Understanding Implementation Variables: Interviews with School SLPs Who Work with Children Using AAC
Open Access
- Author:
- Jagadeesh, Ramya
- Area of Honors:
- Communication Sciences and Disorders
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Jessica Gosnell Caron, Thesis Supervisor
Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Communication Sciences & Disorders
Augmentative & Alternative Communication
AAC
Literacy - Abstract:
- Over 90% of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) leave high school with limited or no literacy skills. A number of intrinsic and extrinsic challenges are likely to contribute to low literacy rates. Yet, access to, and implementation of, quality adapted literacy instruction is one way to improve outcomes. Previous research regarding speech-language pathologists (SLPs) views on AAC literacy implementation and instruction is limited; however, there have been previous successes and challenges in delivering literacy instruction for those using AAC. This paper will focus on understanding implementation variables by interviewing with school SLPs who work with children using AAC. Six main questions guided this study, based on Proctor’s Implementation Outcomes Framework (2009), including: (a) “What makes a curriculum acceptable?”; (b) “What makes a curriculum feasible?”; (c) “What makes a curriculum adoptable?”; (d) “What makes a curriculum appropriate?”; (e) “What makes it that you can implement a curriculum with high fidelity?” ; (f) “What fosters sustained use of a curriculum?”. Use of an implementation science framework can inform curriculum development and needs by potentially providing a richer and more specific understanding of what makes current curriculums acceptable or unacceptable, feasible, and why they were adopted. This framework informs what would make future curriculums acceptable, feasible, and adoptable as well. By attaining information through lived experiences, we can potentially create usable innovations and interventions that better fit the needs of real-world contexts and include experience and voice of those who have to implement adapted literacy daily.