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ABSTRACT
Purpose: This study explored the practices and experiences of teachers who teach students using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), more specifically, speech-generating devices (SGDs).
Method: Nine teachers (one general education, eight special education) from four countries participated in semistructured interviews. A generic qualitative approach was taken to inductively code interview transcripts and establish descriptive themes.
Results: Three themes emerged from the data. The teaching experience theme captured teachers' feelings, role, collaboration with others, knowledge and learning around AAC, and challenges teaching students who use SGDs. The teaching practices theme included curricula that teachers use, instructional planning, materials and adaptations, instructional strategies, and methods for student evaluation and progress monitoring. Finally, the overarching views and practices theme captured teachers' beliefs and interpretation of the educational system for students using SGDs, as well as teachers' overarching views on communication and approach to AAC implementation.
Conclusions: In sharing their perspectives and practices, teachers highlighted a number of constructs that speech-language pathologists could consider when responding to and supporting teacher and student needs. The findings of this study have implications for facilitating collaborative relationships and supporting the use of AAC in schools. Discussion on how educational placement can influence teacher experiences and student outcomes is also integrated into the context of this study.
Many students around the globe receive special education services, including 7.1 million students in the United States (U.S. Department of Education, 2019) and more than 1 million students in the United Kingdom (U.K. Department for Education, 2020). In both of these countries, the second most common disability type among students is a speech or language impairment. Some students, including those who are autistic or have intellectual disability or multiple disabilities, may have complex communication needs (CCN) that require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), such as a speech-generating device (SGD). Although there is no official estimate of the prevalence of AAC communicators (in part due to the heterogeneity within the population's demographics and the types of AAC they use), more than 60% of school-based speechlanguage pathologists (SLPs) report regularly serving students who need AAC (American Speech-LanguageHearing Association [ASHA], 2018).
SLPs play a central role in the provision of AAC services in schools and partner with other professionals for AAC evaluation and implementation. They often spend...