Shifting the Focus: Emerging Priorities in Communication Programming for Students with a Severe Intellectual Disability

Abstract

Best practice in communication interventions for students with a severe intellectual disability has tended to focus on the identification of skills that students can be taught to perform and so be perceived as participating in communicative exchanges. For example instruction has often focused on the use of augmentative communication systems, whereby students are trained to point to pictures, object representations or to sign to indicate needs and wants in the absence of speech. Furthermore, with a focus on outcomes in education being related to functional independence in adult life, skills considered necessary for communication have frequently been those identified as components within the skill sequences of functional daily activities typically taught using behavioural instructional principles. For students with a severe intellectual disability, this may be too narrow a view of communication. This paper proposes that best practice needs to focus more specifically on the quality of social interactions with students throughout the day by placing more emphasis on the role of communication partners in providing an interactive environment that increases communication opportunities and processes.