A ‘speechie’ by trade, researcher Caitlin Stephenson from La Trobe University canvassed the views of 61 Victorian teachers from mainstream public schools via an anonymous online survey, finding ‘limited awareness’ of speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) expertise and scope of practice prevailed.

“We’re not going to steal the spotlight (from teachers), and we certainly don’t want to,” she tells EducationHQ.

“But we should be able to support teams, and we should be able to be used more efficiently than I believe we [are]…”

A key finding was that many teachers did not seem aware of SLPs’ capacity to offer support for students in building written language skills (eg. word reading, reading fluency and reading comprehension).

Rather, teachers in the study perceived SLPs as being best equipped to help with verbal communication skills (speech and oral language) and auditory-based tasks (such as phonological awareness).

“I think the qualitative comments were the most insightful,” Stephenson says.

When teachers were asked why they would – or wouldn’t – refer a student to a SLP, those that would were not specific about how they would help, she explains. 

“They would say, ‘they’re really amazing’ or ‘speechies are knowledgeable’, but didn’t really clearly articulate what they think speechies would help [them and their] students with.

“So, potentially hinting at a lack of knowledge [around the] skills speechies can provide support with.”

One significant issue that emerged from the research was that teachers often face pushback when they try to refer on students to SLPs.

“They’re being told, ‘No, you can’t see them for that. This [one thing] is the only service they offer’...,” Stephenson says.

Stephenson is now calling on SLPs to more widely promote their solid theoretical grounding in linguistics, language development and disorders, and models of communication, so schools and teachers can gain a deeper appreciation of their work.

And crucially, you don’t have to wait until a struggling child reaches Year 3 to refer them on for SLP intervention, she warns.

“I had some schools that were sending [some] kids to me, but it was always at Year 3, so they were what a lot of people will refer to as ‘instructional casualties’, especially when you’re getting them en masse,” she says.

“I‘d get these students, and I‘d ring their parents and the first thing out of the parents’ mouths were, ‘but my kid speaks fine’.

“So, parents were (also) seeing speechies as (just dealing with) speech, which is pretty traditional, and they didn’t know we had a lot of literacy (expertise).”

When Stephenson first entered the profession in 2015, she found there were a lot of internal mixed messages around SLPs’ precise role and how much they ought to support schools with literacy.

“I had friends being told ‘we only do up to phonology awareness and that was it’, but my team leader was showing me all the assessment tools we could use and sending me to professional development about how to do interventional literacy,” she says.

Stephenson has just recently picked up the Tertiary Student Award from Learning Difficulties Australia.

Although it came as a great surprise, the Award has given the researcher a clear signal that her work is indeed having a positive impact.

“I was really like, ‘Wow! Maybe my little chip, chip, chipping away will make a difference’,” Stephenson says. 

“I think my research is just a tiny pixel in the whole photo, but it still matters…”

Now Stephenson is hoping to influence positive change in SLP training programs so that graduates are “very confident in the knowledge base they get from uni”. 

“The knowledge [and content covered in SLP courses] is quite strong, but there’s some variability,” she says.

“And in my latest studies, some of the participants have spoken about just not wanting to work in literacy, and I’m (thinking), 'Well, the doctor doesn't get to rock up to work and say, I don't want to see patients with warts'.

“So, we should have the skill-set whether we want to or not,” she says.