Kelly Farquharson

Florida State University | FSU · School of Communication Science and Disorders

This study examined the effects of practice-based coaching with scripted supports designed to support paraeducators and speech-language pathology assistants (SLP-As) as they implement evidence-based shared book reading strategies with preschoolers with language delays. A single-case, multiple baseline across behaviors was employed. Five educators (...

Purpose: It is often difficult for school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to prioritize implementing new practices for children with speech sound disorders (SSDs), given burgeoning caseloads and the myriad of other workload tasks. We propose that de-implementation science is equally as important as implementation science. De-implementati...

Purpose Low retention of school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) is a growing problem that can have drastic consequences at the school and student levels. Factors contributing to this shortage include features of the work environment, role ambiguity, low salaries, and a demanding workload with higher caseloads, which can result in limited...

Purpose This tutorial is designed for speech-language pathologists who supervise speech-language pathology assistants (SLP-As) and/ or paraeducators. SLP-As and paraeducators often support young children with disabilities within early childhood settings, but do not always have access to professional development to learn and/or enhance their skill s...

Purpose Children who are hard of hearing (CHH) are at risk for literacy difficulties. Speech sound production is related to literacy skills in typically hearing children. Speech sound production abilities can also be markedly weak in CHH due to inconsistent access to the speech signal. We longitudinally examined relations between auditory experienc...

Background: Children with speech sound disorder (SSD) are at increased risk of reading difficulties due to poor phonological processing skills. However, the extent to which children with SSD demonstrate weaknesses on specific or all phonological processing tasks is not well understood. Aims: To examine the phonological processing abilities of a...

Purpose There is a clear need for effective and efficient interventions for children with speech sound disorder (SSD) that can be implemented in both clinical and school-based settings. Method This forum was created for any clinician who treats SSDs. We asked the invited authors to include immediately actionable information, such as therapy activi...

Purpose: Children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) comprise a large portion of caseloads for school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Despite the existence of several evidence-based SSD intervention approaches, the translation from research to practice is often limited by ecological validity because of various factors unique to school s...

This study aims to provide insight into speech-language pathologists' experiences of and preparation for interprofessional collaborative practice across various settings and geographical locations in the United States. We disseminated an online survey via Qualtrics© to reach a representative sample of speech-language pathologists. We questioned res...

Purpose The purpose of this project was to collect practice-based evidence regarding dosage in speech sound therapy sessions in school-based settings. Dosage is the number of trials within a therapy session for any one particular child. School-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) face a variety of obstacles to service delivery, often making th...

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare word-initial and word-final consonant cluster productions in young children who speak African American English (AAE) and compare their productions to what we know about cluster productions in children who speak Mainstream American English (MAE), in order to minimize misdiagnosis of speech sound disorde...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate advocacy engagement and self-efficacy of school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and their perceptions of key issues in education and challenges to advocacy. Method A 75-item survey was used to solicit information about advocacy-related experiences of 194 school-based SLPs. The survey i...

Purpose The purpose of this investigation was to explore how school-based speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') job satisfaction changed because of the COVID-19 global pandemic. We situated job satisfaction within the Conservation Resources (COR) theory. Method We distributed a web-based survey to school-based SLPs throughout the United States. A...

Normative data concerning speech sound acquisition are widely and heavily used in the United States to determine eligibility for services. Normative studies differ in the age and geographic location of participants, which can limit applicability across the United States. In 2016, we queried school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the Un...

Background Nonword repetition (NWR) is a common phonological processing task that is reported to tap into many cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes. For this reason, NWR is often used in assessment batteries to aid in verifying the presence of a reading or language disorder. Aims To examine the extent to which child- and item-level factors p...

Purpose School-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are responsible for providing services to about 55% of students with disabilities in the school setting across the nation. A shortage of qualified school-based SLPs continues to persist in the United States. Research has aimed to identify factors that lead to diminished career intentions, occ...

