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Kate Grandbois: Hello everyone. Welcome to SLP Nerd Cast. I am so excited for today's episode. I am here with a repeat guest who has been on the podcast before to teach us so many things about linguistic ideology. I am joined today [00:02:00] by Dr. Chelsea Preve, who is here to talk to us about models of disability. Welcome, Chelsea.
Chelsea Privette: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. So, before we get started, for those, um, uh, for people in our audience who haven't heard some of your other work, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself? Yes, I am an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Um, and my work is really about improving the experiences of marginalized communities who, um, are receiving services in speech language and hearing.
Um, and I focus on educational settings, particularly in our early childhood education. Um, and so I kind of paint that broad picture because for me that includes a lot of things from, um, [00:03:00] how we are including, um, these concepts in the curriculum to how we are assessing young children, um, who have marginalized linguistic, um, and cultural backgrounds, um, to, um.
Storytelling and working with teachers. And so all of, all of the things, I'm so looking forward to this conversation. Every time I talk to you, I learn so much. Um, and one of the things I love about your work, actually before we hit the record button. I kind of fangirled over you for a hot minute about your writing because it's, it's so, so good.
Kate Grandbois: Uh, and thank you. You bring so much, um, really needed perspective to our field. So I'm very much looking forward to today's conversation as I'm sure everyone who is listening is. Before we get started, I do need to read our learning [00:04:00] objectives aloud, so I will get through that as quickly as I can.
Learning objective number one, describe the differences between the medical, social, and critical or radical models of disability. Learning objective number two, describe the difference between impairment and disability and learning. Objective number three, describe black disability politics and how this impacts the work of speech language pathologists.
For anyone listening who is interested in using this episode for Ash's CEUs, you will be expected to demonstrate learning, uh, knowledge gains related to these three learning objectives in our post-test. You can find the link to the post-test in the show notes, uh, for anyone who is interested in learning more about the financial and non-financial disclosures or any course disclosures related to myself the course, or Chelsea.
All of that information is listed on our website, and you can follow the link in the show notes to the website to learn more. All right. Administrative [00:05:00] stuff out of the way. Um, before we get started and really talk about this paper, so today's conversation is rooted in a paper that you published recently.
I think it came out, we're recording this October, 2025. I think it came out in the last couple of months. Yeah. Um, and I think this paper is, is as we discussed before we hit the record button, it's very complex. These, these topics are really, really important. And with anything in life that's really important, it requires a lot of attention, uh, and some, and focus and digestion.
Um, before we kind of get into that complexity, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about just what are models of disability? What is the landscape that we are about to embark upon with you? Yeah, so generally speaking, a model of disability, um, is a. There are different frameworks for [00:06:00] understanding disability, understanding the experience of disability, um, that each kind of takes a different perspective or has a different focus or a different lens.
Chelsea Privette: Um, and I wanna read a quote. Um, there's a book that I highly recommend, um, called Disability Politics and Theory by AJ Withers. And they say that there are so many models for inventing and understanding disability because disability is not a fixed category. Rather, it is a fluid definition that depends not only on the context in which it is defined, but also who defines it.
The models of disability, however, do not have fixed borders. Rather, they can be porous bleeding into each other or reinforcing one another. And I start with that quote because we tend to, um, I see this a lot in [00:07:00] our field. We tend to jump from trend to trend as different like buzzwords come out. Um, and it keeps us sometimes from thinking holistically and comprehensively about, um, people's agency and dignity.
So we, um, for each of these models, we'll talk about critique, but we can critique and we can also take what's helpful. Um, because the very nature of disability is that it is fluid and nuanced. And so our models have to be two. Um, and using the medical model, um, as an example, many of us have, um, heard.
Slash believe, um, that the medical model is problematic, um, because of the ways that it attaches value to an individual's level of functioning. Um, and [00:08:00] there are those of us who benefit from medical intervention to not being in pain or not be chronically fatigued or any other state that doesn't allow us to be our full selves.
So if we reject the medical model wholesale, we end up demonizing people who seek medical intervention for their disability as they navigate not just the physical implications of their disability, but the social discrimination as well. And while I would love to see a world where no one feels the need to mask their autism or their stutter or their limp or whatever it is, just to avoid the consequences of other people's ignorance, um, we're not there.
Um, and so people have the right to exercise their agency, um, in how they manage that. So, um, a lot of our conversation will focus on the social model, um, today, but as [00:09:00] I'm critiquing the model, I'm surely not saying let's abandon it. Um, because the model has brought us some important things like accessibility, like policy change.
