SpeechLanguage Pathologists Role Perception in Teaching Literacy: Process and Content

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Speech-Language Pathologists Role Perception in
Teaching Literacy Process and Content
Dr. Frank Kersting, Western Kentucky
University Casey Carr, Western Kentucky
University Jessica Kersting, MS, CCC/SLP

• ASHA Convention Chicago, 2008

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Literacy

• Means an individual's ability to read, write, and
  speak in English, and to compute, and solve
  problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to
  function on the job, in the family of the
  individual, and in society.
• law.justia.com/us/cfr/title20/20-3.0.2.1.37.0.16.3
  .html

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ASHAs position statement on Literacy

• Position Statement 13 Roles and
  Responsibilities of SLPs With Respect to Reading
  and Writing in Children and Adolescents
• SLPs play a critical role in the development of
  literacy skills in children and adolescents.
• Why do SLPs play a critical role?
• Spoken and written language have been linked
  through four main areas
• spoken language is foundational for reading and
  writing skills
• each builds on the other to generate competence
  in both areas
• children with spoken language difficulties often
  have difficulty with reading and vice versa
• instruction in spoken language will impact
  written language and vice versa

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ASHAs Position Statement on Literacy

• Position Statement 13
• The SLPs Role
• Providing strategies for preventing difficulty in
  literacy acquisition
• Identifying children at risk for reading and
  writing problems
• Assessing written language
• Providing intervention that targets literacy

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Reading What is it?

• Reading is a process or set of processes by which
  people generate and organize
  their memories related to topic, allow their
  thinking to be guided externally, assimilate
  new ideas, accommodate old ones, then reorganize.
• Reading begins and ends with meaning
• Reading is constructive
• Reading is a selective behavior
• The reader selects from text what appears to be
  important information
  and disregards
  what seems to be less important.
• Perspective
• Learning to read is not as naturally or
  biologically wired in as are speaking and
  listening
• Reading must be directly taught to most children
  over several years of formal instruction
• Moats, 2000

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A perspective of Literacy for SLPs

• Psycholinguistic Perspective
• Goodman
• Hypothesis or prediction about the meaning of
  what is to be read
• Readers make initial use of their prior knowledge
  and language competence
• Strategy order
• semantic (predict meaning)
• syntactic (generate anticipated language
  possibilities to structure anticipated meanings
  predict next word)
• visual (combination with auditory) knowledge of
  letter-sound relationships

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Reading Construct

• Emerging Literacy
• Examination of how children think about literacy
  and the strategies they use in attempting to
  comprehend and reproduce written language.
  Cassidy, The Reading Teacher, 1999
• Literacy
• Individual's ability to read, write, and speak in
  English

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Reading is

• Content
• Text Comprehension
• Process
• Phonological Awareness the ability to auditorily
  distinguish units of speech such as phonemes and
  syllables.
• Phonemic Awareness the ability to hear and
  manipulate sounds in words

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Study

• Survey area SLPs in schools to determine
• their understanding of literacy
• AND
• literacy issues they address based on the
  content/process construct

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Survey

• The survey was administered to 30 school-based
  Speech-Language Pathologists in a 10-county area
  in South-Central Kentucky.
• The Response rate was approximately 1/3

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Results

• SLPs are aware of ASHAs position on SLPs
  involvement with literacy and they feel they have
  the right to address emerging literacy
• The SLP should be part of the assessment team in
  determining literacy ability
• Believe that a preschool childs oral language
  ability is predictive of future literacy
  proficiency and therefore believe that emerging
  literacy goals should focus on both improving
  text comprehension AND phonological awareness
  abilities

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Results

• Many had training in graduate school and/or
  through continuing education regarding emerging
  literacy instruction
• However, not all felt confident in providing
  literacy instruction to preschool children
• Those that did feel confident believed that
  course content should include, but are not
  limited to
• Basic rhymes
• Letter-sound correspondence
• Vocabulary
• Phonological awareness
• Storytelling
• A link between oral and written language and
  basic comprehension of content

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Conclusions

• SLPs providing services in the school should
  address BOTH
• Content
• AND
• Process skills
• This is important because
• The profession needs a consistent theoretic
  foundation specifying the skills and
  responsibilities for addressing those skills in
  providing services
• The results provide preliminary data on the state
  of service delivery in providing
  language-literacy instruction to students needing
  such critical intervention for school success.

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Recommendations

• Increased collaboration with Literacy specialists
  for students enrolled in therapy
• Increased attention to in-services designed at
  promoting collaboration amongst faculty and
  specialists
• For SLPs
• More in-depth training in literacy in all its
  rich dimensions

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Conclusion

• Literacy IS in the SLPs Scope of Practice as
  defined by ASHA.

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Resources

• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
  (2001). Roles and Responsibilities of
  Speech-Language Pathologists With Respect to
  Reading and Writing in Children and Adolescents
  Position Statement. Available from
  www.asha.org/policy.
• Crowe, L. (2003). Comparison of Two Reading
  Feedback Strategies in Improving the Oral and
  Written Language Performance of Children With
  Language-Learning Disabilities. American Journal
  of Speech- Language Pathology, 12, 16-27.
• Culatta, B., Kovarsky, D., Theadore, G.,
  Franklin, A., Timler, G. (2003.) Quantitative
  and Qualitative Documentation of Early Literacy
  Instruction. American Journal of
  Speech-Language Pathology, 12, 172-188.
• Ezell, H.K. Justice, L.M. (2000). Increasing
  the Print Focus of Adult-Child Shared Book
  Reading Through Observational Learning. American
  Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 9, 36-47.
• Ezell, H.K. Justice, L.M. (2004). Print
  Referencing An Emergent Literacy Enhancement
  Strategy and its Clinical Applications.
  Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in
  Schools, 35, 185-193.

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• Justice, L.M., Chow, S., Capellini, C., Flanigan,
  K., Colton, S. (2003). Emergent Literacy
  Intervention for Vulnerable Preschoolers
  Relative Effects of Two Approaches. American
  Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 12,
  320-332.
• Justice, L.M. Ezell, H.K. (2002) Use of
  Storybook Reading to Increase Print Awareness in
  At-Risk Children. American Journal of
  Speech-Language Pathology, 11, 17-29.
• Lovelace, S. Steward, S. R. (2007). Increasing
  Print Awareness in Preschoolers With Language
  Impairment Using Non-Evocative Print
  Referencing. Language, Speech, and Hearing
  Services in Schools, 38, 16-30.
• Moats, L. (2000). Speech to print. Paul H.
  Brookes Publishing, 3
• Shaughnessy, A., Sanger, D., Matteucci, C.,
  Ritzman, M. (2004). Early childhood language
  and literacy Survey explores kindergarten
  teachers perceptions. The ASHA Leader, pp. 2,
  18.