Understanding the effectiveness of student speech-language pathologists and student teachers co-working during inter-professional school placements

Abstract

This study examined whether children’s speech and literacy skills were impacted by co-working among student speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and student teachers during an inter-professional education (IPE) initiative. Seven five-year-old children who demonstrated difficulties with speech and/or phonological awareness participated in three weeks of classroom-based instruction delivered by student SLP–teacher pairs during professional practice placements. A multiple single-participant design with repeated measures was utilized to examine the impact of the co-instruction on children’s speech and phonological awareness. Four out of seven children, each of whom were instructed by a different student professional pair, improved on at least one of two goal areas. More specifically, two out of six children improved their production of trained and untrained speech targets. Three out of seven children also improved on phoneme segmentation of trained and untrained words. Children’s improvement in phoneme awareness was accompanied by improved letter–sound knowledge and spelling. Moreover, analysis of instructional logs confirmed that children who improved on their target goals received classroom-based co-instruction from their student SLP–teacher pairs. The findings support the potential of the placement-based IPE in that most of the student pairs learned to establish co-instruction which positively influenced children’s speech and early literacy outcomes.