The effects of collaborative augmentative and alternative communication intervention for a student with severe disability in an inclusive elementary school setting

Although, the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Intervention appears to be a strategy for enhancing communication competences, it primarily has been used in segregated educational setting (e.g., a special school or a special education classroom). Thus, AAC interventions are not widely used in inclusive school settings. Students with disabilities often experience problems in an inclusive school setting. Specifically, students who have difficulty with verbal communication may get into trouble more often than typically developing students. They usually have the behavioral problem due to their limited communication, and it makes them isolated in the class. Using AAC interventions in inclusive school settings may alleviate these difficulties. In Korea, only two studies have examined the use of AAC interventions in an inclusive setting (Lee & Park, 2007; Lim & Park, 2011). In this study, we used a pre-post single case design to examine the effects of an AAC intervention on class participation, peer interaction, and literacy skills for a student with severe disability in an inclusive elementary school setting.. The intervention was conducted every Tuesday over approximately 4 months. Participants of this study were a 6th grade student with a severe developmental disorder, his mother, 28 nondisabled peers, a homeroom teacher, a music teacher, and a special education teacher. Especially, the student with disability had the complex communication needs, so he had previous experience using the AAC device at home. We used the Tablet-PC version of My Talkie software for AAC intervention. It is a Korean-style AAC software for people with language disorders. The device has Korean-based words and symbols, so the user can easily customize vocabulary and symbols. It provides 2, 4, 8, 15, and 45 cells per page. Individualized page layouts range from 2 to 45 cells on any page. The page with 45 cells has a communication scaffolding system (CSS) that predicts all possible verbs after a noun symbol is selected. This page provides 9 categories: food, school, home, play/leisure, health, traffic, community, schedule, and people. Symbols in these categories are changed automatically according to vocabulary categories. The page also includes functional keys (e.g., phrases, greetings, questions/answers, emergency, and punctuations). We used the 8 and 15 cells for the study. The independent variable in this study was the collaborative AAC intervention, which consisted of five parts: AAC assessment, activity analysis in the inclusive class, selection of the vocabulary and symbol, application of AAC device, and evaluation, The AAC team consisted of a pathological education researcher (first author) and a speech language pathologist researcher (second author). Dependent variables were class participation, peer interaction, and literacy skills of the student with disability. Data were collected as follows: class participation in the music class, peer interaction in lunch hour, and literacy skill during the reading lesson in the special education classroom. The results show improvements in three areas when student used the AAC intervention. First, the intervention led to increased class participation during the music class by 90% from the pre-intervention level. Second, peer interaction during the lunch hour improved. Finally, literacy skills were improved during reading time in the special education classroom. This study suggests that the collaborative AAC team approach is an effective strategy for AAC support in an inclusive school setting. This study demonstrates how using proactive cooperation from two experts on an AAC team can provide communication opportunities for disabled students in an inclusive school. Implications and future directions based on the results of the study are discussed.