Responsive communication coaching for early childhood practitioners in underserved South African contexts: Clinical perspectives

Abstract

Children spend longer hours with early childhood development (ECD) practitioners who are well-placed to facilitate critical early language development. ECD classrooms include a growing number of children at risk for communication delays. Greater collaboration between speech-language therapists (SLTs) and ECD practitioners is needed. Research highlights that responsivity coaching improves communication development. Therefore, responsive communication coaching was identified as a possible approach to early communication development within the classroom. This clinical perspective serves as a reflection on the programme by examining ECD practitioners’ perceptions thereof. Responsive communication coaching was identified as a means to improve practitioner–student collaboration within classrooms. This reflection aimed to describe ECD practitioners’ perceptions of responsive communication coaching implemented by student SLTs. Early childhood development practitioners were recruited from three sites in low to middle socio-economic settings, where most children were English additional language learners. Coaching was presented to 15 practitioners via 16 sessions conducted by student SLTs under supervision. Practitioners completed a custom-designed survey regarding their skill development and experiences of the coaching. All practitioners expressed benefit from coaching. Half of the practitioners (50%) rated coaching as very helpful, while 37% perceived it as helpful. The remaining practitioners (13%), based at the special needs preschool, perceived coaching as quite helpful. Thematic analysis identified the following benefits: enhanced interaction, improvements in children’s communication and the use of responsive communication strategies. Speech-language therapists need to collaborate with and support ECD practitioners in novel ways. The exploratory findings suggest that ECD practitioners benefit from SLT student-led responsive communication coaching sessions.

Current and preferred services of specialized professionals in childcare settings in Quebec, Canada: A descriptive survey of childcare administrators' perspectives

“…use of specialized equipment) (Sekerak et al, 2003). However, the research in rehabilitation favour in‐context interventions as they facilitate generalization of prior learning (Abdoola et al, 2019; Case‐Smith & O'Brien, 2009; Pratte et al, 2024). The frequency of pull‐out interventions should be questioned in childcare systems working towards inclusion.…”

Proposed framework and knowledge synthesis of services delivered by specialized professionals in childcare settings: A scoping review

“…Second, in their introduction, many authors indicated that pull‐out interventions are no longer the best choice for intervening with young children. In fact, they reported a paradigm shift that now favours working directly with early childhood educators or offering in‐context interventions to children to allow for more generalization of the abilities developed by the child (Abdoola et al, 2019; Black, 2008; Dinnebeil et al, 2004; Wesley & Buysse, 2004). That being said, many of the documents included in this review reported on the use of pull‐out interventions: a qualitative study done with PTs working in preschool settings revealed that even if they agree with the benefits of in‐context interventions, they still see the need for pull‐out interventions for some children (Sekerak et al, 2003).…”