Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies

Teaching Students with Significant Disabilities

The Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies - Teaching Students with Significant Disabilities - provides both foundational and practical knowledge in teaching and learning for children with significant disabilities. They are students with intellectual, physical, communication, and/or multiple disabilities, and may include students with autism. These students experience communication challenges and impairment in receptive and/or expressive language and may also have sensory impairments such as vision or hearing loss or challenges with processing visual or auditory information.

While this is a wide and varied group of students, they include students who “do not simply require a differentiated curriculum or teaching at a slower pace”, but who often will require both adaptation and modification to teaching (Carpenter et al, 2015). These adaptations and modifications involve systematic application of evidence-based practices in the context of universally designed goals, methods, materials, and assessments.

Things to note:

• The GCES in Teaching Students with Significant Disabilities will run concurrently with the Certificate in Teaching Students with Complex Communication Needs. Courses in the GCES will include advanced academic requirements.
• This program can ladder into a Master's degree. Click here for more information.
• This program does not qualify students for Alberta Teacher Certification.

Program Goals

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

• Develop an understanding of the barriers to learning that are experienced by students with significant disabilities, and how to reduce them
• Investigate evidence-based practices associated with recruiting and sustaining student interest and engagement
• Analyze materials and methods that can support students with significant disabilities to be actively involved in the learning process, with an explicit focus on language, communication, numeracy and literacy
• Explore the use of assessment tools and practices for monitoring student progress and program planning

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