On International Mother Tongue Day (21 February) I had a productive meeting with colleagues from Cyprus and Australia about their chapter addressing cross-linguistic taxonomies of speech sound disorder that they have submitted for inclusion in our book "Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds".
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| Maria Vasilopoulou, Sharynne, Kakia Petinou, Kerry Ttofari |
Eighteen colleagues from across CSU have expressed interest to join our new research project to analyse the drawings created by children in our ECV2024 Children Draw Playing Global Online Galleries. https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2024/children-draw-playing/
We had a very productive interdisciplinary meeting today lead by Dr Carolyn Gregoric with perspectives shared from education, occupational therapy, education, speech pathology, physiotherapy and nursing. This is going to be a fun and informative project.
It has been a pleasure to host Ida Wiik Sætherskar, a PhD student from Nord University, Norway during this week at the Children's Voices Centre. Ida has met many staff and students at CSU, observed children at the Bathurst Early Childhood Intervention Service (BECIS) and presented a talk attended by 30 people (online and in person).
Ida's presentation was titled "Early Childhood Education Teachers' Judgments of Children's Language Skills". Here is her presentation abstract:
Ida Wiik Sætherskar is a speech and language therapist and a PhD research fellow at the Faculty of Education and Arts, Nord University. Ida´s project is a part of the research project SpedAims Kohort, Centre for Research on Special Needs Education and Inclusive Practice (SpedAims). In her doctoral project, Ida focuses her research on early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ judgments of children’s language skills. Successful early language development is vital to children´s later literacy development, education and well-being outcomes, highlighting the importance of early identification and early intervention for children with language delay or language disorders. ECE teachers are in a prime position to identify and support these children, further emphasizing the need for accuracy in judgments of children’s language skills as a part of their competence in supporting children’s language development. Ida will discuss current knowledge about the efficacy of ECE teachers' judgments of and ability to assess children's language and implications of her findings for further study as well as for practice.
Last night we met with Dr Mel Greaux and Dr Kaloyan Kamenov to present the work we have been doing to prepare our protocols for our research on Children’s insights into health, healthcare, health access.
Huge congratulations to Dr Kate Margetson who just received this email from the Charles Sturt University Office of Governance and Corporate Administration:
It is my pleasure to advise that you have been awarded the Higher Degree by Research University Medal as recognition of your outstanding academic achievement.
Only one graduate per Faculty, per year, may be awarded the Higher Degree by Research University Medal. The University Research Committee determines the eligibility and assessment criteria to award a Higher Degree by Research University Medal. Criteria may include details of publications or presentations given during your candidature, prizes or scholarships won during your candidature or attestations of excellence by your examiners.
Congratulations on this momentous achievement.
Kate's PhD was titled: Moving Beyond Monolingual Practices with Multilingual Children: Learning from Vietnamese-English–Speaking Children, Families, and Professionals
She was supervised by A/Prof Sarah Verdon and myself. Congratulations Kate! We are so proud of you!
Congratulations to Anniek Van Doornik, my PhD student at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, who has just had this paper from her PhD accepted for publication:
Van Doornik, A., Welbie, M., McLeod, S., & Gerrits, E., Terband, H. (2025, in press). Speech and language therapists' insights into severity of speech sound disorders in children for developing the Speech Sound Disorder Severity Construct. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders.
Abstract
Background: Children with speech sound disorders (SSD) are at higher risk of communication breakdown, but the impact of having an SSD may vary from child to child. Determining severity of SSD helps SLTs to recognise the extent of the problem and to identify and prioritise children who require intervention.
Aims: This study aimed to identify severity factors for SSD in order to develop a multifactorial Speech Sound Disorder Severity Construct (SSDSC) using speech-language therapists’ (SLTs’) views and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
Method: In an explorative five-staged qualitative study, the research question was answered: “How do SLTs determine the severity of speech sound disorders in children?”. A total of 91 SLTs from the Netherlands participated in data collection and analysis. The iterative process included three different qualitative research methodologies (thematic analysis, constructivist grounded theory and content analysis) to ensure validation of the results by means of method triangulation.
Results: SLTs considered 9 themes: intelligibility, speech accuracy, persistence, the child’s perception, impact, communicative participation, concomitant factors, professional point of view, and environmental factors. The themes were summarised in three main severity factors: (I) Speech accuracy, (II) The child’s perception of the impact of their speech, and (III) Intelligibility in communication. Other severity factors were concomitant factors and impact. Expertise and support were identified as facilitators or barriers that may worsen or relieve the severity of SSD.
Conclusions: This study highlights the need for SLTs to rethink how they think about severity as a simplistic construct reflecting only speech accuracy. It is recommended that a broader holistic approach to measuring severity is adopted.
