Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools最新文献

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of teachers' unions for school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and their perceptions of the benefits and barriers to union membership.

Method: A 44-item survey was used to solicit information about the perceptions of and participation in teachers' unions of 320 school-based SLPs. Directed content analysis of 70 district collective bargaining agreements was also conducted to explore the presence and content of SLP contract provisions.

Results: Results confirm that teachers' unions collectively bargain on behalf of SLPs as they are often recognized as bargaining unit members. SLP provisions pertaining to salary supplements, caseload and workload caps, opportunities for professional development and mentorship, and alternative evaluations were uncovered. However, SLPs' perceptions of teachers' unions and collective bargaining were mixed. Frequently cited benefits of union membership included improved working conditions, legal and professional protections, and collective bargaining. Common barriers were misunderstandings about the role and responsibilities of unions and monetary costs.

Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest that teachers' unions are not a widely used support structure for school-based SLPs. Despite the barriers highlighted by participants, unions can collectively bargain for provisions that could improve the living and working conditions of practitioners, such as salary supplements, caseload caps, and professional development. Although unions could improve outreach to SLPs in the schools, SLPs may benefit from additional training and professional development opportunities to support the degree to which they advocate and engage with their bargaining units.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27947940.

Purpose: Phonologically complex targets (e.g., [pl-]) are understood to facilitate widespread gains following speech sound intervention, and yet, available research largely features word-initial clusters. The present study investigates intervention effects following treatment of complex clusters presented in word-final position. Importantly, this allows for an added layer of complexity via suffixes that mark tense and agreement.

Method: Eight English-speaking children with speech sound disorder (SSD; 3;3-6;9 [years;months]) participated in 18 one-on-one intervention sessions. Intervention was completed via telepractice, as were all pre- and post-intervention assessments. Intervention targets were word-final two-element consonant clusters that were unknown to the child prior to intervention. Targets were presented in verbs that were either monomorphemic (i.e., [-ks]; they mix) or bimorphemic (i.e., [-ks]; she pick/3s, marked for third-person singular).

Results: All participants demonstrated change across multiple phonological measures. More stringently, six of eight participants demonstrated generalization to untreated sounds and untreated words immediately following intervention, including four of four children with monomorphemic targets. Importantly, positive changes for children with both target types were observed following a relatively short course of intervention (18 sessions over 6 weeks), and mastery of the target cluster was not required for phonological growth to occur.

Conclusions: Results align with available work featuring word-initial complex targets and indicate that word-final consonant clusters are feasible, effective targets for English-speaking children with SSD. Findings similarly affirm the use of telepractice to deliver research-based interventions. Speech-language pathologists may thus integrate these findings with their clinical judgment and client perspectives to implement such targets in clinical practice.

Purpose: The primary aim of the study was to examine the association between early childhood practitioners' use of language facilitation strategies during interactive book reading of informational texts related to science and the language skills of preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD).

Method: Twenty-four practitioners (12 early childhood special education teachers and 12 speech-language pathologists) and 33 preschoolers with DLD participated. Practitioners received training and implemented an informational book-reading intervention for 19 weeks. Practitioners' use of language facilitation strategies (i.e., activating thinking by setting the informational text structure, asking target questions, asking inferential questions, and providing support) was coded using an observational tool. Children with DLD were assessed with a battery of language assessments at pre- and post-intervention.

Results: Providing support significantly predicted the receptive academic vocabulary and receptive understanding of signal words of preschoolers with DLD. Practitioners asking target questions (direct questions related to targeted academic vocabulary and signal words) significantly predicted the receptive academic vocabulary of preschoolers with DLD. By contrast, these two types of language facilitation strategies were not related to expressive academic vocabulary or signal words. The other language facilitation strategies (i.e., activating thinking by setting the informational text structure and asking inferential questions) did not contribute to receptive or expressive academic vocabulary or signal words.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that asking direct questions and providing support may be effective mechanisms for supporting children's understanding of academic vocabulary and signal words during interactive book reading of informational texts.

Purpose: Graphotactic regularities are statistical regularities governing orthographic systems that children are sensitive to from the start of their literacy learning. The current study observed changes in children's sensitivity to a set of graphotactic patterns across different grades in elementary school and measured the contribution of skills such as expressive spelling, reading fluency, nonverbal reasoning, and receptive vocabulary to children's sensitivity of these graphotactic regularities.

Method: One thousand one hundred one French-speaking children in Grades 1-5 completed a writing under a dictation task, a text reading fluency task, and a pseudo-orthographic choice task involving different graphotactic regularities. These regularities fell into two categories: legal versus illegal, which defines the legality of letter strings in French, and frequent versus less frequent, which refers to acceptable letter strings that vary in frequency of occurrence either at the beginning or end of a word.

Results: The results of a repeated-measures analysis of variance showed a developmental difference between graphotactic regularity categories. The frequent versus infrequent patterns developed faster than the legal versus illegal patterns until reaching a point of equivalence in Grade 3. At Grades 4 and 5, legal versus illegal graphotactic regularities progressed more quickly while frequent versus less frequent regularities progressed more slowly. Furthermore, generalized linear mixed-model analyses for both types of graphotactic regularities revealed that they were affected by grade, expressive spelling, reading fluency level, and nonverbal reasoning.

