A Systematic Literature Review of Reading Instruction for Students With Complex Communication Needs

Most approaches for teaching reading involve students reading aloud and receiving feedback. These approaches are not feasible for nonspeaking students, and teachers need alternative strategies that do not require speech. To provide guidance about effective strategies, we conducted a systematic review of 51 experimental studies within 36 journal articles that evaluated reading interventions for students with significant disabilities and complex communication needs. The most common intervention components included task analytic instruction, a gradual release model (i.e., model-lead-test), systematic prompting, and incremental rehearsal. Positive effects were most often reported for decoding outcomes (92%; n = 11), phoneme segmentation (87%, n = 2), and sight words (92%, n = 11). Reading comprehension was only targeted in one study, and fluency was not targeted at all. These findings provide insight into targeting some components of reading, but further research is needed that allows teachers to provide more comprehensive reading instruction for this population.