Team Teaching a Course in Communicative Disorders

Abstract

Many academic disciplines are dependent upon re cruitment of students from general survey courses. This is particularly true for Speech Pathology and Audiology, a relatively young profession. General survey courses are most often designed with two pur poses in mind: to provide a broad overview plus perti nent basic information. Yet in spite of these important objectives, tht introductory course is commonly taught by a graduate assistant or by a staff member with the least amount of tenure. This assignment is usually deemed menial or undesirable, involving the superficial presentation of as much comprehensive information as possible in the limited time available. Little thought may be given to ways in which the course might be made more interesting, challenging, and depthful. Instructor interest and teaching quality invariably suffer. Students planning definite careers in the field are slighted as well as those taking the course in an elective, exploratory vein in search of an academic major. The University of Mississippi has initiated a pro gram through the master's level in the areas of speech pathology, language pathology, and audiology. As part of this program, a variety of training techniques is being investigated and employed. An attempt is being made to utilize only those instructional procedures offering the greatest potential effectiveness. Special emphasis is placed upon the structure utilized to teach the speech survey course. As the team approach provides the student with greater exposure to special ists and allows exploration of the team members (Wetzler, 1964; Dey, 1968) a dyadic approach was initiated. It was hypothesized that two personalities and teaching styles would stimulate more student interest while allowing each instructor to cover his respective material in more depth and more, confidence. Two sec tions were formed. Each of the two instructors taught one-half of the coursework. Division of the course con tent was based upon the respective interests and back ground qualifications of the two instructors, one male and one female instructor, each with two years of prior professional experience and qualification for the Amer ican Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA) Certifi cate of Clinical Competence (CCC). The students were 106 undergraduates, almost all of them sophomores. Class duration was 14 weeks encompassing a total of 38 meetings. Each instructor met six times with approxi mately half of the class and then switched to the other half for an equal time period. This rotating schedule was continued for the duration of the semester. Care was taken to avoid content overlap. Grade re quirements, tests, etc. were all controlled to insure con sistency for both groups on these variables. At the end of the semester, a list of questions was distributed to each student. No signatures were allowed on the an swers so as to minimize biased responses due to threat of punishment. No discussion was allowed among the stu dents immediately prior to and while taking the test. The test was administered spontaneously to avoid possible pre-test discussion that might destroy the desired indi viduality of responses. Each student responded to the following statements: