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Q: How would you explain your work to a fifth grader or someone’s grandparent?
Dow: My study focuses on speech therapists and how well they
can help the children they give speech therapy to. When helping children
in speech therapy, it's important to think about how culture and where
someone grew up might affect the way they speak. For example, some
children might have an accent or use a different style of talking from
the therapist, such as using different words or saying things in a
different order. Just because someone speaks differently doesn’t mean
it's wrong, and speech therapists need to be able to tell when it's just
different and when children actually need help with their speech. I
wanted to know how speech therapists make sure they know it’s not just a
different way of talking.
Q: What draws you to research?
Dow: My introduction to research came from my mother, who has
been doing research on urban education and Latinx students for as long
as I can remember. Her passion for discovering the undiscovered and
challenging the standards of teaching made me passionate about being a
driving force of change in whatever field I choose to pursue. Research
is a great way to push a field forward, and I wanted to be a part of
that advancement as soon as I could.
Q: What motivated you to study this topic?
Dow: In my undergraduate program, I quickly noticed the lack
of diversity within my major. As a Black and Latina woman, it is notable
how few people of color there are in the classroom. The field of speech
pathology itself is 92% white and 96% female, according to The American
Speech–Language–Hearing Association. The population that speech
pathologists serve, however, is much more diverse. I took my first class
on culturally responsive practice earlier this year and noticed it was
one of the smallest courses I had taken related to my major. This
important knowledge was getting passed up by a lot of students who could
have benefitted from it.
My goal became to figure out how therapists dealt with cultural
differences in the “real world” after higher education. I figured many
would be like the people in my major, having not taken any specific
course related to the topic. I could look in the textbook and at the
articles to see what scholars said therapists should be doing to be
culturally responsive, but I want to know what therapists are actually
doing, so I can eventually deduce what we, as a field, can do better to
serve culturally and linguistically diverse populations.