A STAGED METHODOLOGY FOR INTEGRATING ICT IN INCLUSIVE PRIMARY CLASSROOMS

Abstract

Information and communication technology (ICT) is widely promoted as a means of widening participation for learners with special educational needs (SEN), yet reviews of the field consistently report that classroom adoption remains uneven and weakly connected to instructional decision-making. This paper narrows the question from “does assistive technology work?” to “how should a general-education primary teacher decide which digital tool to use, and when?” Ten peer-reviewed systematic reviews, meta-analyses and large-scale studies published between 2019 and 2025 were synthesised; reported enablers and barriers were coded and mapped onto the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework and the instructional cycle. The synthesis confirms moderate positive achievement effects for UDL-based instruction and consistent gains in engagement and participation from assistive technology, while identifying four recurrent barriers: limited teacher digital competence, fragmented institutional support, tool selection driven by availability rather than learner need, and the under-representation of primary settings in the evidence base. A five-stage model — diagnose, select, implement, consolidate, evaluate — is proposed, each stage governed by a decision rule linking a documented access barrier to a technology function rather than to a device.