A Tutorial: Applications of Clinical Self-Efficacy Principles to Mentoring of SLP Assistants

There are an increasing number of speech-language pathology assistants (SLP-As) in the public school settings under the supervision of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the United States. One of the functions of SLPs is to mentor and facilitate the development of SLP-As. The primary aim of this tutorial is to use the social cognitive model of self-efficacy to enhance the knowledge and skills of SLP-As. Literature in social cognitive theory indicates that self-efficacy is a predictor of performance, particularly in education and health domains. Effectively incorporating the self-efficacy framework in the mentoring of SLP-As will improve clinical performance and outcomes, as well as increase job satisfaction and retention of SLP-As in the school setting.