Inclusive Teamwork for Pupils with Speech, Language and Communication Needs

This book provides a rationale for teaching inclusive teamwork and for understanding communication as a collective endeavour. It shows how teamwork can be taught within schools and emphasises the role that classmates have in facilitating good communication, particularly in the face of difficulty.

Grounded in evidence from hours of therapy and analysis of children’s accounts of communication and children’s interactions with their peers, the book explores the components of teamwork by looking carefully at the way schoolchildren really interact. It draws on research from the fields of education, psychology and speech and language therapy to propose the framework for a programme suitable for children aged 7 to 14 years, designed to include pupils with speech, language and communication needs. The programme includes activities, a set of criteria to use as an outcome measure and examples of the way that children and young people have responded in practice. In using the inclusive teamwork programme outlined in this book, teachers have the potential to support all children in developing rapport, effective communication and problem-solving skills.

Providing a framework designed to meet the needs of all learners, this book will be highly relevant reading for students of education, speech and language therapy and educational psychology, as well as speech and language therapists and practitioners in the field of education.