Consequential differences in perspectives and practices concerning children with developmental language disorders: an integrative review.
Aoife L Gallagher, Carol-Anne Murphy, Paul Conway and 1 others
PMID 30945410WHAT IT FOUND
Published speech and language therapy literature treats developmental language disorder as a child language deficit.
Education literature treats it as a learning need shaped by classroom context. These differences affect how professionals define goals and assess children in school collaboration.
Key findings
01SLT papers generally describe DLD as a language deficit within the child, while education papers describe it as a learning disability or special educational need shaped by classroom context.
02SLT papers usually measure success as reduced language deficit, while education papers value participation and use of skills in classroom tasks.
03The literature also showed shared ground: dynamic assessment was seen as potentially useful by both fields, and both acknowledged weak evidence for discrepancy scores in identification.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is a review of published papers, not a study of children, families, SLTs or teachers in schools. The search covered English peer-reviewed papers from a set period, so relevant grey literature or non-English work may have been missed. The authors classified papers as SLT or education literature, and some classifications required judgement, so the boundaries between fields may not be exact. The review did not test whether changing these perspectives improves interprofessional collaboration or child outcomes.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that these literature differences prove collaboration fails or that one profession's approach is better. The review analysed published perspectives, not actual school teams or child outcomes.