A study of teacher's attitudes toward stutterers and non-stutterers

During the elementary school years, on into junior high school and to some extent through high school, children are usually in some stage of physical, psychological, social or academic adjustment. Children with additional communication handicaps such as a hearing loss, speech, language, stuttering or voice problems may experience some difficulty in adjustment. That adjustment difficulty may be social, academic, or achievement oriented. Educators need to be aware of how the communicatively handicapped child deals with these problems in order to be helpful in lessening the difficulty in the academic setting.A study by Ruscello, Stutler, and Toth (1983) looked at the teachers' attitudes toward children with articulatory disorders. The conclusion of this study suggested that teachers rate children with articulation disorders lower in personality characteristics, social characteristics, and achievement-related characteristics than children without communication defects.Something needs to be done to change the negative impressions that some educators have of children with communication defects. However, first a method needed to be devised to identify the exact attitudes of the classroom teachers. Then, in-service training by the school speechlanguage-pathologist might help in informing the educators.This study was designed to identify and compare the classroom teachers' attitudes toward stutterers and non-stutterers. The areas of comparison include personality, social characteristics , and academic achievement.Department of Speech Pathology & AudiologyThesis (M.A.