ACQ Vol 13 no 3 2011

Cultural diversity

Examining culturally valid language assessments for Indigenous children Petrea Cahir

In 2008, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) committed itself to reducing Indigenous 1 disadvantage and closing the life-expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within one generation. Given the established links between language development, literacy, well-being, and life expectancy, the majority of COAG’s endorsed areas of focus (“building blocks”) relate directly to services provided by speech pathologists. Speech pathologists are therefore invited to take their places in affording change to achieve this overall goal. A step towards successful provision of services is the application of valid and reliable assessment methodologies for a given population. The aim of this non- exhaustive literature review is to provide some of the evidence available to speech pathologists working with Indigenous children regarding culturally safe and valid cross-cultural communication assessments. It is hoped that speech pathologists will treat this review as an introductory resource when investigating relevant assessment options for culturally valid research and/or clinical practice. Speech pathology in an Indigenous Australian context Speech pathologists (SPs) are experts in language and communication who work with clients and families from diverse social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. Communication behaviours vary cross-culturally and these differences require careful consideration from SPs when discerning language disorder from language difference . In Australia, this is of course true for SPs working with Indigenous children growing up in monolingual, bilingual, multilingual, or bidialectal communities. A recent web-based Speech Pathology Australia Discussion board entitled “Aboriginal Australians and Language” (moderated by Dr Cori Williams) showed

anecdotally that some Australian SPs working with Indigenous children are not confident that their methods of assessment are culturally and linguistically valid (Speech Pathology Australia, 2010). While there are multiple contributing factors to the use of suboptimal assessment procedures (e.g., the assessment is used to qualify for extra services [Gould, 2008a]), SPs can no longer ignore the fact that it is an ethical disservice to culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations to provide invalid, non-evidence based clinical diagnoses and recommendations (Scarinci, Arnott, & Hill, 2011). The risks of ignoring this void include the continuation of over- (see Gould, 1999, cited in Gould, 2008b) and under-diagnosis of language disorders in CALD children (Bedore & Peña, 2008). Valid assessments of language skills are necessary for the accurate classification of language disorder versus language difference for Indigenous CALD children (Gould, 2008b). While research into the bilingual child’s speech and language development is becoming increasingly available (e.g., Guttiérrez-Clellen & Peña, 2001; Nicoladis & Genesée, 1997) there remains a paucity of valid published guidelines or measurement tools for assessing speech and language development of Indigenous children around the globe. It is therefore not surprising that Döpke (2003), Gould (2008b), and Kritikos (2003) each found that when assessing the language development of CALD children, monolingual SPs tended to use assessments valid for monolingual English language development only. Such assessments do not account for a) the path of bi- or multilingual development, b) linguistic differences (e.g., dialects), or c) other cultural and social differences. The result is the misclassification of the Indigenous child’s language abilities, which has health, economical, social and political ramifications. Over-diagnosis can place unnecessary stress on families, lengthen waiting lists, add needless strain to funding resources, and skew policy-makers’ knowledge of communication disorder prevalence. Underdiagnosis can also result in family stress and anxieties as caregiver concerns go unvalidated. Clinically, under-diagnosis is an ethical issue since children with communication disorders potentially go unidentified. Furthermore, given the relationship between language abilities, literacy, and subsequent educational and occupational opportunities, under-identification is by no small measure a violation of a child’s rights to intervention. Being experts in communication, SPs should be leading the way in health and education to think outside the standardised

Keywords ABORIGINAL CHILD LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT CROSS- CULTURE INDIGENOUS SPEECH PATHOLOGY

This article has been peer- reviewed

Petrea Cahir

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ACQ Volume 13, Number 3 2011

ACQ uiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing