Scanlan Center for School Mental Health

Abstract

The project, entitled “Project STIRS: SLP Training to Improve Resilience in Students with Communication Disorders,” is intended to mitigate anxiety among early elementary students who have communication disorders by maximizing their social-emotional well-being. Communication disorders are speech and language impairments that interfere with a person’s ability to express themselves and/or comprehend others. Repeated communication breakdowns due to challenges with speech sound production, stuttering, vocal quality, vocabulary, grammar, and/or pragmatics can lead to feelings of frustration and anxiety about future interactions. In this two-year randomized controlled trial beginning in July 2022, the interdisciplinary research and advisory team will develop and deliver a case-based resilience training to school speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in four eastern Iowa AEAs. These trainings will focus on two domains of resilience that are rapidly developing and malleable during the early elementary years: self-awareness (e.g., growth mindset, self-efficacy) and self-management (e.g., emotion regulation, motivation). These two domains are of particular importance for maneuvering communicative adversity and within 5-8-year-olds’ zone of proximal development. Training effects will be evaluated using pre-/post-training measures administered to participating SLPs and a selection of their K-3 students who have IEPs focused on speech/language goals. The anticipated outcomes for the SLPs are improved awareness, knowledge, and competency of self-awareness and self-management needs and supports for students with communication disorders as measured immediately before and after the STIRS training. The K-3 students with communication disorders are expected to show improvements in therapy engagement, communication attitudes, and anxiety symptoms as measured immediately after training and three months later.

This project was funded by the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health in June 2022. The Scanlan Center awarded $1 million in research grants to support interventions to improve social, emotional, behavioral, or psychological outcomes in Iowa’s PreK-12 schools. Each project was two years and ran from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2024.

Project Team

  • Naomi Rodgers, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa
  • Philip Combiths, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Director of Clinical Linguistics and Disparities Laboratory
  • Elizabeth Walker, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa
  • Yanchen Zhang, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological and Quantitative Foundations, University of Iowa