities of Granada, Jaen and Seville (Spain).
Purpose of the research and questions and hypotheses
This study aims to provide a general and comprehensive overview of the education and training of Spanish Primary Education teachers about the use of ICTs to support students with special needs and possible obstacles or barriers to their movement. The research problems it was considering are the following:
Q1 Are teachers enough prepared to use ICTs as a resource to support learning in students with special needs?
From this problem, a set of questions and hypotheses are identified below. It formulates the null hypotheses since, through the literature review, it is the ones that it intends to reject in principle.
Q1.1 Is there a relationship between the technical and didactic training that teachers indicate they have regarding audiovisual, computer and Internet technologies and the degree of training/knowledge the teachers have for using ICTs in students with special needs?
Null hypothesis1 (H0): There are no significant differences with an alpha risk of misunderstanding of 0.05 or less between the technical and didactic training that teachers indicate they have concerning audiovisual, computer and Internet technologies, and the degree of training/knowledge teachers have for the use of ICTs in students with special needs.
Q1.2 Is the level of training of teachers the same or different depending on the types of disability?
The hypothesis that is formulated for this problem has been:
Null hypothesis2 (H0): There are no significant differences, with an alpha risk of misunderstanding of 0.05 or less between the knowledge teachers have of the technologies applied to the different types of disability.
Q1.3 Is the level of training determined by personal variables such as gender and professional variables such as teaching experience?
Null hypothesis 3 (H0): There are no significant differences, with an alpha risk of error of 0.05 or less depending on the gender of the teachers.
Null hypothesis 4 (H0): There are no significant differences, with an alpha risk of error of 0.05 or less depending on their years of teaching experience.
Q2 What factors are associated with the promotion and development of training experiences on the use of ICTs in students with special needs?
Q3 What barriers or obstacles hinder the training of these teachers?
The research questions posed were proposed through the compilation of various opinions by the group of experts participating in the study and specialists in Special Education and ICT from the public universities of Granada, Jaen and Seville (Spain). Their work focused on providing accurate and unbiased technical information through their experience in technical tasks and ICT-based training and education. The experts simultaneously discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the initial list of proposed research questions, which were classified to make the final selection of those considered suitable to meet the study's objectives.