Gayl Bowser
Gayl.Bowser@douglasesd.k12.or.us

Joy Zabala
joy@joyzabala.com

Since it was first introduced, the SETT Framework (Zabala, 1995), has been useful to individuals with disabilities, family members, and professionals who make up teams that help to identify and provide assistive technology (AT) devices and services. The SETT Framework was developed to help teams gather and organize information so that they can make appropriate assistive technology decisions during all phases of assistive technology service delivery, from consideration through evaluation of effectiveness.  

Teams using the SETT Framework explore issues related to the Student, the Environment(s) and the Tasks a student needs to do before attempting to determine what Tools will be required.  The SETT framework helps teams focus on what needs to be done for the student to participate actively in those environments and make progress on educational goals.  All team members contribute their individual knowledge and observations in order to build a body of shared knowledge that can be used by the whole team in all phases of assistive technology service delivery. Using the SETT Framework to organize individual thoughts, the team collects information from a variety of sources in order to understand the strengths, skills, and challenges that the student possesses, the environments in which the student is expected to learn and grow, and the tasks that the student needs to do or learn to do.  When this information is collected, appropriate tools can be considered and selected.

Tools, as they are understood in the SETT Framework, go well beyond the assistive technology devices that might be used by a student to include anything and everything that might enable a student to succeed.  While these tools might include assistive technology devices, they also might include support and training needed by the student, accommodations or modifications of various aspects of the environments in which the student is expected to use those devices, or the tasks for which the use of the devices are intended (Zabala, 1996).

Although the information collected using the SETT Framework is intended to guide teams beyond the selection of assistive technology devices, many people have limited its application to that part of assessment and consideration of need.  This article and several others that will appear in upcoming issues of the ConnSENSE Bulletin offer strategies to help teams keep the information in the SETT Framework up-to-date, accurate, and inclusive.  When this happens, it can be used to guide ongoing decisions about assistive technology services to students and their impact on student performance and achievement. Because implementation of assistive technology services and the integration of assistive technology into educational programs are the most important, challenging, and least understood parts of assistive technology service delivery, the focus of this article is implementation. 

After consideration and, in some cases, assessment, have resulted in the selection and acquisition of assistive technology tools, team members faced with planning for use of the assistive technology often find themselves asking, "What now?" Participating in an implementation planning process using the information in the SETT Framework as a guide increases the likelihood that the people supporting the student will see the relevance of the technology and will be more active and persistent in encouraging and supporting the student's achievement through its use.

Revisiting the information collected during the AT consideration and assessment phases of the process and organized by the SETT Framework can help teams develop more specific plans that guide assistive technology implementation and evaluation of effectiveness.  Revisiting the SETT Framework can help teams keep what they know in mind as they apply the information, ideas, and concepts to planning for AT use and support in customary environments and everyday activities.  

When AT implementation works well, students have the opportunity to change in new and exciting ways by using technology to build on existing strengths and to develop new strengths. When AT implementation works well, environments will generally be adapted to support educational participation and achievement of all students, including those who use assistive technology. The quantity, quality and independence with which students accomplish tasks change because AT helps to overcome barriers. For all this to happen, the tools themselves also need attention and planning if they are to be useful to students. Once teams have decided to provide assistive technology devices and services to a student, it is valuable to spend time revisiting the SETT Framework or "re-SETT"ing.

In revisiting the SETT framework, teams can ask questions like:

• What new learning do we hope to see in the Student?
• What environmental changes do we have to make in order to support student change?
• How will the student improve performance on specific tasks as a result of AT use?
• How can we monitor the effects the use of an AT Tool has on a student's performance?

The remainder of this article examines ideas that can be used to revisit the information in the SETT Framework that particularly relates to the student and includes strategies to help teams make plans that facilitate student growth using AT.  In subsequent issues we will look at ways to revisit the SETT Framework and plan for implementation with a focus on environments, tasks and tools.

