Coordination of literacy efforts between literacy professionals and speech-language pathologists: Are we on the same team?

ABSTRACT

As collaborative efforts among professionals have become more widespread in literacy instruction and intervention, there has been an increase in a fragmented delivery of services to students. This qualitative inquiry was designed to assess what, if any, team-based approaches were being conducted among professionals who focus on language and literacy instruction in elementary school settings. Results demonstrated that literacy professionals and speech-language pathologists, individuals designated to support students in the area of literacy achievement, reported varied time in coordination of collaborative efforts, recognized both rewards and challenges associated with collaboration, and perceived their efforts to be mostly multidisciplinary in implementation of services. Strategies for expliciting utilizing team-based approaches among professionals are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitudes
• collaborative learning
• qualitative researcher
• teacher education

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Hannah Dostal and Rachael Gabriel from the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut for their assistance with the initial open coding and analysis of the interview transcripts.