Constructing the room: multi‐sensory rooms in educational contexts

ABSTRACT Multi‐sensory rooms originated from work with adults with mental disabilities in residential settings, but have since been taken up by special schools that cater for children with multiple disabilities. This study sought to chart the ways that staff construct the purpose and meaning of multi‐sensory rooms in this new educational context. Discourse analysis of interview transcripts identified two distinct interpretative repertoires that special school staff employed when talking about their use of multi‐sensory rooms: a child‐led repertoire and a developmental repertoire. Analysis of transcripts demonstrated how these repertoires were deployed differently by different speakers to legitimize a range of social arrangements. The study provides further evidence that the effects of educational technology cannot be evaluated in isolation from local aims and uses.