Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies

Teaching Students with Significant Disabilities

The Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies - Teaching Students with Significant Disabilities (GCES) provides you with opportunities to enhance your skills as an educator responsible for providing quality instruction to students with significant and multiple disabilities including those who require Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). See Alberta’s Essential Components for Teaching Students with Complex Communication needs document for a description of students with complex communication needs.

This certificate is designed for teachers, learning coaches, and related health professionals who want to enhance their knowledge and practice working with students with complex communication needs who require AAC to meet the demands of their everyday communication. It is a part-time, online program that facilitates studying without taking a leave from your career. You will be engaged in authentic tasks and experiences directly linked to working with students with complex communication needs.

The GCES is a four-course experience designed to develop your capacity to design and deliver quality programming to learners with complex communications needs by focusing on:

• Identifying the essential conditions for quality programming
• Support communication and language development by providing effective augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) supports and strategies
• Providing comprehensive literacy instruction for students at both the emergent and conventional literacy levels
• Providing quality numeracy instruction that builds on conceptual understanding and practical skills
• Working with other professionals including speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, teachers of the visually impaired and others to develop strategies and interventions to promote access to learning success.

Program Goals

The following program goals are specific to Teaching Students with Severe Disabilities:

• Develop and understand the components of quality educational programming for students with complex communication needs
• Create and effectively implement augmentative and alternative communication in the classroom
• Establish and nurture a collaborative teaming environment to support communication, language development and learning of students with complex communication needs
• Develop and implement effective and comprehensive literacy and numeracy instruction for students with complex communication needs