Children's Perception of Roles in Intervention

Abstract

Sixteen children enrolled in school intervention for articulation disorders were interviewed regarding their view of the roles of speech-language pathologists, teachers, and children both in classroom and intervention settings. In addition, sixteen school speech-language pathologists were interviewed and asked to predict how the children would respond to the questions. Results indicated that children have well demarcated role differences and are highly consistent in their perspectives of role related behaviors. The children interviewed generally see speech-language pathologists as helping them, and teachers as making them do things. They see themselves as being asked to say things in intervention and be quiet and do work in class. Speech-language pathologists' predictions differed significantly from the children's responses with the exception of the role of the child in intervention. All subjects appeared to see the speech-language pathologist and the teacher as possessing authority and control over the learning context.

Building Classroom Communication Competence: A Case for a Multiperspective Approach

“…The extent to which children's perceptions of roles influence communication has not been fully determined.10 However, there is evidence that in the context of the classroom, children clearly differentiate their roles from that of the teacher,7 and teacher roles from that of SLPs. 15 Both of these last two discourse abilities, repair and role adjustment, relate to Green's fourth construct, meaning is context specific.5 Although Green's work comes from an education perspective, and Ripich and Spinelli13 approach classrooms from a discourse pattern perspective, the interleaving of the two organizing systems illustrates and validates co-occurring aspects of communicative contexts in classrooms.…”