And so we need those things, um, to get to where I hope to see us go and we need more. One of the things I love about what you just said was the fluidity and nuance of this topic. I think, uh, as a professional myself and a student, you know, always learning it is, it feels nice and cozy to put things in boxes as we learn new terms.
Kate Grandbois: Especially, you know, as clinicians when we're faced with clinical decision making or, you know, we're faced with tasks at our job compartment. Compartmentalizing is an efficient way of thinking and you can't really compartmentalize a human being's experience. Mm-hmm. So the, the idea of these models not having fixed boundaries, but [00:10:00] being fluid and influencing each other is, uh, a perspective I had not thought of.
And, and it fits perfectly. I, I just love that. Um, I wonder if you could, so you've talked to us a little bit about the medical model, uh, which is pervasive in speech pathology. What is the social model? Yeah. So the social model was developed by disability advocates, particularly those in the uk in response to the medical model, which as I've mentioned, positions disability as an individual problem in that all disabilities need to be cured.
Chelsea Privette: Um, so what the social model did was kind of flip that around, um, to say that individuals aren't inherently disabled. They are disabled by their environment. So the intervention of the social model then is on society rather than on the individual with the goal of making a world where everyone has what they need at a baseline [00:11:00] and that no one is discriminated against because of their perceived limitations.
So this, this framing highlights how fluid disability is, um, because a person can be disabled in one context, but not in another. For example, a student with an oral language disability is disabled in a classroom where there are no visual supports, or the teacher speaks quickly without pausing or they don't have access to assisted technology.
But that same student has no difficulty communicating with peers or family or community members, or even other teachers and professionals in their school where everyone is communicating Multim, modally. Um, and so. This experience of becoming disabled in certain spaces is compounded for those with other marginalized identities.
In the context of the paper we're gonna be talking about black a a e [00:12:00] speaking children where their language by nature of their being black is perceived as deficient or in need of remediation. Um, and I think that most people can identify the problem with counting dialect as disorder as we like to say.
But um. With that, in my observation, comes either a resignation or an anxiety over what black, a, a, e speaking children can achieve. And I believe that it's because we as professionals lack what Jamila Lay Scott calls institutional literacy, um, which is the ability to read how white supremacy is enacted at the institutional level.
And so, yes, that includes standardized assessments, um, which are mainstays in educational institutions, but it's also in all of our [00:13:00] practices in the way that we are trained, um, even in the way that we think about language, which we'll get more into later. But it's the things that we take for granted as being evidence-based or objective or meritorious that we have to interrogate.
Kate Grandbois: I love the term institutional literacy. Was that the term? Yes. Institutional literacy. That's a great, great term. And I, I'm looking at our first learning objective, and I, I, I know that we need to dis, we're going to be discussing critical and radical models of disability, but I wonder if the best way to get into that is to ask about your criticisms of the social models of disability.
Um, can you elaborate on that a little bit? Especially through the lens of affirming black disabled children's experiences? Yes. So. First, I wanna [00:14:00] say that plenty of scholars and activists have critiqued the social model. So I'm not the first person to do this. I wanna be clear you're not setting anything on fire over there today.
Maybe just a little bit. Um, it might be new to talk about it in the context of language development, but the actual critiques of the social model, I, I did not come up with that on my own. Um, so there are kind of three major critiques that I wanna talk about. And the first one is that the social model can sometimes only morph the oppression of disabled people rather than dismantling it because we get the language of special needs or access needs or accommodations, which are read by some people as special treatment that is undeserved.
Chelsea Privette: Um, or as an indication that an individual is inept in some way. Um. And [00:15:00] the education that sometimes happens in response to that is, uh, reinforcing ableist norms. So rather than centering the dignity and the value of all body minds, the message that often gets across is, I have this thing that's different, but I can still do X, Y, and z.
I can still do the same things as you. I can still approximate normal and Stella Young calls this inspiration porn. So these are the stories of overcoming disability rather than living with disability.
The second critique is of how the rights-based approach dominates US-based strategies for meeting social model goals. Um, and by rights based approach, I mean, um, legislation, kind of the, the policy change approach, the legal aspect of, [00:16:00] um, getting, securing rights, securing, um.
Access. Um, and this becomes problematic for black, indigenous and other people of color who are still systematically denied their rights. Um, and as Audrey Lord says, there's no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives. And so with rights, rights-based approaches, not just with disability advocacy, but in other movements as well, the focus is often on one issue.
