Conference Recap: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (2022)
Conference Recap: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
November 17-19, 2022
New Orleans, LA
The DLL lab had another successful hybrid conference, with both in-person and virtual presentations at the ASHA 2022 Convention. Following ASHA's theme of Resilience Reinvented, the DLL lab highlighted two projects relevant to the era of technology in education. In New Orleans, Dr. Hammer and colleagues presented on the Bilingual Assessment of Phonological Sensitivity (BAPS), a computer-based assessment of early language and literacy development. Doctoral students, Julie Smith and Christine Vail, presented a virtual seminar on a mixed methods interview-survey study on preschool teachers' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Duran, L., Wackerle-Hollman, A., Hammer, C.S., Barrueco, S., Anthony, J., & Erazo, N. (2022, November 17-19). New computer-based instruments for screening, monitoring and assessing dual language learners’ language and literacy development [Conference session]. Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, New Orleans, LA.
This symposium presented three computer-based assessments that measure language and literacy skills in Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers and kindergarteners. The assessments are available in English and Spanish and include the School Readiness Curriculum Based Measurement System; Individual Growth and Development Indicators in Spanish; and Bilingual Assessment of Phonological Sensitivity. Information was provided on the development of each as well as the findings from psychometric analyses. The symposium shared how they can be used to inform speech and language intervention, instructional recommendations, professional development and program improvement efforts. The presenters also provided participants with guidance on how to select assessments for Spanish-English bilingual children and how to interpret scores in each language to guide language and early literacy intervention.
Smith, J.C., Vail, C., Mehta, K., Keffala, B., Hammer, C.S., & Wasik, B.A. (2022, November 17-19). Teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic: An examination of preschool teachers’ daily experiences across instructional modalities [Conference session]. Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, New Orleans, LA.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, preschool teachers faced an unprecedented challenge of navigating remote, in-person, or hybrid instructional modalities. This disruption to early education disproportionately impacted classrooms that include dual language learners (DLLs) and children from low-income homes (Sugarman & Lazarín, 2020). Understanding the specific experiences of teachers in different instructional modalities is imperative for supporting educators’ resilience and language and literacy instruction for DLLs. Therefore, this presentation explored differences in teachers’ daily experiences across the three instructional modalities. Thirty-one preschool teachers of DLLs completed a survey and interview during the winter of 2020-2021. Results indicated both similarities and differences between modalities in terms of teachers' instructional practices, and the challenges and successes they experienced.