Dr Sarah Spencer
BMedSci, PhD, SFHEA, certRCSLT, HCPC
School of Allied Health Professions, Nursing and Midwifery
Senior Lecturer
+44 114 222 2411
Full contact details
School of Allied Health Professions, Nursing and Midwifery
Room 208
362 Mushroom Lane
Sheffield
S10 2TS
- Profile
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I research children and young people’s language skills (their talking and understanding of spoken language) and how it fits within their educational and social contexts and life experiences.
My clinical and academic work addresses educational inequality and injustice related to language, social class, and special educational needs. I am also interested in how we support children and young people with both their spoken language and literacy skills to maximise their participation in everyday life.
For 20 years, I have been a Speech and Language Therapist, registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and a certified member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. I work with children and young people of all ages, but I have most expertise and experience of working with older children and teenagers. I am keen to develop partnerships with mainstream secondary schools in Sheffield and the local area. I can offer speech and language therapy assessment, advice and interventions working with individual children, classrooms, teacher training or whole school approaches.
Please email if you are a family or school who is interested to hear more.
- Qualifications
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BMedSci in Speech and Language Therapy
PhD in Speech and Language Therapy
- Research interests
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A central theme in my work is addressing inequality in both education and speech and language service provision. My research is about
- Adolescent language differences such as speech sound disorder, Developmental Language Disorder
- How schools can include and support children with language and literacy differences effectively
- Speech and language therapy interventions for traditionally underserved communities
- Social class and children’s language
My research is multidisciplinary, and I enjoy collaborating with colleagues from Education, Sociolinguistics and Psychology. I have expertise in a range of qualitative and quantitative research designs and am particularly interested in co-producing research with non-academic partners.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- . Support for Learning, 37(2), 180-208.
- . Linguistics and Education, 63.
- . International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(8).
- Speech-language pathology service provision in English Youth offending institutions. Findings from a survey.. Journal of clinical practice in speech-language pathology, 21(1), 11-17.
- . Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 35(2), 93-111.
- . Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 34(2), 141-153.
- . International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 52(5), 652-668.
- . Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 25(3), 481-486.
- . Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
- . International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 52(2), 184-196.
- . PLOS ONE, 11(7), e0158753-e0158753.
- . Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 31(3), 271-286.
- . International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 50(4), 416-435.
- . International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 48(6), 738-739.
- . Language and Education, 27(2), 129-143.
- . Int J Lang Commun Disord, 47(3), 274-284.
- . CHILD LANG TEACH THE, 26(2), 144-162.
- . International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders.
- Regimes of Motherhood: Social class, the word gap, and the optimisation of mothers' talk. Sociological Review.
Chapters
- (pp. 227-237).
Conference proceedings papers
- . Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, Vol. 63(7) (pp 701-701). Glasgow, Scotland, 6 August 2019 - 9 August 2019.
Reports
- Developing a communication supporting classrooms observation tool.
- . Support for Learning, 37(2), 180-208.
- Research group
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Current PhD students:
- Sam Calladine, developing and refining a therapy approach for very young children with speech difficulties associated with cleft palate (with Hilary Gardiner and Ray Wilkinson).
- Rachel Bear, using Conversation Analysis to investigate the feedback strategies parents use in phonological therapy (with Hilary Gardiner and Ray Wilkinson).
- Mary Hartshorne, evaluating the impact of an intervention to support communication skills in secondary schools (with Judy Clegg).
- Kim Turner, investigating the profiles of language abilities of young offenders in a custodial setting (with Judy Clegg).
- Indri Hapsari, identifying the prevalence of speech and language difficulties in preschool child