And when you focus on one issue, people with other marginalized identities continue to be marginalized even within the movement. And that kind of ties into the third critique, which is that the social model separates the notion from disability, from impairment, and it does this in order to name the oppression experience by [00:17:00] disabled people, not as being the result of their individual limitation or diagnosis.
Quote unquote, but, um, as a result of the inaccessibility and the ableist ideologies that permeate society more broadly. Um, and so that the motivation is good, right? To to name that oppression, but by separating the two, disability becomes disembodied. Um, but we're not separate from our bodies, of course.
So others' perception of our disability can't be either. And black people in particular are hyper visible in terms of how our body's behaviors, beliefs are constructed as deviants and so mainstream. Um, conceptualizations of disability that don't confront other systems of oppression allows for the [00:18:00] continued pathologization of blackness itself.
Um, so it creates hierarchies within disability where black people are still othered, whether it's for the way their disability is perceived within our communities, um, how their disability manifests within our particular cultural context, or in how much more frequently black people are being labeled as disabled.
So the body continues to be important for black disability scholars and activists. I wanna ask a question related to how this ha what, what implications this has for speech pathologists in schools. But before I get to that, you did just touch on something else we wanted to talk about today, and I wonder if now is a good time to address it.
Kate Grandbois: Just that the difference between impairment and disability mm-hmm. Within the context of these many facets [00:19:00] of, of human lived experience and intersectionality. Yeah. So, um, the term impairment, um, is connected more with the individual, with the body, with, um, functioning that. Is often couched in that medicalized language.
Chelsea Privette: Um, and again, it's not to say that that language shouldn't exist, right? Um, it's, it's important to name the things that causes pain, right? Um, disability. Um, with disability, the focus is more on the social implications of the individual aspects of that experience. Um, and for some people the term is used interchangeably.
For some disabled people, it's used interchange interchangeably, and for others it's [00:20:00] not. Um, but, um, kind of the root of where that difference came from is. Rooted in the social model, um, in terms of separating, making a distinction between, um, disability as an individualized experience versus as, um, an experience within one's broader context.
Kate Grandbois: Thank you for delineating those two things. 'cause I have a feeling that's gonna, the, the difference between those two concepts is gonna end up, percolate, permeating into, into my next question. Mm-hmm. Which is really about, um, how we as professionals are experiencing this in, when we were working in schools within these systems that are rooted in the medical model in a lot of ways, um, thinking about the children on our caseload who are coming to us with a, you know, their own individual [00:21:00] human experience, intersectionality.
Uh, and what, what implications all of this have, all of these concepts have for us as working professionals. Yeah. What I've seen happening in the literature within our profession. Is, um, kind of replacing the word impairment or disorder with disability, um, without engaging the larger implications of that.
Chelsea Privette: Um, and so we, even as we're using the word disability, um, the overwhelming model for services is at the individual level. Um, but if we really consider what the social model might look like, um, in our services, then it involves a lot more of the context rather than the individual. Um, a lot more of intervening on classrooms, intervening on the adults in this situation, [00:22:00] rather than on the kids that, that are receiving our quote unquote direct services.
Kate Grandbois: I am gonna try so hard to not get on my nerd soapbox because you've just like poked into my, like my area of interest, which is context, because we as individuals, you know, we work within systems, we work within organizations. Mm-hmm. We work within businesses. Those businesses have policies. Those businesses have leaders.
Those leaders are people. Sometimes those people are nice people. Mm-hmm. Sometimes they're not nice people. You know, we work within these complex fabrics and the idea that, you know, individual service is just that individual service is misleading because we are so continually influenced by the culture and context of our organizations.
That was my tiny little soapbox. I'm done. I love it. I'm, I'm done. I'm done. But I, I wonder if maybe we, now that we've kind of worked through the basic terminology for [00:23:00] models of disability, um, and talked a little bit about. How this will influence is, influences us as professionals. Um, I wonder if we could start, start talking a little bit more about your paper and mm-hmm.
Specifically black disability politics. Can you, again, before we get into it, can you tell us what that is? Can you define that term for us? Absolutely. Um, so a black disability political approach is part of a larger body of work in black disability studies. Um, so I'll refer to multiple scholars here, um, in our discussion, but black disability politics specifically was developed by Sammy Shaw.
Chelsea Privette: Um, um, and it's a framework that describes how black people, disabled or not engage disability through the lens of white supremacy in our pursuit of liberation and justice. [00:24:00] So it is community oriented. It's concerned with how disability functions as an ideology and as a system of oppression over who is or isn't disabled.
