Within my 4-year Australian Research Council Future Fellowship I have been provided with funds to travel around the world and cultivate multicultural collaborations and friendships. This travel has enabled me to "develop rich partnerships". The importance of this was highlighted to me as I read the page proofs of our recent manuscript to be published in the Journal of Communication Disorders. Page 9 of the page proofs states
"The importance of collaborative partnerships with families and communities was identified repeatedly. For example, an online panel member wrote ‘‘Our experience ... is that students need to TALK with people of other cultures and not just attend cultural events’’. There was emphasis placed upon a genuine appreciation of cultural viewpoints and valuing the contribution of diverse cultural attitudes rather than tokenistic inclusion of cultural elements. Subsequently, position statement 4 was included ..." (McLeod, Verdon, Bowen, International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech, 2013)I am very grateful for the funds to enable me to visit and work with so many people in so many different countries over the past 4 years.
