About Us

Katherine Anderson

Tania Attard

Rachael Barringer

Alison Ferraro

Zoë King

We are five students in our fourth and final year of the Bachelor of Speech Pathology course at La Trobe University, Bundoora. We developed this website as part of one of our fourth year subjects. In this subject, we work as a group throughout the year with a supervisor to develop a project which relates to human communication and has a practical use in the wider community.

The need for a stuttering information kit for preschool teachers and childcare workers arose from a research study conducted in February 2006 by Speech Pathologists in the Victorian Stuttering Interest Group of the Speech Pathology Association of Australia. The study involved 63 kindergarten teacher participants with an average of 13.6 years of teaching, completing a quantitative survey. This study investigated the knowledge base and beliefs of preschool teachers regarding stuttering and the frequency in which they encounter children who stutter in their classrooms. This study found that there was a lack of information and some mis-information among preschool teachers in regard to stuttering, causes of stuttering and treatment (Block, Carey, Borg & Ross, 2006).

The outcome of the La Trobe Communication Clinic study prompted us to conduct a small qualitative survey, to further investigate the type of information we would need to include in our project. The survey also included questions regarding the most appropriate format for this information. All the preschool teachers surveyed were keen to receive more information about stuttering and reported that a brochure or website would be the most convenient method for them to access this information.