Teacher Opinions about Auditory Verbal Therapy

Abstract

As a Class II evidence based approach, Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT) hasn’t been implementing widely. The aim of this study was determined the opinions of teachers’ who use AVT in their practices about practicality of AVT, their expectations from each other and AVT practices in Turkey, and also specify the teachers’ perspective about AVT course intensity in undergraduate education. For this purpose semi-structured interview was conducted with five teachers who implemented AVT at least three years and with five families who were involved in AVT training for the last 2 years. This study was conducted as a descriptive design which is one of the qualitative research studies. Content analysis and descriptive analysis were used. In the results, teachers stated that working in person with hearing impaired children’s families has positive impact on speech perception, language development and speech production. Additionally, they agreed that AVT hasn’t been known adequately in Turkey and they needed more courses in their undergraduate educations. As a result it is thought that if AVT takes more place during undergraduate education and teachers can have in-service education about it, AVT may become widespread and may become more useful for children with hearing loss and their families.