JCPSLP Voll 15 No 3 Nov 2013

eight of her nine speech pathology study participants felt insufficiently prepared by their university training to work with low-progress readers in schools, one of a number of reported barriers to collaborative practice with teachers. Indeed, despite a growing recognition of the value of interprofessional education (Barr, Koppel, Reeves, Hammick & Freeth, 2005), relatively little has been written about interprofessional learning opportunities between student speech pathologists and education students. One case study reported by Peña and Quinn (2003) involved two student speech-language pathologists working over an academic year with classroom teachers and their assistants. The authors describe an evolving process of team development but note the status imbalance in their study of using pre-professional speech-language pathology students with qualified teaching professionals. Therefore, the rationale behind the study reported in our paper is that it would be useful to explore issues around collaborative practice, not only through continuing professional development but also during undergraduate training. Davidson, Smith and Stone (2009) report that interprofessional learning within undergraduate training promotes a commitment to diversity in practice and is one way to challenge the persisting idea that interprofessional work undermines each profession’s knowledge base and identity. They view interprofessional practice as a core competency for professionals. Certainly, this reflects the fourth “range of practice” principle of the Competency- Based Occupational Standards (SPA, 2011a) which states that “interprofessional practice is a critical component of competence for an entry-level speech pathologist” (p. 9). Likewise, this sort of initiative clearly connects with Dimension Five of the Competency Framework for Teachers (WA Department of Education and Training, 2004) “forming partnerships within the school community”. Davidson et al. (2009) suggest building on already existing interprofessional learning opportunities in undergraduate training to expand and strengthen notions of collaborative teaching and learning, both within the university and fieldwork settings. Therefore, the aim of this study was to gather initial evaluation data on an interprofessional learning opportunity for both speech pathology and education students at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Method Collaborative session Twelve second-year speech pathology students attended one of two 3-hour sessions, held over two campuses, with 37 third-year education students (in groups of 20 and 17 in each site) working towards qualifying as secondary teachers. These sessions comprised an initial lecture on inclusion, given by the second author, outlining relevant theoretical background and legislative underpinnings, and then tutorials to discuss some of the practical implications of an inclusion policy for teachers and speech pathologists in schools (see Table 1, a list developed from the authors’ professional experience in combination with research findings from, for example, Baxter et al., 2009; Ehren, 2000; Hartas, 2004; McCartney, 1999). The students then worked in small interprofessional groups to introduce themselves and share information about their perceptions of their role supporting children with special educational and communication needs in mainstream classes. They also worked through two video case studies of school students

with disability in the classroom, two 12-year-old boys, one with Down syndrome and one with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. This process involved establishing possible educational, communication and social goals for these children, and discussing hypothetical strategies for meeting those goals together. These cases were drawn from the resource “Count Us In” (http://www.disability.wa.gov.au/ Global/Publications/Understanding%20disability/ middle%20childhood%20booklet%203.pdf) created to raise awareness of managing disability in mainstream schools. Table 1 Practical discussion points relevant to collaboration for teachers and speech pathologists in mainstream schools Discussion points Teachers Speech pathologists • Time constraints • Time constraints • Inflexibility of classroom • Lack of knowledge of teacher curricula & timetabling role and responsibility • Large class sizes and • Larger caseloads across multiple classes multiple schools • Multiple children with issues • Travel required to provide involving professionals services • Lack of support and • Meeting with teacher in classroom assistants DOTT time • Understanding roles and • Excessive paperwork responsibilities • Dissatisfaction with “pull out” • Desire to involve other model professionals in classroom • Expansion of speech • Attitude and leadership of pathology role into literacy principal • Resourcing and funding Logistics and preparation This was the second year that this interprofessional opportunity had been run at Edith Cowan University. It involved a great deal of advanced planning including timetable switching in order to secure an opportunity for the two groups of students to meet, and requiring half of the speech pathology students to travel to a different university campus for one of the sessions. For the education students, the topic of collaboration formed an assessable part of their course whereas for the speech pathology students, the session was part of a unit covering principles underlying intervention, including teamwork, collaborative and interprofessional practice. While highlighted as important, inclusion in schools was not part of their assessment for the unit. Evaluation As part of the usual practice of evaluating students’ perceptions of the quality of the session, all the students present were given the option to complete a “3-2-1” evaluation one week later asking for written comments on three things they enjoyed about the session, two things they would change or did not enjoy, and one concrete suggestion to promote collaboration between teachers and speech pathologists. The information on the forms was collated into the three 3-2-1 categories and within each category, the data was analysed thematically. To do this, all comments were read carefully and similar comments were grouped together. The evaluation forms were de-identified and voluntary and classed by the University Ethics Committee as a quality assurance process. The students were aware that this evaluation would be written up for publication.

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JCPSLP Volume 15, Number 3 2013

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology