A Qualitative Inquiry of Student, Parent, and Educator Perceptions of an Expository Intervention and Carryover

This qualitative study explored the social validity of Sketch and Speak expository strategy intervention as it occurred within a single-case experiment and supported carryover for adolescents with language learning disabilities (LLDs).

Four eighth-grade students with LLD participated in a summer intervention in which they were taught to take notes, generate oral sentences, and orally practice sentences and reports to help them recall ideas from informational texts. After intervention, the adolescents, their parents, and the speech-language pathologist (SLP) who provided the intervention were interviewed. In the fall, the school SLP and three teachers designed and carried out classroom lessons using the strategies. The students and educators were then interviewed about their perceptions of the utility of the taught strategies for language intervention and curricular learning. A qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the interviews.

Six themes emerged from the interview data according to two groups (i.e., students and adults): (a) student awareness of the taught strategies, (b) student uncertainty about the strategies for academic use, (c) parent perceptions of intervention effects, (d) different benefits for different learners, (e) ease of strategy implementation, and (f) collaboration and school context as implementation supports.

This qualitative study revealed that adolescents with LLD, their parents, and their educators perceive Sketch and Speak strategies as helpful within treatment and classroom applications, though the students were less enthusiastic than the educators. The SLPs and teachers showed strong buy-in for the simplicity, effectiveness, and motivational effects of the strategies, even with minimal carryover training.