Revisiting SETT: The Student

After AT for a student has been identified, teams begin to look at the ways the student will use the technology for learning and participation in daily routines.  One very useful framework that can be applied to plans for AT Implementation is the work of Janice Light. In 1989 Light wrote an article entitled "Toward a Definition of Communicative Competence for Individuals Using Augmentative and Alternative Communication Systems (AAC)." In this article, Light proposed that there are actually four kinds of skills that all AAC users need to develop. In this article, we have slightly modified Light's four competence areas to more fully address student skill development when using other kinds of assistive technology.  Looking closely at each of Light's four areas of competence can help teams to identify specific goals and objectives for every student.

Operational Competence: Operational skills are the skills that an AT user needs in order to operate a particular AT device. They may be very simple skills like understanding how to press a single switch or they may be complicated skills like typing on a computer keyboard. Operational competence may include not only the skills to operate the device, but also skills that will be needed to use alternative access methods such as voice recognition and screen readers. Operational skills are the ones we most often think of when we talk about teaching a child to use assistive technology.

Functional Competence:  In Light's original work, she describes an area she called linguistic competence.  For AAC users, linguistic competence involves the language skills needed to communicate.  Linguistic competence for AAC users describes the reason that AAC was chosen and the functional application of device use.  In applying this model to other categories of assistive technology we have changed the term Linguistic Competence to Functional Competence.

If a team has done a good job of assistive technology assessment, collection of information has focused on the use of assistive technology for functional skills. Teams should know ahead of time the ways that the student will use the technology that is provided. But all too often, there is an assumption that the new tool will allow a student to do things just because it is provided. For example, John and his team determined that he needed to use a portable word processor for writing long assignments.  He learned to use the device rather quickly and was sent off to do a writing assignment. It was at that point that the team discovered how many composition skills he was lacking. He could use the word processor to type letters to make words. But, because writing had been so difficult, his teachers had not focused on skills such as proper word order, use of modifiers, punctuation and capitalization. After the initial introduction of the word processor, John's team had to regroup and identify the specific writing (functional) skills that John needed to learn. The barrier of his poor eye-hand coordination had been overcome.  AT use made it possible for him to learn the composition skills he had missed.

Strategic Competence: Strategic competence involves using the device in real world situations.  In the previous example, John was using the portable word processor for written composition.  To do that effectively, he also needed to learn such strategic skills as 1) how to decide when to use the word processor instead of a computer or a pencil; 2) when an accommodation such as dictation to an educational assistant was a more effective solution; and 3) how and when to print written assignments. John also had to learn the associated strategic skill of how to turn in his written assignments. Because he had struggled for such a long time with writing, he had learned to expect that an educational assistant would scribe for him and also turn in all assignments.

Social Competence: Social competence as it applies to augmentative communication refers to the ability to initiate, maintain and terminate communication with real people in real life situations. It includes the skills needed to develop social relationships using AAC devices and strategies. As it relates to other kinds of assistive technology, a focus on social competence can help teams to identify skills that relate to using the technology around other people. For example, when John first took his portable word processor to his sixth grade class, the teacher talked with his students about why John would be bringing it to class. Over time, John was able to take on this task for himself. By the time he reached high school, it was part of his transition plan that he would meet with each new teacher to explain the accommodations he needed in order to complete written work. He was also learning, with support from his team, to ask for those accommodations if they were not provided automatically.  

Light's description of the kinds of skills that AAC and AT users will need to become competent assistive technology users can help teams to identify a comprehensive array of student goals and objectives.  The paradigm can be applied to a wide variety of students with a wide range of disabilities.  As teams revisit SETT Framework information with a focus on AT implementation, the four areas of competence can help to ensure that everyone has the same vision for a student's AT use.   If all four aspects of assistive technology competence are not addressed in a student's program, the program is more likely to encounter implementation difficulties.

In the next edition of ConnSENSE we will focus on strategies that teams can use to revisit the information contained in the SETT Framework with a focus on strategies for supporting and enriching the environments where the AT will be used.

References:

Zabala, J.S. (1995). The SETT framework: critical areas to consider when making informed assistive technology decisions. Houston, TX: Region IV Education Service Center. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED381962)

Zabala, J.S. (1996). SETTing the stage for success: Building success through effective use of assistive technology. Proceedings of the Southeast Augmentative Communication Conference (pp. 129-187). Birmingham, AL: United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Birmingham. Downloaded on October 25, 2004, from http://www.joyzabala.com

*Editor's Note: