Top Lang Disorders Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 259–273 Copyright c  2008 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Collaborative Script-Based Experiences for Bilingual Speech–Language Pathology Trainees Lisa M. Bedore, PhD; Anita M´ endez P´ erez, PhD; Melissa D. White, MA Bilingual speech–language pathology trainees face a dual challenge. They must gain clinical com- petence as defined by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Knowledge and Skills Assessment (2003) and gain proficiency related to bilingual service delivery. Collaborative script- based experiences allow them to gain bilingual experience from the beginning of their training. In collaborative script-based experience, novice clinicians collaborate with expert clinicians and/or educators to reach common goals in service delivery. The graduate clinician carries out specific intervention tasks that may be scripted in Spanish. The bilingual supervisor scaffolds service deliv- ery by directly participating in intervention planning and delivery. Collaborative learning scripts potentially shorten learning cycles because graduate clinicians have access to concrete feedback in context and make immediate changes in their teaching activities. Key words: bilingual, clini- cal teaching, collaborative scripts, knowledge and skills acquisition, Spanish, speech–language pathology, supervision, trainees T RAINING graduate clinicians to become bilingual speech–language pathologists is a dual challenge for the clinical educa- tor. Graduate clinicians are novice speech– language pathologists and often are novice users of their second language for professional purposes as well. To be called a bilingual clinician upon graduation, a student clinician must develop the knowledge and skills regard- ing communication disorders in the bilingual From the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas at Austin The authors thank the graduate students who have par- ticipated in the clinical rotations discussed here and specifically those who agreed to share parts of their lesson plans for this article (Rocio Norman, Jennifer Garcia, and Emily Mohr). We also thank Hays CISD, Del Valle ISD, and Pflugerville ISO for their participation. Corresponding author: Lisa M. Bedore, PhD, Depart- ment of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1100, Austin, TX 78712 (e-mail: lbedore@mail.utexas. edu). population as set out in American Speech- Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA, 1989) definition of a bilingual speech–language pathologist and as required by the Knowl- edge and Skills Acquisition (KASA) Summary (ASHA, 2003). COLLABORATIVE LEARNING SCRIPTS One of the ways that we have addressed this challenge in our bilingual clinician-training program is by developing collaborative learn- ing scripts that allow graduate clinicians to simultaneously work toward clinical compe- tency and bilingual proficiency. The collabo- rative learning scripts are cognitive–linguistic scripts for conceptualizing varied situations that are taught through supervisory scaf- folding. Some components of these may be planned as discourse scripts that can be learned line-by-line when students are acquir- ing professional language skills in their sec- ond language. Scripts are introduced through clinical practicum rotations that take place 259