The purpose of this large-scale descriptive study was to investigate the impact of an implementation model designed to provide U.S. classroom teachers with the knowledge, skills, and resources required to provide aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) instruction to their students with extensive support needs and complex…

Early identification and appropriate intervention services for children who are deaf or hard of hearing significantly increase the likelihood of better language, speech, and social-emotional development. However, current research suggests that there is a critical shortage of professionals trained to provide early intervention services to deaf and…

An eight-step instruction model was used to train a self-contained classroom teacher, speech-language pathologist, and two instructional assistants in partner-augmented input, a modeling strategy for teaching augmentative and alternative communication use. With the exception of a 2-hr training session, instruction primarily was conducted during…