From leadership research to district action: Sustainability of assistive technology use for students with severe and multiple disabilities: a mixed methods study of teachers’ attitudes and experiences

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract Introduction Assistive technologies play a vital role in supporting the communication, learning, independence, and participation of students with severe and multiple disabilities. However, their effectiveness does not necessarily ensure their long-term and sustainable use in educational settings. While previous research has primarily focused on the effectiveness of assistive technologies, limited attention has been paid to teachers’ attitudes and experiences regarding their sustainable implementation. This study aimed to examine the sustainable use of assistive technologies in the education of students with severe and multiple disabilities from the perspectives of teachers’ attitudes and experiences. Methods An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was employed. Quantitative data were collected from 132 special education teachers working with students with severe and multiple disabilities. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 teachers selected from the higher and lower ends of the attitude-score distribution. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, including an independent-samples t-test, while qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis. Results Teachers demonstrated generally positive attitudes toward assistive technologies (M = 73.63/90). However, qualitative findings revealed that positive attitudes alone were insufficient to ensure sustainable use. Institutional support, technical infrastructure, professional development opportunities, and school-level implementation processes emerged as the key factors influencing sustainability. Discussion The findings suggest that the sustainable use of assistive technologies cannot be explained solely by technology acceptance. Rather, teachers’ psychological dispositions should be considered alongside organizational and contextual factors. The study contributes to the literature by providing a more comprehensive understanding of sustainable assistive technology use and offers practical implications for teacher education, school leadership, and educational policy. Keywords: severe and multiple disabilities, assistive technology, special education teachers, sustainability, teacher attitudes, explanatory sequential mixed methods

Study methods

This study was conducted using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design to examine the sustainability of assistive technologies used in the education of students with severe and multiple disabilities based on teachers’ attitudes and experiences. The explanatory sequential mixed methods design is a mixed methods approach that involves collecting and analyzing quantitative data in the first phase of the research process, followed by the collection of qualitative data in the second phase to provide a more in-depth explanation of the quantitative findings (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2018). This design enables researchers to identify general trends related to a particular phenomenon through quantitative data and subsequently explain the underlying reasons for these trends and their contextual reflections through qualitative data. In this study, the attitudes of special education teachers toward assistive technologies were first determined. Subsequently, through interviews conducted with teachers who had high and low attitude scores toward assistive technologies, the factors affecting the sustainable use of assistive technologies were examined in detail. Thus, the study aimed to provide a holistic understanding of teachers’ attitudes and their experiences regarding the sustainable use of assistive technologies (see Figure 1).

Limitations

The findings of the present study should be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, the study was conducted exclusively with special education teachers working with students with severe and multiple disabilities in Türkiye; therefore, the findings cannot be directly generalized to different educational systems or cultural contexts. In addition, the quantitative data were collected based on teachers’ self-reports, and the actual frequency and sustainability of assistive technology use were not assessed through objective measures. Therefore, future studies may provide more comprehensive evidence by incorporating multiple data sources, such as classroom observations, usage records, and digital usage data.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Hülya Torun Yeterge. Sustainability of assistive technology use for students with severe and multiple disabilities: a mixed methods study of teachers’ attitudes and experiences. Frontiers in Psychology (2026-08-27). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1930074

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.