Repurposing technology designed to support who are non-speaking and physically impaired with communication: Can doing so enable these students to access the curriculum and lead to better learning outcomes than the currently available technological solutions made available to them?

Marion Stanton

Keywords: Universal design for learning, learning outcomes, physical disability, Augmentative and Alternative Communication, education technology, teacher expectations, multi-disciplinary teams.

Rationale: This research project will examine existing educational technology offered to the specific cohort of students who have physical disabilities and communication difficulty. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework will guide discussion around the use of technology for this group of students, but other factors will also be examined. The barriers to learning that students face due to their impairments and the experience, expectations and cohesion of the groups of professionals who are employed to support them play a crucial role in their access to learning. The key question encompassing these considerations is whether technology designed to support communication should also be harnessed to support learning, how that can be achieved and what obstacles may exist to its implementation.

Students will have disabilities that may result in them being labelled as having Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD) or Severe Learning Difficulties (SLD) but some may have difficulty with communicating their understanding rather than having a lack of understanding. Many students will rely on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) in order to communicate their thoughts and feelings. The opinions of the students and their families will help researchers to understand how adequate they feel their current access to education technology is and what they feel is needed to better serve their learning needs.

Theory of change and labelling theory will underpin the work with the main goal being for the students to experience significant gains in their learning and a primary concern being the expectations and experience of professionals working with them.

Method: A mixed method approach will be used involving a survey prior to the implementation of an intervention through which student learning progress will be measured and followed by in-depth interviews with students, families and professionals.

The survey will seek to establish current satisfaction levels of the students and within the community around them, both family and professional. It will also seek to understand the expertise and expectations that all participants feel that they have in the use of educational technology.

The intervention will involve a pre-test and post-test within subject design whereby progress in learning is measured over a period prior to intervention and then during and after intervention. The intervention will involve the use of software which is traditionally reserved for communication to access mainstream curriculum learning.

The post intervention interviews will enable deeper exploration of the perspectives of the students and of individuals supporting them. Interviews will seek to enable reflection on the intervention and how the participants felt prior and post intervention.

Results: It is expected that there will be a change in the students’ learning curve that can reasonably be attributed to the intervention rather than to correlation without causation, bias, design errors, interpretation or other influences. These will be mitigated by ensuring as far as is possible that the only change that occurs in the students’ experience during the experimental phase will be the intervention itself.

Conclusion: It is expected that a positive result in terms of student learning can be disseminated through conference proceedings and peer reviewed journals as well as through the professional bodies and government departments that support the student group so that changes in the way in which they access the curriculum can be implemented.