Um, so within a right space model, disability has become a privilege that. Black people and other multiply marginalized people often don't have access to. And so the point is to, um, identify how ableism impacts us all and to create structures of care that attend to the wellbeing of everyone, regardless of whether disability status is or isn't.
So as, as a radical model of disability, it recognizes that, um, as. The system continues to construct and reconstruct disability. It does so on people's bodies, and that [00:25:00] construction is part of a larger narrative about who is capable of what and who is capable of what is constructed around race, gender, sexuality, language, and all of the other social categories were organized into.
So in defining disability, it's important to name both what the system has done to us, in addition to how the system responds to us. Um, Dennis Tyler, um, says that a historical view of disability includes both the condition of an individual and the restrictions of a system. So disability isn't just socially constructed, but it's institutionally imposed onto marginalized people as a whole and both ideological and literal ways.
Um, so not only does racism as a systemic issue influence people's beliefs about [00:26:00] black people, the system also exerts actual violence and psychological and physical violence on racially marginalized people in ways that cause disability and, um, that violence is so regular, right? It's so mundane that it's naturalized, um, in the way that the occurrence of disability and marginalized communities are, it's expected.
Um, and on this point, I draw heavily from Jasper Poor. Um, her book is called The Right to Maine, and she says that disability in racially and ethnically marginalized communities is an exceptional. And, um, remains marginalized even within dominant disability discourse because those stories, the stories of [00:27:00] disability in um, black communities don't fit into the respectability politics and the empowerment models that shape mainstream narratives.
Kate Grandbois: So can you elaborate on how the framework that you just described shapes how we as clinicians think about communication and disability and the intersection there? Yeah. When it comes to communication, I think this approach helps us to think beyond labels.
Chelsea Privette: And to pay attention to how we all language in ways that are specific to our unique body mind. Um, and so what matters more than the specific forms we use is the way we establish and maintain and manage and negotiate meaning with our communication partners. Um, so it's really about [00:28:00] relationship and it's about agency.
Um, and I think that is where it really offers a way of extending what the social model kind of started in terms of, um, not neglecting the political implications of the bodies that our. Students live in,
Kate Grandbois: Mm-hmm. So in the paper you also discuss Crip languaging and Black Languaging Practices, two terms. Mm-hmm. That just in case our audience is not familiar with them, can you describe what those are? Yeah. Um, both Black Languaging and Crip languaging Honor. The body mind of the [00:29:00] language. So in this case, black a a e speaking children with a communication disability.
Chelsea Privette: So black languaging refers to the communication practices that are rooted in historical and cultural realities of black people. And me and Karina Schild have a paper about that. We also have a s Pcast episode about that. Yes. That out. We'll link that in the show notes for anyone who wants to listen to that.
Yes. And so, um, it's, it's a way of naming that history and, um, the, the identity that. That is bound up in the way that we use language. Um, and so I add Crip languaging to this paper to center what s Raja calls Crip knowledge. Um, [00:30:00] he writes about how language research across fields, not just in speech language pathology centers, normative linguistic codes as a way to understand human communication, but he explains that if we all language and we all employ diverse strategies for making our communication effective, then we need to consider all languaging to truly understand it.
And to do that, we have to tap into what he calls Crip knowledge. He says that requires a relational ethics where effective communication relies on mutual support rather than individual responsibility. Um, and I also draw here heavily from, um, John Hener and Octavia Robinson's Cripp Manifesto, and they explained that Cripping language puts the people back in languaging because it honors [00:31:00] the work that people put into languaging, especially via disabled bodies.
Um, so when we assume that we all have the capacity to make meaning, it changes the nature of our work, which is really why I wrote this paper to tell a different story about black children who participated in my dissertation research. So the analysis this time around looks radically different from the original I.
Kate Grandbois: I think I said this during our episode with Corina, how much I love languaging as a verb and how much that incorporates, um, in terms of human experience, in terms of connection. And I'm thinking a little bit about how we as professionals, you know, as we're writing our goals and we're, we're working with our students, um, we're working on quote unquote effective communication and what, quote unquote, effective [00:32:00] communication looks like and how so often that in a, in a goal or in an objective or in paperwork, is sterile, right?
It's, it's form, you know, form function in class. It's, I I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on how all of these concepts of Crip Crip languaging and black languaging impact these traditional ideas of quote, effective communication. Yeah, it completely flips it on head really, because instead of starting with normative communication practices, normative being defined by that bell curve, um, that we, we get in standardized assessments, which is, um, a concept that came out of eugenics.
