Research Symposium

BIO

My name is Richenda Victor and I am from Naples Florida. I am on the pre-medical track and aspire to be a pediatrician in the future. Some of my hobbies include reading, spending time with my dog, and baking.

Collaboration Between Speech-Language Pathologists and Kindergarten Teachers

Abstract

Collaboration between speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and kindergarten (K) teachers benefits kindergarten students who may have academic and/or social concerns, and specifically those with diagnosed speech-language impairment (SLI). Students with SLI are at risk for later difficulty in reading and language-based math skills (Adlof & Hogan, 2018; Cabbage et al., 2018, Cross et al., 2019). The present study aims to provide a descriptive analysis of views regarding collaboration between SLPs and kindergarten teachers. We hypothesize that there will be similar collaboration ratings between the two groups but anticipate that SLPs will place a slightly greater emphasis on collaboration compared to K teachers. First, a cross-sectional survey was deployed to collect demographic information as well as ratings of collaboration for SLPs and K teachers. Dyads (SLP/K teacher) were then created for qualitative interviews and analyses. Even though our data collection is not yet complete, we collected data from 47 K teachers and 133 SLPs and a total of 171 responses. We anticipate concluding that both groups will have similar views in terms of their future collaboration.

Keywords: Speech-language pathology, Kindergarten, Collaboration