BARRIERS IN THE INTEGRATION OF ICT AT THE SCHOOL FOR THE HANDICAPPED

Before developing action plans for effective information and communication technologies (ICT) integration, it is important to determine and overcome the barriers encountered in the teaching-learning process of the educational institutions. Therefore the purpose of this study is to determine the barriers experienced in the process of ICT integration at the School for the Handicapped (SfH)- the only school in Turkey that gives vocational higher education to hearing impaired students. The study was carried out with the qualitative case study at the SfH in the academic year of 2007–2008. The participants of the study were all from the SfH, 60 hearing-impaired students, 21 faculty members and 3 administrators. The data were collected through the participant observations. Interviews, open-ended questionnaires, researcher's journal, documents, archival records and artifacts were compiled and analyzed inductively. Among the findings obtained in the study, the barriers experienced in the process of the ICT integration were the problems experienced by administrators, by the faculty members and by the students. The barriers experienced in the process of ICT integration by the participants at the SfH were found to be in relation to technical problems, technical support problems and problems based on lack of knowledge. The data have been discussed in the light of the related literature.