Episode 2: Neurodiversity

In this season finale episode, Sarah and John talks about the works discussed this season from Crip Linguistics, the power differentials between researchers and clinicians, issues of IDEA, and parental engagement in special education. From these episodes Sarah and John talks about what the field could look like for practitioners and researchers.

In this episode, John and Sarah talk about the role of parental engagement in special education. We unpack the work of María Cioé Peña, interviewing mothers of bilingual children in special education. From the findings, we unpack the demands that immigrant and bilingual families face, which impact the level of engagement in the public school system. This expands the conversation on the role of public education at large.

In this episode, Sarah and John introduce an article concerning power differentials between researchers and clinicians. This conversation upon how power impacts K-12, special education, and higher education. Sarah makes a connection as to how power differentials construct the intersection of race, gender, class, and disability. Ultimately, John suggests the concept of involving the community and the value of community-based participatory research.

In this episode, Sarah introduces an article of her interest concerning the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and how it impacts the overall education system. Comparing how California, Oregon, and New York operationalize IDEA, the hosts express concern about how IDEA can be interpreted with vagueness and ambiguity. John and Sarah talk about how speech and language services are delivered under IDEA regulations.

In this episode, John and Sarah get into multimodalism! John introduces the work of Henner and Robinson (2023) and explores the legitimacy of multimodality and non-verbal communication. This conversation sparks how the social world views communication and its impact on other forms of communication beyond verbal communication.

As season one comes to a close, Sarah and John review the work that is discussed in this season. By reminiscing each episode, Sarah proposes the next clinical question as to how these topics can be applied in a restricted school system. Furthermore, Sarah also implies how the findings in each research can be implemented into universal design for learning and in multi-tiered systems of support.

In this episode, Sarah and John conceptualize bilingualism as a holistic linguistic repertoire. Using the theory of Translanguaging, John and Sarah situate the work of Otheguy et al. (2015) to view languages as a social construct of named languages. By doing so, the two hosts view its implications for language measures and evaluations for SLPs.

In this episode, John and Sarah delve into the intersectionality of race and disability and how it impacts the greater schooling of students of color who are also disabled. With that, the two hosts discuss the work of Annamma et al. (2013)’s concept of Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) and its tenets. Sarah and John both express how the tenets impact how SLPs operationalize evaluation and therapy procedures.

In this episode, John and Sarah unpack the work of Gaddy and Crow (2023) titled A Primer on Neurodiversity-Affirming Speech and Language Services for Autistic Individuals. John and Sarah unpack this article by addressing the three aims stated by the authors: (i) what neurodiversity is; (ii) why is it central to evidence-based practice and culturally responsive care, and (iii) introduce the audience to what neurodiversity affirming practices are.

In this episode, John and Sarah discuss evidence-based practice and its feasibility to apply in clinical work. Centering the work of Hall Mills et al. (2023), John and Sarah will discuss how speech pathologists are incorporating research evidence in their clinical practice. This conversation will broadly express the nature of research and its gaps between theory and practice.