The Effectiveness of Service Delivery Methods on Students with Language and Communication Disorders
The purpose of this study is to examine and gain an understanding of what elementary school based Speech Language Pathologists find to be the most effective service delivery method for students with language and communication disabilities and why this is. The research indicates that the pull out model remains to be the most commonly used form of intervention by educators within American elementary schools, since it is the most well known and teachers remain to be the most comfortable with this method (Cirrin et al., 2010). However the push in and co-teaching model are growing in popularity allowing for students to stay within their classroom, and helping to build relationships between a general education teacher and special education teacher (Hernandez, 2012, p. 51). This was a qualitative study with a phenomenological research approach. Participants in this study included 12 Speech Language Pathologists and 5 elementary school students. Data was collected from all 12 SLPs in the form of a survey, 2 of which were then interviewed by the researcher, and the 5 students were observed when receiving services. The findings of this study indicate that the pull out model is most popular among SLPs. All three service delivery models are effective to some degree, however it is largely dependent on the student. The researcher also found that there seems to be a lack of communication between SLPs and classroom teachers.
Service delivery models rely on educators to answer the questions “...of where the service is to be delivered, by whom, and in what dosage” (Cirrin et al., 2010, p. 3), in order to best meet the needs of students.
Collaboration “...is a critical element for the creation of communication friendly classrooms” (Wilson et al., 2015, p. 348).
“Choice of model typically depends on the goals of the student, as well as the needs of the student” (SLP B).