Chelsea Privette: So let's make that clear. Um, but in, instead of starting with the normative, instead of starting with the center of the curve, it starts with the [00:33:00] left tail and says this, we as humans communicate, and when left to communicate freely, we are effective in our communication. And so what does crypt languaging tell us about human communication?
That's, that's where we get to like the real meat of what human communication is. I wonder how I'm like, again, all of these concepts are deep and complex. Um. I, I know we have a study to get to. I know you know, you, you've already mentioned your data. You've already mentioned your, um, you know, how this kind of grew out of your dissertation, and I'm, I'm tempted to ask so many more questions about these very big ideas that you've just shared.
Kate Grandbois: I'm gonna stay focused. I'm gonna stay on task. [00:34:00] Um. I think if anyone, we're gonna list a lot of references in the show notes. So if anyone is listening and wants to learn more ab about Crip languaging or black, some of these really big concepts that we've talked about, uh, we will definitely list some additional reading in the show notes.
And of course, if anyone's listening and would like to write in with questions, we're happy to triage those questions as best we can. Um, but I do want to, in the, you know, we only have about a half hour left. I wanna ask you about this study and kind of unpack the intention of this paper. Um, you looked at two case studies, uh, of black disabled, a, a e speaking preschoolers through, uh, you used a qualitative analysis.
And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about how you positioned yourself to rediscover this data. Yes, I love this question. Um, I do because most of us are [00:35:00] taught that good researcher, good research doesn't involve the researcher, but that's impossible. Um, and critical scholars are clear on that, that there is no neutral.
Chelsea Privette: And my decision to use a qualitative analysis is not at all neutral. And I explicitly say that in the paper, and I think that's important. Um, the reason, the reason I wrote this paper, um, is. Because I didn't like the analysis that I did for my dissertation. So, so for my dissertation, I looked at the use of black language, um, features by, um, monolingual AE speaking children and their Spanish speaking peers.
So in that paper, I focused on the bilingual children because my research aims were to describe how Spanish speaking preschoolers acquire a a e from their [00:36:00] monolingual peers to map out a way of distinguishing those who had typical or normative, um, language development from those who did not. And I'm gonna leave out a lot of juicy details, but, uh, I was dealing with a dissertation committee that was asking me to copy the methods of a white researcher who is not a speaker of a a e.
And long story short, I changed my committee, but by that time, I had what I had and I was trying to save it for the published article, which was very difficult to do because ultimately some things just couldn't be reconciled. Um, but I published that paper. There are some useful stuff in there, but after that I really sat with the, the kinds of comments and questions that I got from my first committee and [00:37:00] decided that if those are the kinds of responses that I get from the study, then I must be asking the wrong kinds of questions.
So I really took time to, um, delve into, um, research rooted in critical, critical theories across fields. Um. To reeducate myself, um, publishing my learning as I went. And then I returned to the data with a more radical lens. Um, and one of the changes that I made when I first started the original study that I'm proud of, despite my committee's objections, um, I, I changed the protocol, the assessment protocol, because originally I was supposed to do a picture description task, and that decision was based on previous research.
But I had done all of these classroom observations, um, in the [00:38:00] preschool program I was working with. I even led circle time a few times, um, before I started collecting data. And I realized that that task wasn't capturing the language I was hearing in the classroom. And so that's why I switched to doing the play samples.
But when I got to the finished product, the published paper, you still couldn't see that. You still couldn't see the richness of their communication. It didn't reflect the reality of the children's languaging. Um, and Gloria Latson Billings, who was the black education scholar, who, do I need to pause? No, I have a question.
Kate Grandbois: I have a question. Yeah. Um, I didn't wanna rudely interrupt you, but I did anyway. I'm so sorry. I wanna know. It's okay. What, in your, how did you know, what, what process was happening in your, in your mind to say, in your gut to say, this is not [00:39:00] capturing their real experience of languaging? What was it that was sticking out to you that you hadn't captured?
Mm-hmm. Like, what was that nagging like, if you spent all of this time reeducating to go and revisit the same dataset, I imagine that that was a nagging. Gut instinct. Mm-hmm. What was it that you wanted to capture?
Chelsea Privette: That when, when I, when I think of that classroom, I didn't, I didn't see disabled children. Um, but that's what you would think if you read the original paper, it interesting. It's grouping the children, it's separating the children based on their language ability, but that that grouping isn't visible in the classroom, in the classroom that they were [00:40:00] in.
