Speech-Language Therapists' Training, Confidence, and Barriers When Serving Bilingual Children: Development and Application of a National Survey.

PURPOSE: Most pediatric speech-language therapists (SLTs) will serve bilingual children. This article reports findings from the National Survey of SLTs' Training, Confidence, and Barriers When Serving Bilingual Children. This survey was created for SLTs to self-report training, confidence, and barriers when assessing and delivering interventions to bilingual children.

METHOD: The 58-question survey was developed using commonly accepted procedures for questionnaire development to establish content validity: (a) identification of the purpose of the survey, (b) creation of a blueprint of items, (c) expert panel review, and (d) cognitive interviews with end-users. Upon completing initial development, 567 bilingual and monolingual SLTs responded to survey items. Internal structure validity was assessed using a confirmatory factor analysis. A three-factor model with the following dimensions-linguistically matched, not linguistically matched, and barriers when not linguistically matched-resulted.

RESULTS

Descriptive findings uncovered an ongoing need for SLTs to receive training to support bilingual children on their caseload, especially to communicate with families who speak languages other than English and embed children's home language in therapy sessions. While bilingual SLTs were more confident in serving bilingual children than monolingual SLTs were, both groups identified inadequate resources, along with other barriers that impacted their perceived confidence and competence.

CONCLUSIONS

Survey results reveal the continued need to support preservice and practicing SLTs to enhance their competence and confidence when assessing and treating bilingual children. The findings from the present study have the potential of informing American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's leadership, institutes of higher education, and continuing education initiatives.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.29409923.