Training a New Generation of Speech-Language Pathologists with Competences in the Management of Literacy Disorders and Learning Disabilities in Hong Kong

Abstract

One of the recent developments in the education of speech-language pathology is to include literacy disorders and learning disabilities as key training components in the training curriculum. Disorders in reading and writing are interwoven with disorders in speaking and listening, which should be managed holistically, particularly in children and adolescents. With extensive training in clinical linguistics, language disorders, and other theoretical knowledge and clinical skills, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are the best equipped and most competent professionals to screen, identify, diagnose, and manage individuals with literacy disorders. To tackle the challenges of and the huge demand for services in literacy as well as language and learning disorders, the Hong Kong Institute of Education has recently developed the Master of Science Programme in Educational Speech-Language Pathology and Learning Disabilities, which is one of the very first speech-language pathology training programmes in Asia to blend training components of learning disabilities, literacy disorders, and social-emotional-behavioural-developmental disabilities into a developmentally and medically oriented speech-language pathology training programme. This new training programme aims to prepare a new generation of SLPs to be able to offer comprehensive support to individuals with speech, language, literacy, learning, communication, and swallowing disorders of different developmental or neurogenic origins, particularly to infants and adolescents as well as to their family and educational team.

A Survey of Speech-Language-Hearing Therapists' Career Situation and Challenges in Mainland China

“…Even in Hong Kong, the first local training program for speech therapists commenced in 1988 at the University of Hong Kong, with the first graduate cohort with a Bachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Sciences in 1992. Currently, there are a total of 3 undergraduate training programs and 1 postgraduate training program in Hong Kong [7]. In Taiwan, there is 1 undergraduate program and 3 graduate training programs of speech, language and hearing sciences and disorders [13].…”

“…On the contrary, in 2009, the total number of certified SLPs in the US was 120,744, which, with a national population of 308,163,022, resulted in a speech therapist-population ratio of 39.2 per 100,000. Even in Hong Kong in the same year, the latest statistics conducted by the Health Manpower Survey showed that the total number of speech therapists was 506 and the total population 7,003,700, which resulted in a speech therapist-population ratio of 7.3 per 100,000 [7]. These ratios highlight the need for Mainland China to accelerate the development of speech-language therapists to meet the standards of other countries like Hong Kong (a former British colony, which was returned to China in 1997) and even more developed countries like the US.…”