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JCPSLP Volume 19, Number 3 2017 129
Jacinta Berndt for their comments and feedback during the
preparation of this manuscript.
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Australia, 2011). Teachers and SLPs must approach
one another as colleagues that engage in a balanced
partnership, ensuring an honest and flexible relationship
with reciprocal sharing of knowledge and skills (Bauer, Iyer,
Boon, & Fore, 2010).
An insight and perspective that was shared with
school staff was the communication demands of many
commercially available and widely used social, emotional
and behavioural interventions and programs. Working
with teachers to consider the language demands of these
interventions, and modify them accordingly, added value
to the existing approaches to behaviour support. To
improve and strengthen understanding of the links between
classroom behaviour and the development of language and
literacy skills, professional knowledge and insights need
to be shared between the teaching and speech-language
pathology professions.
Individualised intervention
The provision of individualised intervention to address
specific needs is a core component of the speech
pathology service within this specialist setting. As discussed
by Snow (2014), students with disrupted early education
experiences often reach the middle years of primary school
with limited literacy skills. For these students, opportunities
to acquire the necessary foundational skills to access the
curriculum become fewer as they progress through school.
For many students, whose insufficient language and literacy
skills go unnoticed, creating a distraction through
undesirable behaviour is often a preferable option
(Armstrong et al., 2016).
In line with the recommendations of Gallagher (1999),
the tier 3 intervention included (a) supporting students
to identify communicative alternatives to undesired
behaviours, (b) building emotional vocabularies to support
behaviour, (c) developing social stories and social scripts,
and (d) including reinforcement for positive communication
and behaviour. Specific areas of language, including
curriculum-specific vocabulary and the comprehension of
instructions and discourse, were targeted with either small
groups or individual students. Intervention took place in
the classroom or in a small room adjoining the classroom.
A small number of students participated in a single case
design study that targeted emotional vocabulary, the
comprehension and use of conjunctions, and sequencing
concepts. The results of this intervention will be published
at a later date.
Conclusion
Working with this population is challenging and rewarding in
equal measures. Regular exposure to students’ complex
histories and ongoing experiences of trauma, neglect, and
abuse can have a cumulative impact on practitioners (Baird &
Kracen, 2006). Skilled professional supervision and mentoring
is therefore essential for SLPs working in environments
such as this. With the growing momentum that is building
behind the role of the speech-language pathology
profession in furthering social equity, efforts focused on
addressing hidden communication impairments in primary
school students with SEBD have the potential to achieve an
impact that is evident well into these students’ futures.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the students and teachers who
have participated in this project, the Helen Macpherson
Smith Trust for their support of this research, and Associate
Professor Patricia Eadie, Professor Pamela Snow and