Partnering with people who stutter for transformative teaching and learning in speech-language pathology

Service user involvement (SUI) in health professional education is associated with a range of benefits including students' increased understanding of person-centred care and enhanced skills underpinning their communication, and increased service user empowerment. Despite this, it remains an unexplored topic in the stuttering literature and there is limited guidance on how to authentically and sustainably embed the involvement of people who stutter within professional training. The purpose of this short communication is to explore the possibilities of SUI in healthcare education and to advance understanding of meaningful involvement of people who stutter in speech-language pathology (SLP) education.

The benefits, challenges and facilitators of meaningful SUI in healthcare education are summarised. A taxonomy of client involvement in healthcare education is presented and examples pertaining to the involvement of stuttering service users are provided. Practical recommendations are proposed to support SLP educators' increased involvement of people who stutter in their stuttering curricula.

Despite an increasing literature on the range of benefits of SUI and the fundamental right for service users to be included in healthcare education, research on the meaningful involvement of people who stutter (and parents or carers) in the education of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) remains in its infancy. Their sustained involvement can be supported by educators establishing and maintaining trust with stuttering communities alongside educational institutions' commitment through aligned funding and policy support.