Multimodality: how students with special educational needs create multimedia stories

This investigation into how students receiving special educational provision use an ICT (information and communications technology) multimedia environment to produce stories, took place within the special needs unit of a comprehensive, secondary school. The research aims were to investigate ways in which special education needs students produce multimedia stories, analysing the role of the Zone of Proximal Development with respect to literacy learning. The research was framed by sociocultural theory and a qualitative methodology underpinned the research activity, with consideration of interactions between students and computer, and between students and the researcher, taking the sociocultural environment into account. Research methods included interpretation, reflexivity, deconstruction, discourse and notions of multiplicity. Students working within this software environment were encouraged to produce a number of high‐quality presentations, and this contributed to an autonomous working style. However, whilst the role of the computer was important, so too were human agency and other artefacts within the setting.