the receiver of the intervention, the provider of the intervention, and the environment in which the intervention occurs. One intervention readily adaptable to implementation in an early childhood environment is Phoneme Factory Sound Sorter® (PFSS) (Wren and Roulstone, 2013). The British English version of the software was examined in Wren and Roulstone (2008). Although Wren and Roulstone (2008) did not find PFSS to be any more effective than traditional table-top, they speculated the reasons for this may have related to dose, a small sample size, heterogeneity within the sample, and children’s stimulibility for consonants targeted in PFSS. McLeod et al. (2016) conducted a cluster randomised control trial to evaluate PFSS as first-phase intervention for preschool children with SSD in which educators (teachers and/or teaching assistants) implemented PFSS using SLT designed intervention targets. PFSS is based on Stackhouse and Wells (1997) psycholinguistic framework, and targets children’s input phonological processing skills. Children receive computer-based feedback depending on their response, thus circumventing the implementation barrier of educator feedback accuracy identified by Dodd and Barker (1990). While no significant differences to children's speech production were found between PFSS and typical classroom practice in the PFSS trial by McLeod et al. (2016), this did provide an opportunity to examine the barriers and facilitators to computer-based intervention across a range of early childhood environments and with a range of educators. The aim of the current study was to examine the experiences of the educators who implemented PFSS with preschool children with SSD attending their centre to identify factors acting as barriers and facilitators to PFSS implementation. Method Context of the current study Data in the current are drawn from the Sound Start Study. The Sound Start Study was a blinded cluster randomised controlled trial run across 39 early childhood
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Table 1. Key roles and responsibilities of educators and the research team Educator responsibilities Research team responsibilities Ensuring that children participated in the required amount of intervention with PFSS (four sessions a week of around 15 minutes duration for nine consecutive weeks) Identify intervention targets of each Monitoring children to ensure they remained on task and completed all games, changes children’s goals weekly within the program Train educators in the use, management, and backup of PFSS Maintaining records of children’s attendance and participation in intervention and backing up PFSS files every week Answer educator questions and resolve technical and logistic issues Describing their experiences with the intervention in a phone interview at the conclusion of the intervention Visit the preschool throughout the intervention to check on intervention progress and record keeping