Um, and, and that was part of it too, like it was, it was a classroom by, by black women who were allowing them to language freely, so. They're, they were doing it right. And I, I wanted to tell that story. Um, and I often go back to the, um, something Gloria Latson Billings writes. Um, she's the black education scholar who developed the, um, the framework for culturally responsive pedagogy.
And she said the bravest thing she ever did was to ask a different question. So she said, in, instead of asking what's wrong with our children, I decided to ask what was right. And so that's, that's what I wanted to do with the data is, is to highlight what is right. And so that, that was my new starting place.
Kate Grandbois: No one can see me smiling [00:41:00] from ear to ear. I think that's such a great quote and something that's so applicable and it's a great story. I'm happy to now stay on track. I'm sorry that I sidetracked us with that. No, that's great. It's, it's relevant. Mm-hmm. 'cause in this, in this study, you were a participant and a researcher.
What was that? What was that like? How did that wearing two hats impact how you moved through all of this? I assume it's related to that concept of Yeah. Telling, the, telling the truth, or your truth or your experience. Well, the data was collected like back before I had all of these critical frameworks. So I definitely entered the space as a clinician with the goal of capturing as much oral language as I could.
Chelsea Privette: Um, and. Because of the context. Um, well, really, really, there were two, some of the kids were [00:42:00] recorded at school with another peer, um, and for others, because it was during the height of COVID happened with, um, in the home. So I did some home visits and invited the caregivers to participate. So I wanted to be as invisible as possible.
That was my intention going in. But that didn't happen. Um, the kids were excited to play with me and I wasn't gonna ignore that. And I was excited to play with them too. Um, but especially with the home visits because the parents expected me to do the playing, um, even after I invited them in. So I did. Um, and oftentimes with parents, they want to get their kids to show you what they can do.
And so, um. In those instances, I saw my role as, as really keeping it play rather than an [00:43:00] interrogation, which so much of what we are taught to do in a training programs is this kind of InterG, I don't wanna say interrogation style, but you know, very authoritarian, very adult led. Mm-hmm. So I, I love that description.
Kate Grandbois: What did you find in this, in this study? Very open-ended question there. Oh, yes. That is not an accident. Um, what I found the second time, yes. The second time what I, what, um, I found the second time was, um, these just beautiful interactions that, um,
Chelsea Privette: that. Uh, frankly, I think I, I could see, because I am also a part of that community by the way, I [00:44:00] was doing this research in the city where I grew up. Um, and so when I say my community, I mean my, my community. Um, and so, um, I, that, that was part of my lens too. Even though I was coming in kind of with a clinical hat on, I was also like, very much, um, felt, felt at home in a way that, that I don't in other places, um, doing research.
Um, and so, um, I. I saw that and I kind of went searching for, um, some methods and linguistics that would help me describe, um, the relational aspect. Um, and so I ended up [00:45:00] focusing on repair and negotiation as strategies for meaning making. Um, so this was a lot of new learning for me in terms of learning what that is and, and how to, how it's conceptualized in research.
Um, but I kind of did what I always do and, and looked across fields to see, um, how I could bring things together, um, to tell the story in a way that, that felt good in a way that. Felt true to, um, their experience, the experiences of the participants and my experience with them. And what did you find about meaning making and negotiation?
Yes. Sorry, I felt like I was talking a lot. I was No, no, no. It's great. No, it's [00:46:00] great. I just, I I, I'm just so curious now. Yeah. So, um, I, I found what, what the literature on that says is that that's, it's what we all do. Um, and my goal in focusing on these strategies was not to just, part of it was normalizing.
Those strategies, but also to say that we should expect this, um, because repair and negotiation are a part of communication across cultures, across context. So in a very real sense, those strategies that is human communication. Um, and it's so ubiquitous, we often don't even notice it. Um, but when you're trained like we are to find what someone is doing wrong, it becomes a concern.
And so, um, I wanted to reframe that, [00:47:00] um, reframe those strategies as opportunities to affirm what children are doing in their interactions to meet their communicative goals and to further engage their communication partners. Um. To notice a, a breakdown and request a clarification or respond to a clarification, um, to use all of your resources to respond to a request for a clarification, whether that resource is something in the environment or another person, um, to repeat what someone says as a way to affirm or reject their input.
All of this is how we do language and this is how learning happens. Um, and so it's a, it's a plus regardless of who is using these strategies and these strategies. Um, these are strategies we, we teach usually in, in the context of social skills with kids who [00:48:00] have quote unquote difficulties with pragmatic.
