Language and Language Disorders- SPED 475

Originally, this course is meant to be a senior level special education course that discusses the concept of language, and the types of language disorders that exist- what they are by definition, and how they manifest and when.  In response, weekly presentations were made by students concerning each disorder type, and the class formed a discussion on  how they all may affect our students in our classrooms, and how we as teachers may help them through accommodations or modifying lessons. Overall, this class was very interesting to find how we all classify language, and how many different disorders there are that can affect kids that parents may not even be aware of, or even know how to help them receive services.

As a part of this class, all students were tasked with researching a disorder of choice, a specific target group that may be affected, such as those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and then research an evidence based program that can help those students through conducting a literature review. In my time at Longwood, one of the many things that I had always wanted to do was go beyond creating a literature review for a poster presentation, and to conduct higher tier research.  As such, with research partner Taylor Bauer, we decided to enhance this class for an honors, and to go beyond only a literature review, but rather to conduct research ourselves. We wanted to instead find that those with EBD, Emotional Behavioral Disorders, are more likely to have lower pragmatic abilities, or, are less able to communicate needs or have lower social interactions with peers. Through using behavioral tests, we wanted to see if those with higher language skills, through using the Connors Rating Scale, might also score for lower pragmatics skills using an Pragmatic Language Inventory test. In addition, we still followed the original project parameters through also researching a great evidence based research tool that would be best to implement with the students with EBD to also increase pragmatic language skills. We were able to test 3 students to get initial understandings for a thesis going, and are looking to continue research and gain a larger sample size in the future.

To introduce our topic, and gain a larger understanding, below is an excerpt from our abstract!

“The way people express thoughts and emotion is through language. Students
with Emotional Behavioral Disorders (EBD) are known to have lower pragmatic
language abilities and social skills (Norbury et al., 2017). Despite the heavily researched
cooccurrence of language impairments and EBD in students, very few students with this
cooccurrence receive language and speech services (Mackie & Law, 2010). This study
aims to determine if there is a correlation between the level of behavioral issues and
pragmatic language abilities within the population of students with EBD. The results of
the study will aid in determining whether students with EBD should also be considered
for speech and language services as well as providing information to aid in selecting
potential interventions that may aid students with both EBD and language impairments.”

Overall, I am very grateful for this opportunity. If not for this being an option for an enhancement, I am not so sure that I would have been able to have this chance to engage in the research like this.  As a result of this enhancement, I was given firsthand training from my adviser on how to use rating scales for both language and behavior that I will be using in the future as a teacher, as well as using them during Graduate school. I was also given the chance to engage with the schools and students in Farmville and gain a greater understanding on how creating proposals, as well as how communication and writing with parents and school personnel works. If not for this, I would not have been so prepared during student teaching to know how to conduct correspondence with parents, such as writing parental consent forms, or even writing an introductory letter to parents and students!

I look forward and feel very ready for any research that I hope to conduct during Grad School!