Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders Journals: An Exploratory Survey of the Recent Literature.

PURPOSE: Inspired by a preliminary survey of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) literature conducted by Friberg et al. (2014), the current study aimed to expand the original study's findings-that SoTL was rarely published in the communication sciences and disorders (CSD) literature from 2009 to 2013-to the subsequent 8-year period (2014-2021). The latter period was of particular relevance considering the dissolution of one American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)-affiliated publication and the addition of another non-ASHA-affiliated publication during that time. METHOD: Ten peer-reviewed CSD journals and the articles published in them were identified via a survey of the literature that used narrowly defined criteria developed in collaboration with a librarian. Five trained CSD graduate student raters compared a definition of SoTL to article abstracts to determine whether each should have been categorized as SoTL. Part 1 of the study investigated an 8-year time span, Part 2 investigated the remaining nine journals in the subsequent 5 years, and Part 3 investigated publication rates of SoTL in Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders (TLCSD) alone. RESULTS: Part 1 of the study revealed that publication rates of SoTL were extremely low in the 10 surveyed CSD journals in the 8-year time span investigated. A similar and diminishing trend was found in Part 2. Even smaller percentages of journals were dedicated to SoTL. Part 3 confirmed that relatively large amounts of CSD-specific SoTL have been published in TLCSD since its inception in 2017. CONCLUSIONS: As of 2021, SoTL articles continued to be uncommonly published in CSD journals. Until recently, scholarly teachers attempting to apply SoTL in the classroom had limited resources. Beginning in 2017, TLCSD has provided an outlet for SoTL, whereas other CSD journals seem to have published less of it. Reform of publication, peer review, tenure, and promotion policies and procedures is called for so that SoTL might be included as a valid scientific endeavor.

Toward validation of a minimal competence core of morphosyntax for African American children.

PURPOSE: The authors set out to determine (a) whether African American children's spontaneous spoken language met use criteria for a revised minimal competence core with original and added morphosyntactic patterns at different geographical locations, and (b) whether pass/fail status on this core was differentiated on other criterion measures of language maturity. METHOD: The authors used a common set of activities and stimuli to elicit spontaneous speech samples from Head Start students, age 3;0 (years; months). The 119 participants were distributed at a northern (Lansing, MI) and a southern (Baton Rouge, LA) location. RESULTS: More than 80% of the children at each location met criteria for 10 core competencies. They included sentence length, type, complexity, and morphosyntactic elaborations of sentences at the lexical, phrasal, and clausal levels. The 2 most significant predictors of pass/fail outcomes in a regression analysis were (a) clinical referral status and (b) the number of different words (NDW(100)) spoken in a speech sample. CONCLUSION: A minimal competence core analyses of spontaneous oral language samples may help to identify delayed spoken grammars in African American children.

Multicultural/multilingual instruction in educational programs: a survey of perceived faculty practices and outcomes.

PURPOSE: To describe the instructional strategies reported for multicultural/multilingual issues (MMI) education at programs in speech-language pathology and audiology and the perceived ease and effectiveness of doing so. METHOD: A 49-item questionnaire elicited anonymous responses from administrators, faculty, and teaching clinical supervisors at educational programs accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in the United States. The data were provided by 731 respondents from 79.6% of 231 accredited U.S. programs. They included instructors who taught courses dedicated to MMI and those who did not. RESULTS: Respondents were generally committed to multicultural instruction, but they varied in their reported instructional practices and perceived levels of preparedness, effectiveness, and needs. General curricular infusion without an MMI-dedicated course was the most common instructional model used. Students were judged to be at least modestly prepared to deal with diversity issues as a result of their multicultural instruction, although current instructional approaches were not viewed as optimal. More positive outcomes were reported by instructors of MMI-dedicated than MMI-nondedicated courses. CONCLUSION: The instructional models and strategies used for MMI education vary, and programs are challenged by multiple issues in complying with the mandate for MMI curricular infusion.