Professor Edwards’ research aims to better understand the interactions between phonological and lexical development in young children. Currently, she is examining the interactions among vocabulary growth and phonological knowledge (speech production, speech perception, and higher-level knowledge) in children who speak mainstream and non-mainstream dialects of English as well as children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants.
Professor Fourakis has collaborated with Professor Larry Shriberg in the development of the classification system for paediatric speech sound disorders termed the Speech Disorders Classification System (SDCS). He also undertakes research into speech perception and production by people with cochlear implants.
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| Professor Jan Edwards, Professor Sharynne McLeod, and Professor Marios Fourakis |
On Monday 25th February, Professor Edwards gave the following presentation at the School of Teacher Education Brown Bag Seminar Series in Bathurst, and was simultaneously video-conferenced to people in Dubbo, Wagga and Albury.
Abstract: The single most important problem in public education in the United States today is the “achievement gap”: the well-documented observation that children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) families perform less well academically than children from middle-SES families. Many children from low-SES families speak a non-standard dialect of English (e.g., African American English or AAE), while the language of instruction is Mainstream American English. Dialect mismatch is an often-ignored factor that may contribute to the achievement gap. This talk will discuss two studies related to dialect mismatch. Study 1 examines the impact of dialect mismatch on the awareness and comprehension of MAE by 105 4- to 7-year-old AAE-speaking children from low-SES families. Study 2 describes a pilot intervention program to ameliorate dialect mismatch. Children from two pre-kindergarten classrooms participated in this program: one classroom received a focused curriculum that highlighted differences between “home” and “school” talk, while the other classroom received a control intervention that focused on mindfulness. Children in the experimental group, but not the control group, improved significantly on measures of MAE comprehension and phonological awareness after the intervention program. [Funded by NIH grant 02932 to Jan Edwards and a Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery grant to Mark Seidenberg]
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| Kangaroos (including a joey in the pouch) welcoming Jan and Marios to Bathurst |
