"Establishing Diagnostic Skills in Novice Bilingual Clinicians: A Scaffolded Approach"

​Professor Elizabeth Peña (right) co-authored an article in Teaching and Learning in Communications Sciences & Disorders exploring training skills for pre-service bilingual clinicians.
 
The title of the article is “Establishing Diagnostic Skills in Novice Bilingual Clinicians: A Scaffolded Approach.”
 
Co-authors are Assistant Professor Carlos D. Irizarry-Pérez (first author), University of New Mexico; Clinical Assistant Professor Mirza J. Lugo-Neris, The University of Texas at Austin; and Professor Lisa M. Bedore, Temple University.
 
Peña is a certified Speech-Language Pathologist and a Fellow of the American Speech Language Hearing Association. In the UCI School of Education, she serves as Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity and directs the Human Abilities in Bilingual Language Acquisition (HABLA) Lab. She also serves as co-chair of the School’s Climate Council. Peña's research interests include bilingualism, language impairment, and test development and treatment.

Abstract

​This study sought to scaffold administration performance of a standardized bilingual screener to sufficient levels of accuracy for data collection using principles of Cognitive Load Theory by managing task complexity when training pre-service clinicians. Before training administration skills, two students were given copies of the manual for the Bilingual English Spanish Oral Screener (BESOS) and asked to administer the protocol independently. During the intervention phase, students were scaffolded through administration tasks of increasing complexity and given explicit instruction, which included tailored goals, modeling, and feedback. Performance for four skills was assessed using a fidelity rubric and analyzed using visual analysis. Performance varied per skill, but overall scores were higher during the intervention phases than during the baseline phase for both students. In addition, accuracy of performance maintained across client participants showing patterns of generalization. Although the data are limited, scaffolding training skills for pre-service clinicians appears supportive in training administration skills for bilingual tasks. The level of support may vary per skill and per language. Future research may seek to investigate other clinical skills and tasks.