Over the
past week, Nicole Limbrick has visited Bathurst. Jane McCormack and I are
supervising her honours dissertation titled: Designs
and decisions: The creation and use of informal criterion-referenced measures
for assessing children with speech impairment. During the week we finalized
the criteria for critiquing conceptual and operational features of speech
assessments, then coded informal measures and published tests in English and
other languages. We realized just how complex the task of creating a robust,
valid and reliable assessment is. So often we as speech pathologists head
straight for the stimulus pictures, score form, and norms, almost discarding
the examiner's manual. This week has highlighted the importance of
interrogating the design of the assessment measures we use to ensure the integrity
of the assessments undertaken with children. It has also highlighted the innovation amongst our professional community for creating assessment measures to address gaps where there are no suitable tools available. Nicole will present some of the
findings of her research at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference
in Hobart next year.
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| Nicole Limbrick and Sharynne at Allen House in Bathurst |
