Abstract
This paper reports collaboration between teachers and speech therapists and the change of their conventional roles while developing, in Hong Kong, a curriculum-based Chinese Language Program for children with special needs. The Program focused on four areas: comprehension, expression, reading, and writing. The roles of language teachers and speech therapists changed as they collaborated to design and validate the Program that had assessment and treatment components.
Introduction
Children with special needs require help from different specialists so a team approach is often effective for these children. Because children spend most of their time in the classroom, teachers can coordinate and facilitate students' learning, especially their language learning. Despite speech therapists usefully assessing students' speech and language abilities and designing and carrying through treatments beneficial in the therapy room, students often carry over to other contexts little of the skills they acquire in therapy rooms (Harn, Bradshaw, and Ogletree, 1999). Hence it is important that teachers and parents, who spend much more time with the students in such other contexts, ensure better follow-up and carryover of students' learning. For the team approach to succeed in schools all the professionals there have to interact usefully. For example, speech therapists have to interact with classroom teachers and parents in observation, goal setting, consultation and collaborative intervention activities. Only in this way can the speech therapist serve well as a member of a multidisciplinary team.
Collaborative consultation during classroom intervention often generates solutions to complex problems that require different professionals' expertise. Usually solutions produced by a multi-expertise team are more comprehensive than those individual team members produce independently. Hence, professionals such as classroom teachers or speech therapists have to explore, face the challenges, and gain the benefits of collaborative service delivery. In such collaboration the roles of classroom teachers and speech therapists change dramatically and continually to meet the varied demands of the students and their co-professionals (Harn, Bradshaw, & Ogletree, 1999.)
At least three obstacles impede classroom-based interventions:
(1) Access to classroom and extension of language goals into the classroom curriculum are often a problem. This often requires great support from teachers in order to overcome. (Achilles, Yates & Freese, 1991.)
(2) Successful classroom-based intervention depends on the attitudes of the speech therapists and the teachers being right. They must be willing to develop mutual trust, respect and to share knowledge with each other.
(3) Teachers and speech therapists should be willing to give up their traditional roles and take up necessary new ones.
Classroom teachers' essential responsibilities are to know and master the curriculum and to manage children in a whole class; similarly speech therapists have, through their expertise in language, to be able to modify, adapt and individualize the curriculum when working with a child in class (Elksnin & Capilouto, 1994; Roller et at. 1992.) Classroom method could lead to greater increases in students' generalization of target words, arguably through increases in natural opportunities for interaction and practice in communication.
As mentioned, working collaboratively with mutual respect and a generous sharing of expertise, school professionals can serve children better. In Hong Kong, inter-professional collaboration in classroom intervention is limited and only at an early, if developing, stage. Because practice can effectively foster collegial sharing of expertise and students' learning, collaboration should be implemented not only in western countries but also in jurisdictions, like Hong Kong, where such professionals as teachers and speech therapists currently collaborate little.
The Aim of the Study
This study aims to investigate teachers' and speech therapists' change of roles and the extent of their collaboration during the development of a curriculum-based Chinese Language Program (CLP) for Hong Kong children with special needs.
Methods
Subjects
Four language teachers and two speech therapists in a special school participated in the development of the CLP.
Procedures
To develop a comprehensive, curriculum-based language program, a multidisciplinary team is necessary. Hence language teachers and the speech therapists were invited to be key members of the team.
There were different stages of collaboration between language teachers and speech therapists in the development of the CLP that comprises an assessment tool, teaching contents, and teaching activities.
1. Constructing the CLP
Initially, the language teachers and speech
therapists met regularly to discuss and agree on their roles in developing the
CLP. From their teaching experience, teachers mainly provided ideas on what to
teach and how to teach that. With a view to being able to modify the content of
the program, speech therapists provided specific knowledge on speech and
language. Before the teaching trial started, the speech therapists held for the
language teachers a workshop on implementing the language program. The language
teachers learned the application of the assessment tools, strategies for
assessing students' abilities, how to set goals for individual students in a
group, and how to select appropriate activities.
2. Feasibility trial for the CLP
In stage two, the language teachers
and speech therapists spent about two months trying out the program. Three
weeks of this trial period were spent on assessment; the rest was used for
teaching. The trial was to confirm, or disconfirm, the effectiveness of the
language program as useful, teacher-friendly, and suitable for students. Each
language teacher joined by a speech therapist led a group of students. When the
assessment period began, speech therapists assisted the language teachers in
their assessments; later, the language teachers independently administered
assessment. During the teaching period, each speech therapist collaborated with
a language teacher taking a class.
In the period of co-teaching, there were
three phases in teachers' and therapists' collaboration. Initially, speech
therapists played a dominant role in the teaching activities; subsequently, the
teachers and the therapists led the class alternately; finally, the language
teachers played in dominant role in the class teaching with the speech
therapists acting as assistant or advisor.