The purpose of this study was to examine how school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) maintained clinical services via teletherapy during the COVID-19 pandemic closures. School-based SLPs in the United States were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. Questions relevant to this study gathered information regarding a) provisi...

Purpose The purpose of this tutorial was to consider and apply design thinking to the clinical process of determining eligibility for special education and related services for students with spoken language and literacy disorders in school-based settings. Specifically, we will consider some of the predicaments that multidisciplinary assessment team...

The purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate the quality of Individualized Education Plan (IEP) goals for students with traumatic brain injury (TBI) using an empirically based rating instrument. One hundred twenty-five IEP goals for 49 students with TBI were coded using the Revised IEP/IFSP Goals and Objective Rating Instrument (R-GORI;...

Purpose Parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) often report difficulty engaging their children in successful reading experiences. Shared book reading (SBR) is associated with many aspects of language growth for children who are deaf and hard of hearing. The primary purpose of this pilot study was to investigate the effectiveness...

Over the past two decades, there has been a persistent shortage of qualified speech-language pathologists (SLPs) across the United States. This shortage is predicted to continue, as data reported by the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that there will be a 27% increase in job openi...

More than half of U.S. speech–language pathologists (SLPs) currently practice in the school setting and 92.6% of SLPs who work in schools provide services focused on children's speech sound production (articulation and/or phonology). This article describes evaluation and eligibility requirements for children with speech sound disorders in the Unite...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which school-age children with speech sound disorder (SSD) exhibit concomitant reading difficulties and examine the extent to which phonological processing and speech production abilities are associated with increased likelihood of reading risks. Method Data were obtained from 120 ki...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the features of Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for a cohort of students with traumatic brain injury (TBI) to help elucidate current special education practices for students with TBI. Method We obtained permission from administrators of a local school district of 41,000 students i...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which child- and therapy-level factors contribute to gains in speech sound production accuracy for children with speech sound disorders in receipt of school-based services. Method Data were obtained from 126 kindergarten and first- and second-grade children currently in receipt of spee...

Purpose This exploratory study examined speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) clinical experience and work environment characteristics impacting comfort with providing intervention to children with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method This study included 162 SLPs who responded to a national survey about their comfort providing intervention to child...

The purpose of this study was to explore how school-based speech–language pathologists (SLPs) determine eligibility for children with speech sound disorders (SSDs). Presently, there is substantial variability nationwide with respect to if or how children with SSDs receive speech therapy in public schools. We report the results of a nation-wide surv...

Purpose The purpose of this article is to explore the ways in which children with mild speech sound disorders (SSDs)—that is, single sound errors—may be at risk for difficulties with phonological awareness, decoding, spelling, and social–emotional well-being. Conclusions SSDs comprise a group of children who have difficulty in consistently and cor...

Purpose Children with dyslexia have speech production deficits in a variety of spoken language contexts. In this article, we discuss the nature of speech production errors in children with dyslexia, including those who have a history of speech sound disorder and those who do not, to familiarize speech-language pathologists with speech production–sp...

Letter identification is an early metric of reading ability that can be reliability tested before a child can decode words. We test the hypothesis that early speech production will be associated with children’s later letter identification. We examined longitudinal growth in early speech production in 9 typically developing children across eight occ...

Purpose: Speech sound disorders (SSDs) can have a negative impact on literacy development, social-emotional well-being, and participation across the life span. Despite this, many public schools do not provide appropriate or timely services to this population of children. In large part, this is a result of variation in how state and local agencies...

Purpose Speech sound disorders (SSDs) comprise a large percentage of school-based speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) caseloads, particularly for those practicing in elementary schools. Many service delivery models have been proposed to manage rising caseload sizes. One particular approach, response to intervention (RTI), was introduced as an opti...

We investigated the extent to which working memory and behavioral attention predicted reading and listening comprehension in grades 1 through 3 and, whether their relative contributions differed by modality and grade. Separate grade samples (N = 370; ns = 125, 123, and 122 for grades 1, 2, and 3 respectively) completed multiple measures of word rea...

