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ACQ
Volume 12, Number 1 2010
ACQ
uiring knowledge in speech, language and hearing
The week-long clinical training sessions in March and
July 2009, led by Sue Woodward and co-taught with
Marie Atherton, Jacqui Frowen (March) and Felicity Megee
(July), were also successful, as participants were keen
to apply their knowledge and skills. The experience has
fundamentally changed the Australian lecturers and clinical
educators, giving them not only a new teaching role and
peers with a shared passion for this innovative work but also
an international perspective of speech therapy, one which is
more inclusive of students who are culturally and linguistically
different to those typically found in courses in Australian
universities. The outcomes for the participants will be
reported in a forthcoming paper on evaluation of the course.
Several evaluation, reflection and feedback sessions
with staff and participants informed both development and
revision of the course as it progressed, so that the content
and teaching processes in the second 2-week teaching
block held in October 2009 directly targeted participants’
learning needs as they changed throughout the course. In
the content, for example, four key unifying themes of clinical
processes (derived from the feedback) were used as a
basis for teaching in each of the specialist speech therapy
topics (such as dysphagia, speech, language, cleft lip and
palate). These themes were: diverse team practice, clinical
reasoning, therapy planning, and working more effectively
with patients. A problem-based learning approach was used
in every teaching session.
Assessment of participants was continuous throughout
the clinical teaching, and they were also required to submit
detailed patient case reports. A selection of these case
reports was then used in the final teaching block to inform
individual oral viva examinations, so that participants’ deep
learning was examined.
The future
To the best of our knowledge, the first Vietnamese national
who is fully qualified as a speech therapist has recently
returned to Viet Nam. She shares some of her work below.
Tri. nh Thi. Kim Ngo. c
Speech therapist and Vice-Dean, Faculty of
Special Education, The National College of
Education, HCMC
In 1999, I graduated from Da Nang University of Education,
with a 4-year degree majoring in English. I obtained a BSc in
Special Education in 2002 at Ha Noi University of Education,
and majored in working with children with hearing impairment
(HI). After my second degree, I worked as a researcher at the
Centre for Children with Disabilities (CwDs), Institute for
Education and Research in HCMC. Then I worked as an
assistant to the program officer who led inclusive education
programs for CwDs at the Save the Children (Sweden) project
in Ha Noi. Since 2004, I have been working as a lecturer at
the Faculty of Special Education, the National College of
Education in HCMC. I taught the audiology module and
language development for children with HI and was a leader
of the HI Team before going to England in 2007.
I completed an MSc in human communication sciences
at Newcastle-upon-Tyne University in September 2008. I
got a scholarship from the Ford Foundation International
Fellowships Program with a dream of supporting children
with language difficulties. Since I started working with
children with different types of disabilities, I have realised that
the majority of CwDs have speech and language disorders.
My dissertation was compiling a vocabulary checklist for
Vietnamese parents so they can assess their children’s
language development and identify late-talkers in children
from 18–36 months of age.
Foundation Australia, one of whom was an Australian
speech pathologist volunteer.
Two 2-week teaching blocks combining theory integrated
with practice principles were conducted in February and
October 2009. Two 5-day clinical training periods were run
in March and July. Each course participant was required to
attend all of the academic teaching periods, and one week of
clinical training. Australian speech therapy lecturers and clinical
educators working in teams presented each teaching period.
Course content and style
Planned in conjunction with all project team members
including Dr Dung (see her own reflections later in this
article), the first 2-week block taught in February 2009 was
designed to include the following topics: principles and
processes of speech therapy practice; the implications for
practice of essential anatomy, physiology and neurology for
speech, swallowing, voice, and hearing; an overview of
speech and language development; hearing and its
implications for communication impairments; an introduction
to speech therapy with head and neck cancer patients; and
assessment and treatment of cleft lip and palate, voice and
swallowing disorders, in both adults and children.
The teaching methods were as varied as we could
possibly make them. Small group work, case-based
learning, role plays, case presentations, group problem-
solving and discussions were all used – methods which
were all unfamiliar to the course participants. These were
in addition to practical demonstrations and trials, and
demonstration modelling and clinical teaching with volunteer
patients. Thus, while this period was designed as principally
“academic teaching”, the learning was as experiential as
possible. Team teaching became the “modus operandi” and
often it grew organically as the speech therapy lecturers
gained trust, experience and confidence with each others’
preferred teaching style.
An example of a practical demonstration was the “normal
swallowing practical”. Dr Bernice Mathisen (responsible for
the dysphagia component of the course) had organised with
course participants and the hospital kitchen for individual
portions of a range of Vietnamese food consistencies to
be served during a teaching session on swallowing and
swallowing disorders. A variety of delicious Vietnamese
dishes was presented to the students, ranging from the
internationally known Vietnamese specialty, noodle soup
(pho), to rice dishes, sweet biscuits, honey, and desserts
based on agar-agar. Course participants working in pairs
offered food and fluids to each other, in a role-play situation,
observing a number of normal parameters, such as the role
of texture or positioning, reflecting and discussing afterwards
the effects on normal adult swallowing. This session was
particularly well received as food and eating play a major role
in social participation in Viet Nam.
Participants in the short course in speech therapy with the
lecturers