3. Evaluation of effectiveness of the CLP After the development of the CLP and the trial teaching, all language teachers filled in a questionnaire to evaluate (1) the language program's suitability to student's language ability and needs; (2) its benefits to language teachers' knowledge, skills and teaching strategies; (3) perceptions of the speech therapists' corresponding gains; and (4) the usefulness and user-friendliness of the CLP. Additionally, teachers could note any aspect of the program they thought worth comment.
Results
Changes of role by teachers and by speech therapists
Because CLP was developed in stages, language teachers' and speech therapists' collaboration and their role change are similarly reported.
Development of the Assessment Tools
Before participating in the development of the assessment tool of the CLP, the language teachers judged students' language level and ability subjectively, presumably drawing on their experience. They assessed students' language abilities by their perception of students' success in following the language curriculum. For example, language teachers might elicit a student's ability to express 'I want candy' by holding a candy when given prompt the 'I want…?'. If the student then said 'I want candy', the language teacher might, surely in a way open to challenge, interpret that student's expressive ability as being three words.
The speech therapists usually designed their own tool or used some standardized language tests to assess students' language ability. The assessment was often carried in the therapy room; language performance outside the therapy room might not be assessed at all. Hence their assessments could well be unhelpfully restricted and downplay, at best, a student's functional use of language and pragmatics.
After the development of the CLP assessment tool, language teachers learned from speech therapists how better objectively to assess students' language ability or level according to developmental profiles. Concomitantly, language teachers became more aware of different areas of language, for example: pragmatics, symbolic understanding, cognition, and play skills. With clearer concepts and better understanding of different speech and language abilities, teachers were more effectively able to assess students' language ability.
Through their presence in classrooms speech therapists grew more aware of rich opportunities for curriculum-based interventions and dramatically increased their contributions. Again, as speech therapists provided language teachers with skills and knowledge in assessing students' language ability they, in part incidentally, shared their expertise with their collaborators and gave practical demonstration of what had, at first, looked only theoretically plausible
Developing teaching content
Before the development of teaching content, language teachers acted as coordinator, designer, and executor of the of the whole language curriculum. Speech therapists designed their own speech-language therapy content and almost always saw students only in the therapy room. In the development of the teaching contents, language teachers collaborated with the speech therapists. Language teachers and the speech therapists alike contributed in the design, development and coordination of the language curriculum content.
Development of teaching activities
Before the development of teaching activities, language teachers mainly focused on lesson themes when they were designing or conducting teaching activities. Those activities might not match students' language level or need. Conversely, speech therapists tended to develop therapy activities for individual students without considering the school curriculum a student was intended to follow. This unfortunate converse tactic risked losing necessary support from teachers or parents who could fairly view the therapy as irrelevant to what most directly concerned them. Hence language treatment might well have limited success or even fail.
By participating in the teaching activities development, both language teachers and speech therapists learned to integrate the classroom language curriculum with the developmental profile of children with special needs.
Teaching trial of the CLP
Until the teaching trial of the CLP, language teachers mainly focused on students' reading and writing skills in the classroom and speech therapists mainly used pullout methods and seldom undertook language treatment in classrooms.
In the teaching trial, language teachers co-taught with speech therapists and focused on language skills, like articulation or pragmatics that they had previously little touched. For their part, speech therapists pursued their special contributions through classroom intervention, reverting to pullout therapy only when necessary.
Questionnaire survey of Teachers' comments on the effectiveness of the Program
From their responses to questionnaire items on the suitability of the program for students' language ability and needs, all language teachers agreed that the contents were indeed so suitable. All language teachers and speech therapists agreed that they collaborated more. From that collaboration, all the language teachers and the speech therapists reported that communication between them; their personal and professional support, and their sharing of each other's expertise benefited. Three of the four language teachers and one of the speech therapists reported that their understanding and knowledge of students' ability increased. For the item on understanding of each other's work after the collaboration, only one language teacher and one speech therapist agreed on they had more understanding; the others had no comment. The results of the usefulness and user-friendliness of the CLP were that three of the language teachers found the CLP useful and user-friendly.
Discussion
Contents of the language program
The collaboration of teachers and speech therapists brought about a CLP successful for children with special needs. The program is curriculum-based and offers assessment tools, teaching content and teaching activities. It is a package with information and materials for teachers to develop the language and communication skills of Chinese-speaking communication-disordered students in language comprehension, language expression, reading, and writing.
The assessment tool comprised a set of procedures with necessary instructions, record sheets and language materials. The procedures are of two types: structure-based assessment and observation-based assessment. Individual students' different language abilities are assessed through these procedures. The structure-based assessment of ability in language covers comprehension, language expression, reading, writing, and symbolic understanding; the observation-based assessment attention, play, and pragmatic skills. Language teachers can follow instructions, in an assessment manual to use provided materials, for example, picture books, to carry out the assessment, recording students' performance on the given sheets.
Curriculum-based, teacher-friendly and user-friendly contents and activities characterize the CPL material; professional information on skills and strategies, like the functional use of language, augment the material.
The form and extent of changes language teachers' and speech therapists' changes of roles mediated through collaboration in CLP was ascertained experientially during the development of the program and afterwards, more objectively, through the questionnaire survey.
Teachers' traditional roles
Teachers have to develop language assessment tools for classroom use and the appropriate language teaching contents and activities. They are also sole executors of language assessment and teaching. Very often teachers have to develop their own syllabus as there is no systematic syllabus to follow. Teachers act as promoters of reading and writing attempting to match mainstream schools' goals (Hence often an ignorer of student's needs in language comprehension and expression.)
Because language is essential for education, those with language disorders have problems in learning at school. Teachers seek to play a major role in teaching language to communication-disordered students. In consequence, to teach appropriate materials to the students, teachers need a clear understanding of each student's language abilities and what such abilities entail. This is nearly impossible without any systematic tool that teachers can use for assessing students' language abilities. Teachers in special schools do not usually have a set syllabus or guideline to follow or refer to in teaching; they can only prepare their teaching materials in accordance with their experience and limited knowledge of student's previous language performance. Again, teachers may not have enough professional training or knowledge to enhance and otherwise develop students' language abilities and communication skills. Thus, the outcome of their efforts may be ineffective. Without means for systematically assessing language abilities teachers have little recourse but to evaluate a student's language abilities subjectively and, as best they may, decide then what to teach. It will be no surprise if teachers then do misjudge students' language abilities and that, in turn, students barely benefit from their classes. Additionally, to match the teaching curriculum used in the mainstream schools, teachers may unrealistically, mainly emphasize reading and writing in their teaching. Because of their distinct regional and historic origins spoken Cantonese and written Chinese essentially differ. The verbal utterances of most Cantonese-speaking students with special needs are communicatively disordered. If one accepts the primacy of speech in linguistic communication then there is an overwhelming argument to teach them the comprehension and expression of spoken Cantonese before dealing with reading or writing in Chinese orthography. That is to say, if teachers insist on teaching reading and writing to students whose speech often defeats their addressees, then the teachers have scant hope of meeting the students' primary communicative needs.
Traditional role of speech therapists
Speech therapists assess individual students' speech and language abilities and design appropriate treatment activities accordingly. However, the treatment sessions, often carried out in the therapy rooms, do not fit in with the school curriculum. Speech therapists rarely participate in language classes and only act as adviser to language teachers upon request.
Current roles of teacher
Teachers now act as co-assessors with speech therapist and as guided employer of speech and language teaching and knowledge. They collaborate with speech therapist in language assessment, treatment design and intervention.
Current roles of speech therapists
Speech therapists become advisor and collaborator in language assessment, program design and teaching. They also co-teach with qualified classroom language teachers Through curriculum-based intervention, curriculum elements become intervention content. More curriculum-based speech and language intervention become, increasingly more, delivered in classroom rather than in therapy room. (cf. Montgometry, 1994). To cater for the school's curriculum, classroom teachers and speech therapists have to collaborate and integrate into a team rather than pursuing separate and even conflicting duty (cf. Nelson, 1994). When speech therapists use classroom-based interventions, they become as much members of the educational team as teachers and other concerned professionals. Different team members may have various responsibilities in different types of intervention but the primary aim should be meeting individual student's needs in and beyond the classroom (Ferguson, 1991). In the CLP, teachers and speech therapists collaborate to achieve this purpose. As the program was developing, changes occurred in how teachers viewed their interaction with speech therapists. They also changed the way they viewed speech therapists, the responsibility they took for children in their classes with speech-language disabilities and even how they organized and taught their classes. Abundant research shows that teachers play an important part in making any tailored program work and how classroom-based speech language interventions could be implemented. (Achilles, Yates, & Freese, 1991; Borsch & Oaks, 1992; Brandel, 1992; Magnotta, 1991; Montgomery, 1992). A like importance held true for the language teachers making the CLP effective by collaborating with speech therapists and implementing the Program in the school curriculum.
Conclusion
Collaboration among professionals is important in the education of children with special needs. Again and in a new context we have evidence of how the roles of different professionals will change with their revising their conceptions of (a) the work in hand, (b) the need of the students, and (c) the project within which all are working. The collaboration and role changes of teachers and speech therapists were manifested in the development and use of the CLP. Thus both collaboration and classroom-based curriculum succeeded and so merit wider promotion.
Acknowledgements
This project was supported by grants from the University of Hong Kong Research Grants Committee Grant and the Quality Education Fund. Particular thanks are extended to the students, language teachers, and speech therapists of PLK Yu Lee Mo Fan Memorial School for their cooperative assistance. Thanks are also due to Alison Li for her contribution to this project and Dr. Godfrey Harrison who helpfully read the earlier version of this paper.
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