1. SLPs with small caseloads are more likely to use an RTI approach to services for children with SSD, compared to SLPs with average caseloads. 2. Despite changes to IDEA made in 2004 outlining RTI, SLPs with more than 20 years of experience are as likely as SLPs with less than 20 years of experience to use RTI. 3. This suggests that the variabilit...

Beginning first grade with limited literacy skills creates a disadvantage for academic success. Alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and oral language skills are crucial for age-appropriate performance within most first grade curricula. Home literacy environments can help to create positive literacy and language experiences, but many childre...

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the role of working memory processes as a possible cognitive underpinning of persistent speech sound disorders (SSD). Method: Forty school-aged children were enrolled; 20 children with persistent SSD (P-SSD) and 20 typically developing children. Children participated in three working memory tasks - o...

Purpose: Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers (i.e., stakeholders) have vested interests in children's language growth yet currently do not have empirically driven methods for measuring such outcomes. The present study established language benchmarks for children with typically developing language (TDL) and children with language impairmen...

1. Despite guidance from the U.S. Department of Education and ASHA (Dublinske, 2002), there is still substantial variability in how “adverse educational performance” is interpreted for children with speech sound disorders 2. This variability is markedly different based on years of experience and state lines 3. Children with speech sound disorders a...

This longitudinal study investigated profiles of lexical quality domains in preschool children and the extent to which profile membership predicted reading comprehension in first grade. A latent profile analysis was conducted to classify 420 preschool children on lexical quality domains, including orthography, phonology, morphosyntax, and vocabular...

http://leader.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2531207

Background: Numerous studies suggest a positive relationship between the home literacy environment (HLE) and children's language and literacy skills, yet very little research has focused on the HLE of children with language impairment (LI). Children with LI are at risk for reading difficulties; thus, understanding the nature and frequency of their...

Purpose: This paper describes methodological procedures involving execution of a large-scale, multi-site longitudinal study of language and reading comprehension in young children. Researchers in the Language and Reading Research Consortium (LARRC) developed and implemented these procedures to ensure data integrity across multiple sites, schools, a...

Some children with residual deficits in speech production also display characteristics of dyslexia; however, the causes of these disorders--in isolation or comorbidly--remain unknown. Presently, the role of phonological representations is an important construct for considering how the underlying system of phonology functions. In particular, two rel...

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to determine the unique contributions in children's language and literacy gains, over one academic year, that are attributable to the individual speech language pathologist (SLP), and (b) to explore possible child-level and SLP-level factors that may further explain SLPs' contributions to children's langua...

The present study focused on the identification and stability of language and literacy profiles of primary school children receiving school-based language therapy over the course of one academic year. Participants included 272 early elementary school-age children who had been clinically-identified as having a language impairment (LI). A latent prof...

Speech sound disorders are a complex and often persistent disorder in young children. For many children, therapy results in successful remediation of the errored productions as well as age-appropriate literacy and academic progress. However, for some children, while they may attain age-appropriate speech production skills, they later have academic...

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties with word decoding. Research suggests that child-level (i.e., phonological processing) and environmental-level (i.e., classroom quality) factors both contribute to decoding skills in typically developing children. The present study examined the extent to which these same factors...

Children with dyslexia and/or specific language impairment have marked deficits in phonological processing, putting them at an increased risk for reading deficits. The current study sought to examine the influence of word-level phonological and lexical characteristics on phonological awareness. Children with dyslexia and/or specific language impair...

Today’s school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) serve children across a wide range of communicative disorders and perform duties in a variety of service delivery settings. Student learning outcomes in graduate communication sciences and disorders (CSD) preparation programs must reflect these expanding roles of SLPs as they prepare candidat...

Implementing new programs within a school system is a challenge often faced by educators, but one that can be successfully addressed through discussions among faculty both within and outside one's school system. It is never easy to make a change in procedures, but, with the help of our colleagues, it can sometimes go more smoothly. The purpose of t...