After looking at my comments, I have decided to refine my topic and driving question to include how speech therapy techniques can be combined with dance and movement in order to bring benefit to students who are deaf or have speech-language disorders. I think that this modification will be slightly more specific and help me to find the answers that I am looking for. This topic is also very important to me because I can actually use it when I am a speech therapist. I want to be open and accepting of new ideas and ways to reach and help my clients and students, so if there is a way that I can use dance I will be willing to try it.
Per suggestions, I looked into some programs that use dance and movement therapy in conjunction with speech therapy. At Texas Tech University, some SLP graduate students who were also dancers have started using ballet as a therapy for autistic children. Many children with autism have difficulty expressing themselves to others and can also be diagnosed with various speech and language disorders. There is a high likelihood that I will be working with autistic children in my future. These SLPs have discovered that ballet has helped their students improve in social interaction skills, coordination, and discipline. The individual nature of ballet helps the autistic students interact with each other at a slower and more comfortable pace than with larger team sports. Ballet also helped the students be able to express themselves.
While these SLPs aren't combining dance and speech therapy into one program, they were able to recognize the link between movement and expression. If this program exists and is helping children with autism be more comfortable expressing themselves to others, I'm sure that other programs exists which can work more individually to improve speech through dance.
