Abstract
Teachers and Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) share concern about children’s Speech Language and Communication Needs (SLCNs) but they have different foci because of their professional roles. Contemporary research has identified the challenges to schools when meeting the needs of children with SLCN, highlighted terminological controversies and has increased opportunities for professional development. The views of 170 Educationalists and SLT professionals in England about SLCN, and the children’s associated needs were compared for similarities and differences in an on-line survey that employed both categorical responses and Likert scales. Comparisons were made between Teacher and SLT groups and between SLTs working in schools and clinics. There were few significant differences between the views of SLTs in clinics and education. By contrast there were often large and significant differences between teachers and SLTs. Education professionals were less familiar with terminology related to speech difficulties, did not discriminate between behaviours that might differentiate speech from language difficulties and varied in the ratings given about other associated difficulties. Additionally, education professionals showed awareness of academic and behaviour difficulties associated with language difficulties and highlighted associated problems with reading and writing. SLTs felt confident in their understanding of the relevant terminology but there was less clarity in the features that discriminated speech from language difficulties. Both the Educationalists and SLTs valued additional training needs with over 50% of the Education staff reporting that they had no training in SLCN. The lack of clarity about the language markers of SLCN by teachers and the requests for tools to help in the identification of speech and language problems in school-age children are important areas to address. Both SLTs and Education staff emphasised the co-occurrence of difficulties with reading comprehension and written text production, highlighting the importance of profiling children’s language learning needs rather than a reliance on diagnostic categories.
Highlights
Many young children experience speech and language delays (Law et al, 2000; McLeod and McKinnon, 2007), and enter school with poor language skills (Norbury et al, 2016)
The development of effective services for children with SLCN depends on both mapping provision and examining professionals’ understanding so as to develop effective collaborative practice
The likelihood of behavioral problems was judged as moderately high by both groups and there were no significant differences in patterns of responding with “bullying other children” again being the least likely reported behavior
Summary
Many young children experience speech and language delays (Law et al, 2000; McLeod and McKinnon, 2007), and enter school with poor language skills (Norbury et al, 2016). A vital first step toward addressing these issues is to establish current understandings of both the speech and language and other associated difficulties experienced by the children [see Bishop et al (2016) for an analysis of the views of researchers and speech and language therapists (SLTs)] Achieving this objective entails examining both groups of professionals’ perceptions. Previous work has focused on one group of professionals (Sadler, 2005; Dockrell and Howell, 2015), small samples in local areas (Glover et al, 2015; teachers n = 14, SLTs n = 6), or in specialist settings (Hartas, 2004) None of these studies differentiated speech from language difficulties
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