Not Yet Identified: The knowledge,skills, and training needs of early years professionals in relation to children's speech and language development

This article draws on a research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, looking at early years professionals' knowledge about speech and language development and their confidence and skills in assessing normal and delayed language development. Key findings, based on 829 questionnaires and 50 interviews, reveal very limited training in speech and language difficulties as part of initial training and low levels of post-qualification training in children's speech and language. Practitioners are aware of the need for early identification of children's communication difficulties but lack the tools with which to perform this identification. In order to provide a context for these results, a content analysis of the curricula from a variety of initial training routes explored the extent to which there was a focus explicitly on assessment and identification of children with speech and language difficulties. The role of professional journals and key texts in supporting practitioners in making judgements about children's language development was also investigated. The access to, and provision of, post-qualification training to support the assessment process is identified as a key area for development.     

Gender Bias Among Counseling Trainees: A Study of Case Conceptualization

Counseling trainees' responses on free-response dependent measures to 2 client case vignettes were examined for possible gender bias. Gender bias was found for clients, both women and men, who displayed nontraditional gender role behavior.     

The Use of Story in Critical Literacy Practice

Story-telling and story-writing as pedagogical practices hold a pre-eminent place within critical literacy practices. In Toronto, Canada's largest city, progressive community-based literacy programmes begin the educational process by assisting adult literacy students to learn to read and write by using the language experience method. The educational process is furthered when the programmes publish the autobiographical accounts that these learners have created. They publish these accounts as a way of generating relevant educational reading texts for adult new readers, and more significantly as a form of cultural expression for people marginalised by poverty. Elaine Gaber-Katz, a feminist educator literacy practitioner, explores how critical literacy programmes purposefully seek out the voices of those who have been silenced. She also explores the ways in which these programmes create the spaces for these voices to be heard. Focusing on the use of story, the author assesses the value of publishing these kinds of learners' stories and confronts some of its inherent limitations.