| Author(s) |
Carlos Pérez Valle Jessy Burdman-Villa RaMonda Horton Susan Rvachew |
| Volume | 49 |
| Number | 1 |
| Year | 2025 |
| Page(s) | 21-37 |
| Language | English |
| Category | Research Article |
| Keywords |
Cultural Responsivity Linguistic Sensitivity Shared Reading |
| Abstract |
Cultural responsivity is an important aspect of evidence-based practice. When a speech-language pathologist is providing services to a child whose home environment does not represent the majority language or culture, special efforts are required to adapt to the values, beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences of the family when selecting materials and designing therapeutic activities. When providing services to children, the use of culturally appropriate storybooks is especially important to promote a sense of belonging and support co-creation of knowledge by the clinician and child. In this study, we asked speech-language pathologists from across Canada to complete a survey about their sociodemographic information, their practice and caseload, and their use of diverse literature with their pediatric clients. As expected, the survey revealed that speech-language pathologists in Canada were overwhelmingly white English-speaking women, even though their caseloads were somewhat or very diverse with respect to racial and linguistic characteristics. The respondents in this study agreed that culturally responsive therapy materials were important for the children on their caseloads. However, one third used books that had no human characters, and another third used books that presented white human characters. The speech-language pathologists reported barriers to obtaining culturally appropriate books, with insufficient resources and a lack of books being the most important. La sensibilité culturelle est un aspect important d’une pratique clinique fondée sur les données probantes. Lorsqu’un ou une orthophoniste offre des services à des enfants dont l’environnement familial ne correspond pas à la langue majoritaire ou à la culture dominante, des efforts particuliers doivent être déployés pour sélectionner du matériel thérapeutique et concevoir des activités de thérapie adaptés aux valeurs, aux croyances et aux expériences de la famille. En particulier, il est important d’utiliser des livres d’histoires culturellement appropriés pour promouvoir un sentiment d'appartenance et soutenir la co-construction des connaissances entre l’orthophoniste et l'enfant. Dans cette étude, nous avons sondé des orthophonistes du Canada quant à leurs informations sociodémographiques, leur pratique, les caractéristiques de leur patientèle, ainsi que leur utilisation d’une littérature jeunesse diversifiée auprès de cette dernière. Conformément à nos hypothèses, l'étude a révélé que les orthophonistes du Canada étaient en grande majorité des femmes blanches anglophones, même si les caractéristiques raciales et linguistiques de leur patientèle étaient assez ou très diversifiées. Les personnes interrogées dans cette étude reconnaissaient l’importance d’utiliser du matériel thérapeutique culturellement adapté avec les enfants avec lesquels elles travaillaient. Toutefois, un tiers de ces personnes utilisait des livres sans personnages humains et un autre tiers utilisait des livres dans lesquels figuraient des personnages humains blancs. Les orthophonistes ont rapporté plusieurs obstacles à l'obtention de livres culturellement appropriés, les plus importants étant un manque de ressources et de livres. |
| Record ID | 1354 |
| Link | https://cjslpa.ca/files/2025_CJSLPA_Vol_49/No_1/CJSLPA_Vol_49_No_1_2025_1308.pdf |
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