November 21, 2011

Ingredients for working with children with speech sound disorders

Sharynne, Lynn Williams, Rebecca McCauley and Elise Baker
Can you bake a cake without chocolate?
Can you bake a cake without flour or eggs?
What are essential ingredients? What are active ingredients?

Lynn Williams (East Tennessee State University), Rebecca McCauley (Ohio State University), Elise Baker (The University of Sydney) and I spent a productive 3 days at Mission Beach, San Diego during November. During our time together we conducted a content analysis of the common and unique ingredients that make up 15 phonological interventions for children with speech sound disorders that were documented in Interventions for Children with Speech Sound Disorders. Currently there are 48 different documented interventions for children with speech sound disorders. We chose the interventions with the highest levels of evidence of effectiveness. It was a privilege to have this time together to think about effectiveness of intervention for children with speech sound disorder, and to develop a framework to assist speech-language pathologists, their university educators, and researchers  to consider common and unique ingredients. We are currently writing up our work, and hope it will be published at some stage.
Lynn Williams, Rebecca McCauley and Elise Baker
conducting the content analysis of interventions