What this paper adds:
What is already known on the subject
Although there are several proposals aiming to define the severity of SSD, the extent to which these align with clinical practice is not well understood. In recent years, speech accuracy and other factors such as intelligibility have been suggested as possible indicators of SSD severity. Flipsen et al (2005) concluded that experienced clinicians evaluated the number, type and consistency of speech errors as well as intelligibility, considering articulatory competence at both the segmental and whole word level when determining severity. Enderby and John (2015) developed ICF-based Therapy Outcome Measures (TOMs), including a TOM for phonological disorder. Although there is evidence in the literature that multiple factors should be considered when determining severity, there is still no clear guidance on this. In this discussion, the perspective of SLTs is an important contribution to the development of a measure of severity, but is lacking in the known literature.What this paper adds to existing knowledge
As a first step, this study examines SLT’s perspectives on how they define and measure severity of SSD, and determines how those views align with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in order to develop a severity construct that can be further tested and validated. Using the views of SLTs and the ICF, this qualitative study resulted in the multifactorial Speech Sound Disorder Severity Construct (SSDSC).What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?
The practical experience of SLTs, combined with what is known from the literature, provides insight into the different factors that may contribute to severity of SSD. These factors may be considered in developing a measure of SSD severity in the future.
Early Childhood Voices. Our new book highlights the diversity and cultures of young children and ways we can listen to and learn from children.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-56484-0
Thanks to all of the excellent international authors and to Charles Sturt University media for your news story today
The Children's Voices Centre began in January 2025 with the appointment of the first group of staff:
The next two positions are being advertised.
We are spending the first month or so in meetings with key people across Charles Sturt University including Jason White (Research Office), Pat McKenna and the finance team, buildings and planning, Justin Williams (CSU Advancement), CSU Brand, Institute Directors, and key Faculty staff.
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| Carolyn, Tamara, Sharynne meeting with Jason White from the Research Office |
During January we received most of the chapters for our edited book "Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds - Second Edition". Helen Blake, Kate Margetson and I spent most of today working through the chapters, reviewing them and planning feedback to the authors. The content is fantastic - and shows the huge growth of knowledge and resources - as well as the change in professional practice over the decade since the first edition was published.
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| Helen, Sharynne and Kate holding the first edition |
Today Dr Kate Margetson and I presented a 2-hour invited seminar titled "Help! How can I support multilingual children? Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL)" at the Central West Speechies' PD Day in Orange.
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| Karen Trengove (Learn2Communicate), Dr Kate Margetson (CSU), Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU), Dr Rebecca Sutherland (The University of Sydney) |
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| Dr Kate Margetson describing data from our research |
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| Dr Kate Margetson describing the SACHL |
This presentation was a really important day for Kate's postdoctoral research. We have had a 18month grant from the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) to consider how speech pathologists can support multilingual children, particularly in rural areas. Kate presented our work on the SACHL:
https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl
The attendees both provided a wonderful audience for research translation, but also for providing advice about how to make the SACHL better for all.
Congratulations Sarah Bartlett on passing your PhD endorsement requirements. It is exciting that you are able to finalise your ethics application then start data collection. Sarah's PhD title is: "Implications of Caregiver-implemented Intervention for Underserved Communities".
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| Sarah celebrating with her supervisors - Sharynne and Carolyn Gregoric |
A/Prof Kate Crowe and I have been discussing future research collaborations with colleagues from Nord University for some time on the topic of "Sámi Education Language Assessment Guidelines". We met again for further productive discussions.
This morning I met with my wonderful colleague from the US - Professor Lynn Williams - to discuss future collaborations. Lynn and I have a rich past of very productive and impactful collaborations. It is exciting to now discuss new areas of work.
Today A/Prof Tamara Cumming and I met with Lilium Burrow from the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) about a potential collaboration with our World Health Organization project to consider children's perspectives and experiences of health and access to healthcare.
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| Sharynne, Tamara and Lilium |
It has been an honour to serve on the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee of the Royal Society of New South Wales for 2023 and 2024. The Royal Society of NSW is the oldest learned institution in the Southern Hemisphere. Today was my last meeting on the committee before the 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM). I have enjoyed the meetings with the committee members:
The minutes of the meeting stated "Today is Professor Sharynne McLeod’s final meeting. Professor Sharynne McLeod was thanked for her strong contributions on the Committee."
Today the Catholic Education Tasmania team met with Sarah Verdon and myself to discuss the forms and processes involved in rolling out the project across Tasmania.
Tonight I met with Kate Crowe to work on the Qualtrics and other data entry processes.
We are getting ready for when the ethics committee gives us approval to start.
Today our CSU team met for the first time to prepare our WHO research project. What a great team.
Here is the aim of our 2-year project
To advance health equity for persons with disabilities by understanding the experience and perspectives of children with disabilities in the health sector
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| Lisa Dealtry, Tamara Cumming, Sharynne McLeod, Carolyn Gregoric, Helen Blake, Kate Freir, Sarah Verdon (+ Suzanne Hopf and Julian Grant) |
Today 17 enthusiastic children (and 8 parents) were our third group of Australian advisors about our new research project with the World Health Organization. They built on the knowledge from our first two meetings and taught us a lot. We are now ready to share their insights with the CSU researchers and the WHO. Thanks children (and parents)!
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| CSU children's advisory group |