The main purposes of this study were to explore how children ages 3-6, with and without communication disabilities learn basic concept words, particularly conceptual relational words (CRWs) in inclusive preschool contexts; to investigate how exemplary teachers shift their instructional and communication style between children with and without complex
communication needs (CCN); and to analyze the influences of naturally occurring routines and contexts with respect to learning and using these basic concept words.
The specific research questions were:
1. What is the nature of teacher instructional language or communication style relative to CRWs with children with and without CNN?
2. What opportunities exist for children with and without CCN to use and/or understand CRWs, and how do these opportunities impact all children’s learning of CRWs? 3. How do naturally occurring routines and contexts support and impact children with
and without CCN in learning and using CRWs?
4. What ‘space’ is created in the classrooms to support concept development and use of CRWs during peer or student-teacher interaction?
Design
A qualitative cross-case research design (Merriam, 1998; Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014; Stake, 2006; Yin, 2009b) was used to compare/contrast knowledge from individual cases then “mobilize knowledge from these individual cases” (Khan & Vanwynsberghe, 2008, p. 1) to
produce new knowledge. In order to gain insight into a subject that is not well understood, I chose the cross-case design that would afford me the opportunity, through “force of examples” (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p. 228), to provide practical, valuable, and transferable information to other AAC researchers and practitioners. The ability to capture classroom information on a daily basis for a prolonged period of time informed and built understandings about the ways that teachers and related service providers made decisions regarding vocabulary selection for children’s aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems, and they ways they shift
instruction for young children with and without complex communication needs (CCN). Setting Characteristics
The four recruited classrooms were physically located in three different towns within the same school district. Three classrooms were under the purview of the local education agency and the Early Childhood Program. Two of these preschool classrooms were run out of a local
elementary school with instructional time constrained to 2 ½ hours per day, five days a week. The third classroom was located in an external building on the grounds of another public elementary school, also constrained to 2 ½ hours of instructional time five days a week. The fourth classroom was managed through a partnership between Head Start and the local education agency. Head Start ran a full-day program (about six hours per day), five days a week. The Head Start classroom was housed in a renovated home situated in the center of town and within
walking distance to the local elementary school, post office, and town library. The number of participants in each classroom is described in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Participants in Each Classroom Classroom Classroom Location
Number of Consented Classroom
Aides
Students with IEPs without IEPs Students With
CCN Without CCN
1 Public School Building 4 3 2 10
2 Public Elementary School 2 1 3 9
3 Public Elementary School 2 1 2 8
4 Renovated Home 4 1 2 14
The total number of consented students per classroom ranged from eleven to seventeen serving a range of three to five children with Individual Education Programs (IEPs). The students who had IEPs were overseen by the same Early Childhood Program Coordinator who was
employed by the school district. Two special education case managers covered two classrooms each and speech and language services were divided between the elementary school’s speech- language pathologist (SLP), the early childhood program SLP, and an SLP from an external private agency. As such, there was considerable overlap in philosophy, knowledge, and skills of AAC intervention across classrooms. Classroom 1 utilized an in-class speech aide whose
intervention was overseen by the SLP. Classrooms 2, 3, and 4 shared the same speech aide who was responsible for both push-in and pull-out direct services to children with a wide range of developmental delays. Classroom 4 contracted with an external SLP agency for their student with the most complex needs. A state-wide interdisciplinary assistive technology team provided AT/AAC services to the district and consulted in two classrooms during my observations.
These four inclusive preschool classrooms were complex and dynamic environments bound in their practical systematicity (Bourdieu, 2005b) as shaped by their state and regional socio-economic realities and curricular guidelines. The practical mix of both the individual and
socially-imposed systemic factors affected the priorities of instructional activities and shaped the teachers’ instructional language.
Four classrooms bound by guiding principles and shared standards. In 2014, the Vermont General Assembly passed Act 166 entitling all children between the ages of three and five, with or without disabilities, to attend publicly funded prekindergarten education for no fewer than ten hours per week for 35 weeks each year. Act 166 was supported by Vermont’s Early Childhood Framework and Action Plan and drove the creation of Vermont’s 13 Guiding Principles (Vermont’s Early Childhood Outcomes, Practices and Procedures, 2018). One guiding principle has particular relevance to children with complex communication needs (CCN);
“young children learn through play, physical activity, exploration, inquiry, engagement, asking questions and communicating with adults and other children.” (VT State Board of Education, April 2015, p.6). Beyond these principles, the Vermont Early Learning Standards (VELS; Vermont Agency of Education, 2015) detailed the intended outcomes of this prekindergarten experience. These standards were aligned with the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes
Framework, the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts, Mathematics, and the Next-Generation Science Standards.
The VELS are meant to guide the development of age-appropriate goals and objectives on the IEPs of children with disabilities “to support the education of all children with their same age peers in high quality, early childhood settings” (Vermont Early Childhood Outcomes Practices and Procedures, 2018, p. 8). Nearly every one of the standards requires children to demonstrate receptive and expressive language skills. Notably, the students in this study with CCN used or needed aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to meet these state standards.
