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Q: What motivated you to study this topic?
Dow: In my undergraduate program, I quickly noticed the lack
of diversity within my major. As a Black and Latina woman, it is notable
how few people of color there are in the classroom. The field of speech
pathology itself is 92% white and 96% female, according to The American
Speech–Language–Hearing Association. The population that speech
pathologists serve, however, is much more diverse. I took my first class
on culturally responsive practice earlier this year and noticed it was
one of the smallest courses I had taken related to my major. This
important knowledge was getting passed up by a lot of students who could
have benefitted from it.
My goal became to figure out how therapists dealt with cultural
differences in the “real world” after higher education. I figured many
would be like the people in my major, having not taken any specific
course related to the topic. I could look in the textbook and at the
articles to see what scholars said therapists should be doing to be
culturally responsive, but I want to know what therapists are actually
doing, so I can eventually deduce what we, as a field, can do better to
serve culturally and linguistically diverse populations.
Q: What have you found most surprising about this work so far?
Dow: Initially, I thought it would be difficult to find people
who would be willing to speak with an undergraduate student they had
never met for 30 minutes, but many of the participants were excited to
speak with me, ask me questions about the research and tell me about
their personal experiences. In terms of the findings in my study, one of
the things that surprised me is that many therapists shared how 2020
affected their ability to provide culturally appropriate care to their
clients. Some spoke about how the Black Lives Matter protests in the
wake of the death of George Floyd brought unprecedented awareness to the
way that race and culture interacts with different institutions — and
speech pathology was no exception. Many participants talked about how
the events of 2020 created conversations about cultural differences and
their impact on care, which had not happened before.
Q: What are the possible real-world applications for your study?
Dow: Speech-language pathologists serve real children and
serving those children in the best way possible is at the heart of this
research. Participants in this study told stories of success and failure
in therapy for diverse populations. This is important, as it gives
other therapists the opportunity to read and learn from the study and
potentially better their practice. This study shows the need for
comprehensive graduate school education development for culturally
responsive care, new methods for developing institutionally based
change, and more culturally representative standardized testing. All
these things are further research opportunities.