Siva Priya Santhanam, Monica L Bellon-Harn, Shubha Kashinath, Kaitlyn Wilson, Victoria VanUitert, Alyssa Barnett
{"title":"The Speech-Language Pathologist's Role in Supporting Autistic Students in Postsecondary Education Settings.","authors":"Siva Priya Santhanam, Monica L Bellon-Harn, Shubha Kashinath, Kaitlyn Wilson, Victoria VanUitert, Alyssa Barnett","doi":"10.1044/2025_AJSLP-24-00467","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>Navigating the postsecondary landscape is a complex and daunting journey for many autistic students due to widespread misconceptions about autism among nonautistic peers and educators. Additionally, barriers to self-advocacy limit students' academic and social integration, ultimately compromising their ability to graduate. Despite these challenges, there remains inadequate support for this population with social communication, executive functioning, and self-advocacy. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are well positioned to reduce existing barriers and provide support to autistic students and their postsecondary communities in these needed areas. This clinical focus article highlights the pivotal role SLPs could play in establishing personalized supports for autistic college students and describes how SLPs can leverage their unique skills to fulfill this role.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>Drawing from existing literature, clinical expertise, the neurodiversity framework, and lived experiences of autistic college students, we offer guidelines for the indirect and direct supports that SLPs can provide. In addition, we provide a case example and personalized support plan to illustrate the application of direct supports.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Targeted direct and indirect supports are crucial to autistic students' retention, success, and graduation rates and to building a welcoming postsecondary community. This article emphasizes how SLP supports for autistic college students fall within the scope of practice and how these supports can be operationalized through the concrete examples provided.</p><p><strong>Supplemental material: </strong>https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.29496335.</p>","PeriodicalId":49240,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology","volume":" ","pages":"2533-2546"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_AJSLP-24-00467","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/7/21 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Purpose: Navigating the postsecondary landscape is a complex and daunting journey for many autistic students due to widespread misconceptions about autism among nonautistic peers and educators. Additionally, barriers to self-advocacy limit students' academic and social integration, ultimately compromising their ability to graduate. Despite these challenges, there remains inadequate support for this population with social communication, executive functioning, and self-advocacy. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are well positioned to reduce existing barriers and provide support to autistic students and their postsecondary communities in these needed areas. This clinical focus article highlights the pivotal role SLPs could play in establishing personalized supports for autistic college students and describes how SLPs can leverage their unique skills to fulfill this role.
Method: Drawing from existing literature, clinical expertise, the neurodiversity framework, and lived experiences of autistic college students, we offer guidelines for the indirect and direct supports that SLPs can provide. In addition, we provide a case example and personalized support plan to illustrate the application of direct supports.
Conclusions: Targeted direct and indirect supports are crucial to autistic students' retention, success, and graduation rates and to building a welcoming postsecondary community. This article emphasizes how SLP supports for autistic college students fall within the scope of practice and how these supports can be operationalized through the concrete examples provided.
期刊介绍：
Mission: AJSLP publishes peer-reviewed research and other scholarly articles on all aspects of clinical practice in speech-language pathology. The journal is an international outlet for clinical research pertaining to screening, detection, diagnosis, management, and outcomes of communication and swallowing disorders across the lifespan as well as the etiologies and characteristics of these disorders. Because of its clinical orientation, the journal disseminates research findings applicable to diverse aspects of clinical practice in speech-language pathology. AJSLP seeks to advance evidence-based practice by disseminating the results of new studies as well as providing a forum for critical reviews and meta-analyses of previously published work.
Scope: The broad field of speech-language pathology, including aphasia; apraxia of speech and childhood apraxia of speech; aural rehabilitation; augmentative and alternative communication; cognitive impairment; craniofacial disorders; dysarthria; fluency disorders; language disorders in children; speech sound disorders; swallowing, dysphagia, and feeding disorders; and voice disorders.
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号
