EBP Briefs

The Briefs provide explicit guidance in how to approach specific clinical questions and rich models of implementing evidence-based practice as a systematic clinical-care process.

In addition to measuring the accuracy of the delivery of intervention, can fidelity measures provide insight on the effectiveness of the SLP-teacher collaborative consultation and increase embedded languageintervention opportunities in the classroom?

As the number of children adopted from foreign countries continues to grow substantially, questions persist regarding their long-term language and literacy skills. What is the best language assessment battery to determine if a second grade student, who was internationally adopted at 36 months old, has language impairment?

With the advent of evidence-based practice (EBP) in health care, it has become important to appraise the available evidence on the efficacy of AAC intervention in persons with aphasia. Should we consider a technology-based AAC intervention or a nontechnology-based AAC intervention treatment approach for a person with chronic severe Broca's aphasia and apraxia of speech?

Script training is designed specifically to improve conversational independence, but primarily of children with autism and not children with SLI. Can an intervention strategy whose research was done with one population be used effectively with a different population for the same purpose?

Asked to deliver improved outcomes and reduced costs for Speech, Language and Hearing (SLH) service delivery, a Director of Speech, Language and Hearing Services chooses an evidence-based approach. She embarks on a scoping review of relevant literature addressing systems of SLH service delivery, including systematic reviews, case studies, and interviews with SLP experts.

What helps preschool students acquire pre-literacy skills? Based on the available evidence, shared book reading, and code-focused interventions that combine PA and phonics are the most promising interventions.

Does the Cycles Approach result in effective remediation of phonological disorders? Evidence for the efficacy of the Cycles Approach is limited. The best evidence available suggest that this approach is effective with children who exhibit severe phonological disorders both in isolation and in combination with other language disorders.

Katy is a speech-language pathologist working with a preschooler who has just been indentified as having language impairment, and speaks predominantly Spanish. In his home environment, Spanish is the primary language and his parents want him to be able to communicate in that environment, as well as at school. The child's teacher, however, believes that intervention should be in English. In which language should Katy conduct intervention?

Debbie, a monolingual elementary school speech-language pathologist (SLP), frequently assists other teachers with creating and implementing intervention plans for students. She recently was approached by a fifth-grade teacher who was concerned about one Spanish-English bilingual student who struggles in English class. The teacher thinks that this student's limited English vocabulary knowledge could be influencing his reading comprehension, but is unsure of how to address these needs in the classroom. Can Debbie suggest evidence-based strategies the teacher may implement to help this student?

Julia, a speech-language pathologist (SLP), is working in a K–8 elementary school in a large urban school district. In the past five years, the school's Somali population has more than doubled from 20% to 45%. Her goal, like other SLPs, is to enable her students' success by building and bridging Somali and English communication skills for home, community, and school settings. Julia's research has focused on monolingual English-speaking students with impairments.

Beth, a special education teacher reports that a student with Autism is increasingly exhibiting self-injurious behavior. Helen a (SLP) also notices the increase in negative behavior. Beth and Helen consider the use of functional communication training (FCT).

Maryanne, a school-based SLP, works with the IEP team to support a kindergarten student with autism. Maryanne researches an intervention called "video modeling" to determine the appropriateness for this student, given the IEP team's view that play-based skills are a critical element for this student's IEP. Will Maryanne find enough EBP support to warrant the implementation of video modeling?

An SLP in a small urban elementary school wants to help second grade students on his caseload improve their reading comprehension. He looks to his knowledge of evidence-based practice for the answer to his question: does explicit instruction in story grammar positively impact elementary school students' comprehension abilities in reading narrative text?

A reading specialist and an SLP team up to support a change request to a 3rd grader's Individualized Education Plan (IEP) regarding phonemic awareness intervention. Will they find the evidence they need to support the IEP change?

Whether or not to teach phonics has long been a polarizing debate between phonics and whole language advocates. The authors provide a research-based review of phonics and its role in teaching reading and writing. Their findings lead to recommendations of how to best incorporate systematic phonics teaching in the classroom and in teacher training.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in schools are exploring new or expanded roles with literacy, including intervention with students with language impairment (LI). At the same time, they seem to be struggling to find the motivation and time to engage in evidence-based practice (EBP). The author makes the case that EBP fits well within school culture. An example is provided to demonstrate how a school SLP can utilize the questions to make EBP decisions regarding literacy-related interventions.

A speech-language pathologist (SLP) works with a child who stutters to translate successes from the therapy room to her school and home settings. When the current treatment plan isn't working, the SLP looks to research for answers. What process will she use to narrow and evaluate the research in order to make effective treatment changes?

An educator examines why the special education students at his small, urban high school have difficulty with writing and what he can do to help. Because his school system already expects students to have the requisite writing skills, many special education students don't have the chance to improve their skills during high school and may not pass the district's graduation exam. The educator and his colleagues respond by applying the research-based Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model. What will they and their students learn from their efforts?

In this brief, the authors consider whether instruction in a child's native language (particularly Spanish) hinders or promotes learning of literacy in English. The authors conduct a four-step process for identifying research on this topic, examining this literature, and then determining the answer to this clinical question. The results suggest that supporting a child's home/native language promotes rather than hinders development of English literacy skills.

In this brief, a hypothetical clinician takes on the task of identifying a "research based" approach for training parents to provide language intervention in the home environment. This brief describes a four-step process for identifying effective interventions, and describes the outcomes of this process as applied to home-based parent-implemented language intervention.

The social situations that adolescents encounter on a daily basis require both speed and agility: they must select comments that directly address the topic at hand, control utterance length so as not to monopolize the conversation, take the perspective of others and use both verbal and nonverbal methods to convey and state implied meaning.

Added to this, the idiomatic language of adolescent peer groups continually evolves,and familiarity with this language is important to building and sustaining relationships with one's peer group.

With the vast array of therapy materials and approaches available, how would a clinician determine the most recent evidence available supporting current intervention practices?

Speech-language pathologists who are interested in evidence-based practice may wish to know whether there is scientific evidence to support particular methods of vocabulary instruction...Do elementary schools students learn new vocabulary more effectively from hearing stories with brief explanations of unknown words than from hearing stories without such explanations?

One of the signature characteristics of children with autism is failure to develop adequate communication skills. Clinicians often are faced with the decision of selecting and implementing an aided or unaided augmentative or alternative communication system for these individuals. Given that a clinician may recommend sign language training for a child with autism, what evidence is available upon which to base this decision?

In this brief, we consulted the available experimental evidence to consider an important question that clinicians often ask: Should I provide speech-language intervention within the child's classroom (classroom-based) or outside of the classroom (pull-out)?