Joint Attention and Mutual Awareness: “Why” Not “What”

Teacher and student

Over the years I have come to realize that we often ask the wrong question. The real issue is not “What should we do” or “What type of activity will s/he be interested in?” but rather “Why is the student acting this way? Why does s/he not show interest?” Answering the “Why” question is, however, trickier when a student is an AAC user who has difficulty expressing him/herself. So, it seems easier to focus on activity outcomes rather than to spend time understanding why the student is not paying attention.

Students who do not behave in a way that we expect can be challenging to teach. This is particularly difficult, as we want to demonstrate the gains that students make. If they do not find activities interesting, we change our instructional approaches and strategies (e.g., reinforcement) to ensure the student complies. Changing teaching activities or reward strategies, however, does not guarantee that what we change to will be more effective.

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Friendships in Young Students with Severe Communication Problems: Are We Providing Enough Opportunities?

Happy children playing

“This student has no friends.”

I often hear teachers and therapists commenting that a particular student has no friends. These comments always make me wonder about how we see friendships developing in young students. What do we mean by “s/he has no friends”?

Do we mean that these students:

  • sit mostly by themselves?
  • do not seek out others in a way that we expect them to?
  • show no preference of whom to play with?

The comment “This student has no friends” generally signals the beginning of a discussion on how what we do in classrooms impacts on students’ opportunities to make friends.

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AAC Awareness Month October 2022: Promoting Friendships in AAC Intervention

Autumn poppies

Introduction

Today, I share a presentation I made for AAC Awareness Month at the Centre for AAC in South Africa. I discuss ways in which we can deepen our understanding of different types of friendships. As a result, we can promote friendships in AAC intervention as an integrated part of daily activities.

A Challenge in AAC intervention

One of the biggest challenges that AAC interventionists face today relates to the sustainability of our efforts. We work to teach children to recognize and use symbols on communication boards or high-tech devices. However, we often must acknowledge that these interactions remain superficial. Consequently, interactions become routinized and stilted as students practice what they have learned. Because these messages do not really reflect how students feel, these interactions can become stumbling blocks in AAC users’ attempts to make friends.

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