Subject Area
Education, Health Care
Abstract
Speech therapy and interactions with Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) during early adolescence is a common experience of many Deaf individuals. The decision to attend speech therapy is typically made by their hearing parents in conjunction with medical and educational professionals who hold the view that deaf children need to fit into the hearing world (Harmon, 2013). With the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) showing that the majority of currently licensed SLPs work in school settings (ASHA, 2018) coupled with the fact that the majority of deaf children receive some speech therapy in their early schooling years, the team wanted to know how Deaf individuals felt about their experiences with speech therapy. Therefore, the research questions that guided this study were: 1) what attitudes do culturally Deaf adults have towards their experience in speech therapy and why do they have these attitudes? and 2) what suggestions do culturally Deaf people have to help speech-language pathologists be culturally competent with Deaf clients? A qualitative design with a thematic content analysis was selected to provide a description of the textual data from participants' stories (Anderson, 2007). Findings from this initial study provided some insight into how Deaf individuals feel about having had speech therapy in school.
Recommended Citation
Greene, A., Clark, D., Ramos, G., Koo, C. K., Wimberly, M. B., & Goyette, D. (2023). Deaf Adults’ View of having Speech Language Therapy in Early Schooling. JADARA, 55(2), 1-15. Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/jadara/vol55/iss2/1