Um, but that's what all effective communication comes down to. It's, it's all pragmatics, it's all social interaction. Which brings me to my next question, which is related to one of the things you described in the paper, seeing things like argument and humor mm-hmm. As big pieces of communication, repair, I mean, what's more mm-hmm.
Kate Grandbois: What's more human than arguing and using humor? Right. I mean, that to me, that just shows, is a reflection of the connect of connection. Mm-hmm. This was the funnest part of the data. To me. This was, this was the, the, the pleasant surprise I think, um, that came out of this data with this new lands. Um. And there, there was a, a long argument that I put in the, in the paper between Kareem and Robert, [00:49:00] and it's like my favorite thing, like in all of the play samples that I collected from my dissertation.
Chelsea Privette: And so I was so happy to be able to, to talk about this. But, um, to answer your question, um, with, with argument and humor, um, it was important for me to talk about this too. Not just because it's fun, but because sometimes what we do in therapy actually restraints children's communication, um, in ways that.
We end up policing their creativity and their agency. We tell them that certain things aren't appropriate, that arguing isn't nice, or that learning isn't time for humor, but these things just aren't true. Can they turn rude or inappropriate? Sure. But they aren't fundamentally inappropriate or a hindrance to [00:50:00] learning.
Um, so these are strategies that not only maintain a particular relationship with communication partners, but also between the child and, and what they're learning. And sometimes the mode of the argument or humor is culturally specific and might even be an expectation in that child's community. So we shouldn't impede their development, um, in learning those strategies because they're necessary.
Kate Grandbois: I love that. And I, I, I think that what you just said about us policing children is another reflection of some of these models we talked about earlier that are very, uh, driven by our judgment and driven by that. Mm-hmm. You know, kind of sense of, uh, power imbalance where the, we have the power and someone else doesn't.
Well, clinicians or people in positions of, of leadership, um mm-hmm. You know, hold the power and those power imbalances that are inherent [00:51:00] in a therapeutic, you know, medical model setting. I wonder in our last couple of minutes, if you could talk to us a little bit about the clinical implications of this study in terms of our, you know, goals of therapy.
We've talked about this a little bit, but this has a pretty far reaching implications. Yeah, so intervention tends to be transactional and as you mentioned, centers the goals of the clinician at the expense of the goals and the agency of the child. And as clinicians, our goals tend to align with the institutions, which is to assimilate children into normative ways of being.
Chelsea Privette: And I think too often the goals for therapy are written from, from questions on standardized assessments or from curricular standards, [00:52:00] um, which center normative communication practices. So the overarching goal, um, tends to be to make children not have a communication disability, or at least appear not to as much as possible.
But if we make therapy relational rather than transactional, then um. Decon contextualize assessments become much less relevant. Um, and what's more relevant is the interaction beyond any test. And when we observe what children are doing with their communication with a relational ethic, they tell us what they need.
If we pay attention and allow them space to communicate freely, they tell us how to expand on the strategies they're already using. Um, they tell us how they're engaging with curricular content, um, and that opens the door to more direct conversations about the goals they would [00:53:00] benefit from. Um, in one of my papers in, um, the critical practice paper, I talk about letting students talk back to the materials, um, because this is where we get at the how and the why of their engagement.
And so centering connection and co-construction instruction requires us to be co-learners with the children we're serving, which means we have to listen more and not just with our ears, and we can teach others in the child's environment to do the same, to build that reciprocity across context. We don't have time for me to go down another rabbit hole, but I just wanna highlight for one second the implications of one sentence that you just said, which was the limitation mm-hmm.
Kate Grandbois: Of standardized tests. The limitation of our traditional evaluation. [00:54:00] Paradigm because so many of our systems eligibility, right? Access to service, uh, reimbursement for services given. So much of that is built on these status quo concepts of evaluation. So what you're saying is a true systems shift and has really big implications for our field, for organizations in an, for industries.
Is that, is that an overstep or do you agree
Chelsea Privette: It's an overstep? Wait, was what? An overstep. Do you, do you, do you agree or is, or is that an overstatement? No, absolutely not. Like it's not an overstatement. I just want, I wanted to make sure I was on that I was on the right, on the right wavelength. Yeah, because it, it leads into, you know, another kind of take clinical takeaway.[00:55:00]
Kate Grandbois: If we're talking about our industry, and we're talking about organizations within industries, right? If you think about it. Mm-hmm. From like a national level with law and policy, and then field specific norms and standards, step by mm-hmm. State regulations and asha, and then one layer down the organization that you work in.