Four classrooms bound by economic realities and financial tensions. Consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory, there are multiple layers of influence that impact preschool classrooms situated in economically depressed regions of the country, like the classrooms in this study. For example, the smaller local public schools in which three of the classrooms were housed faced economic challenges that were not new to this region. The last 30 years saw an aging population, a decreased number of children in the schools, and a lower tax base. It was not uncommon to hear administrators, teachers, and families alike speak of “making do with what we have.” Due to mounting state-wide financial constraints, these small schools were under increasing political pressure to close their doors and join larger centralized schools.
During my visits, some of the teachers alluded to an overriding concern of having their community schools close and the looming possibility of their own children riding a bus for long distances on bad roads during the long winter months. The local newspaper ran editorials and opinion pieces reflecting these justifiable concerns, which created a unifying tension across all four preschool classrooms. In fact, the district superintendent became somewhat of a local hero because of his compelling and widely publicized speech to the state legislature in defense of small-town schools.
Federal grant funding for a “high-needs community”. In January 2014, Vermont was awarded a $36.9 million five-year, federal grant (Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge) to help build a high-quality and accessible system of early child care and education for all children birth to Grade 3. Just weeks before I began my onsite data collection, the four-year progress report was publicly released. This report indicated that the VELS had been updated, the early multi-tiered systems of support expanded, and more early childhood educators were highly qualified to teach within their universal preschool system.
The overarching goal of the grant was to improve school readiness for children with “high needs” (Building Bright Futures, Early Childhood State Advisory Council, January 2018) as defined in economic terms, not in terms of disability criteria. More specifically, the State of Vermont defined a “high-needs community” as one in which 25% or more of the children are at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level. All four classrooms in this study were situated in high-needs communities. More than 50% of children in each classroom were at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level (low income). Figure 3.1 (below) illustrates the percentage of low- income students in the three different towns where sites in the study were located. The results were confirmed by the school district’s data representing student participation in free and
reduced meal programs. US census data, school system demographics, and information from the National Center for Educational Statistics (2017-2018 report) suggest that the shared sources of funding for the school district where the classrooms in the current study were housed included a 55% contribution from the federal government, a 41% contribution of local funds, and only a 4% from the state. Despite these unified interests attempting to improve learning outcomes of all children across the districts, there are still ongoing and very practical challenges.
Figure 3.1 Percentage of low-income students by town
Accountability mandates, policies, and curricula. In response to the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA, the Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of
Education established three early child outcomes (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2004). Specifically, preschool-aged children are expected to: (a) demonstrate positive social and emotional skills and relationships, (b) acquire and use knowledge and skills, and (c) take
appropriate action to meet their needs. The VELS align with all three outcomes and Vermont, like all states, is mandated to report yearly progress on these outcomes (VT Early Childhood Outcomes Practices and Procedures, 2018, p.38). In the Building Bright Futures 2017 executive summary report, there is an emphasis on developing children’s social-emotional skills through the use of a high-quality social and emotional learning curriculum. Vermont chose to adopt the early multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) developed by the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) and the Technical Assistance Center on
Social Emotional Intervention. Vermont early educators were thus required to place a major programmatic focus on developing social-emotional skills. With the adoption of a particular curriculum, comes a particular type of instructional language. This was evident in the four classrooms that were the focus of this study.
CSEFEL. Beginning in 2008, the region of Vermont where this study was conducted received partner training from CSEFEL regarding a research-based model that focused on building positive relationships between students, teachers, and families as a means of supports for a child’s social-emotional development (Fox, Dunlap, Hemmeter, Joseph, & Strain, 2003). Evidence of CSEFEL’s impact was still present in three of the four classrooms through
materials, books, and scripted teacher language. For example, some of the teacher language referenced Tucker Turtle Takes Time to Tuck and Think (Lentini, 2007) and the use of such terms as “being a super friend” and “being kind with body, words, and actions” that appear in that children’s book.
CSEFEL also placed heavy emphasis on developing behavior support plans in
coordination with special educators (csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/what_works.html). These plans focused on prevention strategies, teaching new behavioral skills, promoting the language of positive behavior support, and monitoring social-behavioral outcomes. The language of CSEFEL was entrenched and intertwined with behavior regulation terminology and strategic behavior- control language in the research sites. Since all classrooms shared special education managers, special educators, and related service providers, similar CSEFEL instructional language and visual support strategies were noted across classrooms. The CSEFEL website also provided another teacher resource called Carol Gray’s Social Stories (Gray & Garand, 1993). These stories provided templates intended to help children with DD figure out and negotiate social
problem-solving routines; a few of these stories were read to students or seen in the classroom bookshelves. Examples are shared in the results chapter.
Social Thinking Curriculum. One classroom was piloting Michele Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking Curriculum (https://www.socialthinking.com) during the study period. The Social Thinking Curriculumpromotes the use of specific language, such as, “thinking with your eyes”, “being a social explorer” and “being on a group plan.” The curricular language is
designed to generate a greater sense of group attentiveness, but it also introduced new and more abstract linguistic meanings to common CRWs. Examples of how students were affected by the flexible meanings of CRWs are shared in the results chapter.
