Systematic Review of Educational Technologies for Children and Adolescents with Down’s Syndrome: Trends, Patterns, and the Role of Relational Support
Abstract
This paper reviews the research on the use and development of educational technologies for children and teenagers with Down’s Syndrome. Many believe in the effectiveness of this approach due to the inability of conventional methods to support this population. Given that conventional educational methods often do not adequately support this population, we hypothesize that integrating educational technologies could offer more effective learning solutions. To verify this hypothesis, we screened 132 studies available on EBSCO, and finally got 31 studies is fully supported by our findings. The results of these studies show that there are many benefits of using technological tools to support the learning of children with Down’s Syndrome. However, our findings illustrate almost all the existing educational technology studies (85%) investigating youth with Down’s Syndrome investigate human-to-human relationships that include a technological component rather than studying with technology alone. This finding supports the credibility of Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of Learning in real-world educational settings. Indeed, this review finds that many studies systematically underestimate the positive impact of integrating technology and relationship-based interventions, indicating the need for further research. Ultimately, it is the combination with human capital that can unleash the full potential of educational technologies and yield the most positive outcomes for children with Down’s Syndrome.
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