Affiliation:
1. Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Abstract
Purpose:
Developmental language disorder (DLD) is an underidentified neurodevelopmental disorder that affects, on average, one out of 11 kindergarten-age children (ages 4–6 years). Children with DLD can face academic, behavioral, psychiatric, emotional, and social challenges. Universal screening is seen as an effective way for public school districts to increase DLD identification rates. However, little is known about factors impacting implementation of school-based universal screenings for DLD. We partnered with a large suburban school district in the Intermountain West region of the United States to gather detailed perspectives from school personnel regarding the barriers and facilitators to the implementation of universal screening in their district.
Method:
Using a two-phase mixed-methods design, we first conducted focus groups to identify potential barriers and facilitators to universal screening. We then used the qualitative data from the first phase to develop a 20-item survey to assess agreement with the focus group results among a wider group of district speech-language pathologists and kindergarten teachers from the school district.
Results:
Our survey showed moderate levels of agreement with our focus group results. In particular, school personnel showed high levels of support for universal screening for DLD, with interesting interplay across various factors: (a) the negative impact of unmanageable workload on personnel under both referral- and universal-based identification formats, (b) the preference for paraprofessionals to administer screenings, (c) the role that Response to Intervention programs may play in offsetting workloads associated with universal screenings, and (d) the need for increased awareness and education about child language development and impairment among general education teachers and the public.
Conclusion:
Recommendations for incorporating these factors into more useful and applicable collaborative research-based efforts are presented.
Supplemental Material:
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23661876
Publisher
American Speech Language Hearing Association
Subject
Speech and Hearing,Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
Reference79 articles.
1. A Randomized Comparative Effectiveness Trial for Preventing Type 2 Diabetes
2. If We Don’t Look, We Won’t See: Measuring Language Development to Inform Literacy Instruction
3. Building Sustainable Models of Research–Practice Partnerships Within Educational Systems
4. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2005). Evidence-based practice in communication disorders [Position statement]
.
https://www.asha.org/policy/tr2004-00001/
5. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2022a). Scope of practice for the speech-language pathology assistant (SLPA).
https://www.asha.org/policy/slpa-scope-of-practice/
Cited by
1 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献