Programmatic rules and instructional expectations. Two out of the four teachers expressed a concern that there was an instructional overemphasis on addressing students’ social- emotional needs over equally important literacy needs. The teachers realized classroom
outcomes data were collected on both children’s early literacy and social-emotional skills. Frustration arose when teachers were faced with instructional decision-making in the short time the students spent in class each day. Each of these exemplary teachers felt there was not enough instructional time to meet programmatic expectations regarding social-emotional and literacy learning; even for the one teacher who had students for six hours each day.
A few weeks after the study began, public school teachers received notice of a state-wide mandate requiring all preschoolers to be outside playing, weather permitting, at least 30 minutes each day. All teachers agreed that children needed more outdoor time, but now three out of the four classrooms had to devote one-fifth of their two-and-a-half-hour school day to outdoor play. Woefully, this further cut into the time teachers had set aside for literacy and other content areas.
Participant Recruitment and Inclusion Criteria
Recruitment of teachers. The Early Childhood Program Coordinator consulted with the special education case managers, the representatives of the local education agency, and the early childhood classroom teachers and originally nominated five high-quality teachers who led classrooms fitting inclusion criteria. Three teachers were initially recruited and consented to study. However, after my first round of observations in all three classrooms, one classroom was considered for exclusion upon the discovery that the spoken language of the target student had improved to around 50-75 intelligible words. A replacement classroom was sought and recruited for inclusion. Upon careful consideration and discussion with both the Early Childhood Program Coordinator and my dissertation advisor, we decided to keep the third classroom as a
comparative example for three reasons: (a) the student of interest was still using a speech generating device as a communication support in the classroom; (b) the student still had significant expressive and receptive language delays and remained on the speech pathologist’s caseload; and (c) the lead teacher was managing a classroom with two additional children who had significant communication and behavioral challenges who were considered (at times during the day) to be minimally verbal and were expected to consent to study. As a result, four teachers leading four inclusive classrooms were purposefully selected and consented to participate in the study because of their perceived high level of instructional skill and prior experience with children of varying abilities and communication needs.
I knew the teacher from site 1 from my earlier practice in this region of Vermont when she was in her prior role as a paraprofessional. I informed this Early Childhood Program Coordinator of this prior relationship and made no comment that might influence her recruitment. I did not know the teachers from Site 2, 3 or 4 and relied solely on the Early
Childhood Program Coordinator and peer nominations for their recommendations as exemplary teachers. This purposeful-homogenous site sampling led to the best possible comparative case selection because people were both knowledgeable of the classroom characteristics and the bounds of my study. In this type of sampling, administrators and peers selected the exemplary teachers who also had: (a) one or two students per classroom with the most intense and complex communication needs; (b) four to five students per classroom with higher incidence
developmental speech-language-motor delays; (c) students who were being tracked under a Tier 1-Universal/Response to Intervention support system; and (d) students defined as typically developing.
Teacher inclusion criteria. The primary teachers included in the study were identified by their administrators and peers as being highly qualified with the knowledge, skills, disposition and content knowledge to instruct a preschool inclusion class. In addition, all four teachers had (a) no less than five years of experience working in an inclusion classroom instructing children with various disabilities, (b) an early childhood birth-to-5 authorization, or any other state- required credential, and (c) an active state educator license. The years of experience in these categories for each teacher participant is provided in Table 3.2. All four teachers held state teaching licensure and either an early childhood endorsement or credential. Only one teacher had experience working with students who had CCN.
Table 3.2 Teacher Participant Demographics Pseudonym Years of Teaching Experience a Years of Experience with Inclusion Years of Experience with DD b Prior Experience with CCN c Ms. Argus 20 5 20.0 Yes Mrs. Smith 18 13 13.0 No Mrs. Reed 13 12 10.6 No Ms. Arquette 7 7 7.0 No
a “Instructional experience” includes time spent as a professional licensed/credentialed early
educator and prior experience as a paraeducator in early intervention or special education. b
DD = developmental disabilities. c CCN = complex communication needs
Three of the four teachers in this study had linguistic and cultural heritages that ran deep in this geographic region. All four spoke in the patois of the region, which contained identifiable grammatical and phonological patterns and distinct colloquialisms. These teachers were part of the hard-working middle-class population of women who made up the region’s critical
workforce of daycare providers, educators, and health care providers. They lived, worked and volunteered in their own communities and were sensitive to the varied socioeconomic stressors many families experienced. In addition, they placed a high value on relationship building and trust formation with their students’ families.
Indeed, these teachers carried enough social capital (Bourdieu, 1986) to corral family and friends to make important contributions to their classrooms in many ways. These contributions include: (a) donating time and materials to improve the playgrounds; (b) building classroom play structures; (c) donating food and other necessities to students’ families; (d) organizing field trips and transportation so all children could visit new places; and (e) organizing community-wide public events to celebrate children. I do not think that the teachers realized what a truly binding force they were for their local community.
classroom activities and the therapeutic support services as outlined in each student’s individual education program (IEP). These paraprofessionals and classroom aides were consented, along with the child’s speech-language pathologist (SLP) and SLP assistant. Parents consented to sharing speech-language, occupational, and/or physical therapy, hearing/vision, AT/AAC