What is it about?

Speech-language pathology graduate programs that seek to promote an inclusive environment for minoritized students can learn about students’ experiences through the advice that students offer to a peer. Advice provides insight into students’ beliefs about the extent to which they are included and their access to social goods (tangible and intangible concepts of value). This study analyzed advice on inclusion that minoritized students offered to a peer. Themes showed anticipated exclusion and loss of social goods. Students used personal agency to mitigate losses and collective agency to frame diversity as an asset. Strategies are provided for graduate programs to support students’ emotional well-being, frame education in the service of communities, foster peer relationships, and value diversity.

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Why is it important?

The field of speech-language pathology has limited diversity in its membership and is committed to ongoing recruitment and retention efforts. At the graduate level, students with minoritized identities may experience barriers and lack of access. Minoritized identities may include race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, male in a female dominated field, LGBTQ+, and disability identity. Examining the advice that minoritized students offer to each other can inform diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and offer guidance to programs in designing inclusive educational and clinical training environments.

Perspectives

Minoritized graduate students create their own understandings of their experiences and develop strategies to navigate the graduate school environment, which may not have been designed to include them. Examining the advice that minoritized graduate students offer to each other shows the challenges that they experience, their strengths, and their collective efforts to support each other and promote the benefits of diversity. I hope that minoritized students can play a key role in informing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Teresa Roberts
Portland State University

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This page is a summary of: Examining Inclusion in Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Programs Through Minoritized Students' Advice to a Peer, Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, June 2023, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2023_persp-22-00226.
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