Conclusions: This study provides evidence of developmental differences in sensitivity to graphotactic regularities according to the type of regularity studied. Reading fluency and expressive spelling skills contribute to graphotactic regularity sensitivity. Higher scores in expressive spelling, reading fluency, nonverbal reasoning, and an older age were related to higher skills in identifying legal versus illegal graphotactic regularities. Such findings can contribute to educational, clinical, and research applications.

Purpose: School-based telefacilitators are critical yet underresearched members of telepractice programs. They are the face of the telepractice program and are often telepractice champions in their communities. However, we have little research explaining the typical profile of telefacilitators, making it more difficult to identify personnel characteristics that contribute to the implementation of sustainable telepractice programs. The purpose of this study was to describe the typical profile and preparation of school-based telefacilitators for physical, occupational, and speech therapy in the United States.

Method: A cross-sectional survey gathered 21 telefacilitator responses about their primary job title, preparation, confidence, and basic demographics. Survey recruitment followed an adaptive sampling method with three phases: stratified random sampling, purposive sampling, and targeted convenience sampling. Results were analyzed using frequency counts and descriptive statistics where appropriate.

Results: Most respondents held the primary job title of paraprofessional, but a diverse range of titles were reported, including superintendents and directors of special education. Half of the respondents received various methods of formal training for the role, whereas the other half were self-taught. Overall levels of confidence in job performance were high, yet self-taught telefacilitators felt that lack of training negatively impacted their performance. Most respondents had a bachelor's degree or higher.

Conclusions: There is a high degree of variability in the profile and preparation of telefacilitators. Inconsistency in terminology and lack of agreed-upon job responsibilities are significant barriers to studying the role of telefacilitators and the ability to plan telepractice staffing needs adequately. Clinical implications and opportunities for future investigation are highlighted.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27115216.

Purpose: Understanding the experiences of families of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) during COVID-19 educational disruptions is essential for designing responsive supports during pandemic recovery efforts and beyond. This qualitative study describes the experiences of families of first- and second-grade children with DLD during the pandemic as compared to the experiences of families of typically developing (TD) peers.

Method: A conventional content analysis approach was used to analyze caregivers' written responses to open-ended questions regarding their perceptions of COVID-19 educational disruptions. Responses were analyzed separately by group: caregivers of children with DLD (n = 23) and caregivers of TD children (n = 22).

Results: Four categories of caregiver responses were generated for each group: impacts on children, remote learning challenges, impacts on caregivers, and protective factors. For both groups, concerns about the child's well-being and literacy learning were most prevalent and prevailed over concerns about oral language. Most caregivers in each group described negative impacts of educational disruptions on their cdhildren. As compared to caregivers of TD children, caregivers of children with DLD reported higher rates of remote learning challenges and more negative impacts on literacy learning, speech and/or language, and education in general. DLD caregivers also shared fewer positive comments and remarks related to protective factors.

Conclusions: Results indicate that families of children with DLD may have experienced more challenges during COVID-19 educational disruptions as compared to families of TD peers. Thus, responsive research and supports for these families is essential.

Purpose: We examined the role of narrative microstructure (production of words and sentences) and narrative macrostructure (organization of events) in the use of internal state terms (ISTs) in narratives of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in their school language (SL).

Method: Fifty-eight Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschool children aged 55-78 months divided into two groups participated: 16 bilingual children diagnosed with bilingual DLD and 42 with typical language development (TLD). Narratives were elicited in SL/Hebrew using the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? Narratives were transcribed and coded for frequency of ISTs and classified as perceptual, linguistic, motivational, linguistic, emotional, or physical. ISTs were also examined in terms of their role in microstructure (tokens and types) and macrostructure (Character, Setting, Initiating Event, Internal Response, Plan, Attempt, and Consequence) categories.

Results: In terms of microstructure, bilingual children with DLD produced fewer word types and tokens in general and fewer perceptual ISTs than bilingual TLD peers. In terms of macrostructure, children with DLD used six out of the seven story grammar elements in their narratives less than bilinguals with TLD. For ISTs and macrostructure, bilinguals with DLD produced fewer linguistic ISTs in Attempts than their peers with TLD.

Conclusions: Bilingual children with DLD have difficulties in producing ISTs, and this difficulty is shown to be related to both microstructure and macrostructure abilities. Suggestions for clinical intervention are offered to assist children with DLD in producing narratives that involve mental state language related to characters' feelings, intentions, and goals.

Purpose: The present study was designed to investigate persistence in preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) compared to similar-age peers with typical language (TL) on tasks designed to be moderately challenging, yet equivalent in difficulty for both groups.

Method: Sixteen preschool-age children with DLD were matched to 16 children with TL based on chronological age, biological sex, and maternal education. The children completed two play-based tasks that were designed to elicit some success but impossible to complete. Task persistence was measured by the total time spent attempting to complete each unachievable task.

Results: Despite equivalent task difficulty for both groups, the children with DLD exhibited less persistence than the TL group. This reduced persistence behavior on the part of the DLD group was a generalized and not a task-specific response.

Conclusions: Despite experiencing the same degree of success on moderately challenging play-based tasks, the children in the DLD group exhibited reduced task persistence relative to the TL group. Potential implications for reduced persistence for children with DLD are discussed.