The hospital. The school mm-hmm. The district, right. You get smaller and smaller in this kind of funnel sort of triangle. When we get put into this. Pipeline of our profession. We enter this profession through schools, through graduate schools mm-hmm. Through training programs. Uh, and I'm just thinking about how all of these systems are very interconnected.
Mm-hmm. You also used a word earlier I loved, which was permeates. So how our culture, these, you know, ableist practices, racist practices, kind of permeate through all of these layers, triangles, funnels, whatever shapes you're imagining in your mind. Mm-hmm. And I wonder if you could just talk very [00:56:00] quickly about, um, what, you know, anybody is who's listening, who is teaching in a training program or is in a training program, or is a new grad, or is a student or supervising new grads, how these kind of anti ableist and anti-racist frameworks can have a place in training programs.
Mm-hmm.
Chelsea Privette: We're asking this all the time and, and my response to this question is also a response to the fact that we're, we, we talk too much among ourselves. My, my first recommendation is read widely because our, our field is really good at staying siloed and it's a problem.
Um, most, most graduates, they come out of their program only with a clinical understanding of language, and we call ourselves language [00:57:00] experts. Or communication specialist or whatever. But it's, it's mostly not true. Like we're we're trained to be specialist in pathology without having a robust understanding of communication to begin with.
And so, um, anytime we see or hear something that's not in line with what we've been taught about normative, monolingual white, mainstream English, we don't know what to do with it. Um, and so that's the first thing. And the other thing I wanna return to is the, this idea of institutional literacy. Um, and.
Actually, there are four eyes to this, this framework that, that Jamila Lay Scott talks about in, in her book. Um, black appetite, white food, um, institutional literacy, interpersonal Literacy, ideological and Internalized. Um, so all of the ways that [00:58:00] that oppression shows up, um, in our work and in in ourselves.
Um, because you can't do anything about oppressive structures if you can't recognize them. So, um, we, we need that because racism, ableism, or systemic issues that affect every single one of us. And so we need to understand our part in that.
Kate Grandbois: I appreciate this conversation so much, and I know that we have covered a tremendous amount of ground in this conversation. Uh, and as I already mentioned, we will list many references in the show notes for people to further their learning, further their reading, and, you know, start to unpack some of these very dense, complex ideas.
My last question for you is just about how you experienced writing this paper and this idea of the tension between the [00:59:00] reality of our field and the, and the realities of institutional research and the, the power that you've put into this paper.
Chelsea Privette: Um. Yeah. So for me, it all comes back to story. Um,
as I've been writing my last couple of papers, um, there's a quote by Sr Tover where she says, storytelling is not a luxury for black people. It is vital to our very existence, but researchers are often restricted to gathering stories and not telling them. And what I have learned, even in outside of my work and, and telling my life story, there's a difference between telling your story and explaining your story.[01:00:00]
And that difference has a lot to do with what Tony Morrison calls the white gaze. And so my goal. To stop explaining the stories I wanted to tell with the language of that the white Academy taught me, and to start telling the stories in my own language and the language of the communities I was working with, um, and including their voices directly as much as possible.
Um, and, and that's what I encourage, um, others in the field too, who are either new to the field or, um, gotten shifting perspectives, um, in the field because, um. We don't have, we don't have to prove anything. I feel like so long we've, we've been taught that we have to prove that our language is a language or that our culture is good, but, but there's, there's no proving and there's, there's a wealth of literature to stand on.
Um, scholars of color, [01:01:00] again, mostly outside of our field. Um, so it's been really important for me to find the scholars living and past who, who speak to me, who might brighten my flame, um, what I call the great cloud of witnesses and my scholarly community. Um, and even including those who are writing from outside of the academy.
Um, and so it's venturing out and finding new people.
Kate Grandbois: It was wonderful words of advice and I just so appreciate you coming on and sharing all of that. Uh, for anyone listening who would like to read this paper and or any of the other references that we've mentioned, we will link the, um, reference in the show notes.
Thank you so much for being here. I also wanna thank the rest of our production team who makes this podcast possible. Dr. [01:02:00] Anna Paula Mui, who's our CE administrator, Tegan Hearn, our production manager, Darren Lopez, our production assistant, Tracy Callahan, uh, and Dr. Marybeth Schmidt, who helped to elevate our peer review process.
And last but not least, um, Chelsea, thank you so much for being here. I knew I was gonna learn a ton from you today. Never. I, I always do. And I'm, I'm just so grateful for your time. Thank you so much.
Chelsea Privette: Thank you. Thank you for.
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