1999 in Review: A Synthesis of the Special Education Technology Literature

Abstract

Despite ready access to technology and the overwhelming amount of information available via the World Wide Web, the professional journal continues to serve as a critical source of information used by researchers and practitioners to stay apprised of current developments in their discipline. To facilitate use of the extant knowledge base, this study utilized research synthesis methods to examine two questions: How widely scattered is the literature on special education technology? and What did we learn in 1999? The table of contents for all 1999 issues of 26 journals in special education technology, special education, and educational technology were studied. The procedures yielded a corpus of 788 articles of which 114 articles (14%) were judged as contributing to the emerging knowledge base on special education technology research and practice and therefore relevant for this review. Analysis of the literature scatter revealed that 92% of the relevant literature could be found in 12 journals and that a core set of four journals contained 60% of the relevant articles. Content analysis of the relevant articles resulted in a profile concerning what the discipline has learned in 1999 relative to research and practice on a wide array of topics in special education technology. The strengths and weaknesses of this literature analysis approach are discussed and the implications of this work for future research and practice are noted.