Higher Degree by Research Symposium

This week three of my PhD students (Helen Blake, Ben Pham and Nicole McGill) went to Wagga Wagga to participate in the Charles Sturt University Higher Degree by Research Symposium. They have come back with stories of collegiality, learning, and confirmation of what they already know and do.

Lisa McLean (Research Officer, Faculty of Arts and Education),
Helen Blake, Ben Pham

2017 achievements

Today I had my annual performance management review with my head of school. It is a time to consider productivity for the year. Here is a list of what I reported for 2017 thanks to the amazing team of people (students, postdocs, and colleagues) I work with:

• Awarded: 4 grants ($650,567 in funding) 
• Published/in press: 1 book, 7 encyclopaedia entries, 6 book chapters, 20 journal articles, 2 commissioned reports
• Presented/co-authored: 3 invited conference presentations, 21 peer reviewed conference presentations (published abstracts) in Australia, Japan, Scotland UK, US, Greece, Germany, and Viet Nam
• Submitted (in addition to above): 2 grants, 1 book chapter, 10 journal articles

Charles Sturt University's Academic Senate

I am an elected member of Charles Sturt University's Academic Senate, representing the Professors' Forum. We meet face-to-face five times each year. Yesterday was our last meeting for the year in Wagga Wagga where we said farewell to Professor Jo-Anne Reid as the Presiding Officer of Academic Senate.

Members of Academic Senate

Can teacher-child relationships support human rights to freedom of opinion and expression, education, and participation?

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication

Wang, C., Harrison, L. J., McLeod, S., Walker, S., & Spilt, J. L. (2017, in press November). Can teacher-child relationships support human rights to freedom of opinion and expression, education, and participation? International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.

Here is the abstract:

Purpose: This study explored how teacher-child relationships change over the early school years, in terms of closeness and conflict, whether these trajectories differ in type and frequency for children with typical development and children with speech and language concern (SLC), and whether the trajectories are associated with school outcomes at 12-13 years.
Method: Participants were children, parents, and teachers in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Parents identified 2,890 children with typical communication and 1,442 children with SLC. Teacher-rated teacher-child closeness and conflict were collected biennially over six years. Academic and social-emotional outcomes were reported by teachers and children. Growth mixture modelling was conducted to generate teacher-child relationship trajectories and Wald’s chi-square analyses were used to test the association between trajectories and school outcomes at 12-13 years, after controlling for a range of covariates including child’s sex, language background, indigenous status, age, and socio-economic position.
Result: In both groups, the majority of children had teacher-child relationship trajectories with sustained high closeness and low conflict that predicted positive outcomes at age 12-13, but the SLC group was more at risk of less positive trajectories and poorer school outcomes.
Conclusion: Close, less conflicted relationships with teachers may provide a supportive context for later language, literacy, and social-emotional development. This study highlights the role of teachers in supporting children in their development of communication and academic skills that will optimise their capacity for freedom of opinions and expression, education, and participation, as enshrined in Articles 19, 26 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Xuan's visit re Southern Vietnamese children's speech acquisition

This week Xuan Le (Lê Thị Thanh Xuân) is visiting Bathurst to work with Ben Pham and myself to analyse and write up speech acquisition data collected with children from Southern Vietnam. Xuan is a co-author of the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (VSA, Pham, Le, & McLeod, 2016) and we have been collecting data from the north and south of Viet Nam to finalise our examiner's manual for the VSA and write a supporting journal article. The data from the south were collected with support from a Trinh Foundation Australia grant. This is the fourth time Xuan has visited me in Bathurst.

Xuan Le, Ninh Dang Vu, Ben Pham and Sharynne working together in Bathurst

Celebrating Xuan's birthday in Bathurst

At the end of the week we submitted an article to be considered by an international journal

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Discussing research with Vietnamese children with the Bilingual Development in Context Lab at SDSU

While visiting San Diego State University, Dr. Giang Pham welcomed Ben Pham and I to her Bilingual Development in Context Lab. We discussed our research with Vietnamese children (including our new ARC Discovery grant) with her research assistants and students, and learned about their research about Vietnamese children's language skills undertaken in San Diego and Ha Noi, Viet Nam. We look forward to this productive exchange continuing into the future.

Members of Dr Giang Pham and Dr Sonja Pruitt-Lord's labs

Lunch with members of Dr Giang Pham's lab

Presentations at San Diego State University

This week Dr. Giang Pham  invited Ben Pham and I to visit San Diego State University. While visiting we met with faculty and students and presented some seminars.

Attendees at Monday's seminar

• On Monday I presented a seminar titled "Multilingual Children's Speech: A World Tour" to students, staff and speech-language pathologists from within the community. 
• On Tuesday, Ben, Giang and I presented our invited seminar from the ASHA convention titled "Vietnamese children’s speech and language: Latest clinical research" We presented to the staff and students in the research laboratories.

Ben and Sharynne at San Diego State University

Visiting the Confucius Institute at SDSU

Today Ben Pham and I visited Professor Lilly Cheng at the newly opened building for the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University (SDSU). We were honoured to participate in the tea ceremony and to have a tai chi display and concert. Lilly welcomed us into her new office, taught us Chinese calligraphy and showed us many very special Chinese artifacts.
We visited because Professor Cheng is the President of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (and I am Deputy Chair of the Child Speech Committee).

Professor Lilly Cheng in her office

Ben learning calligraphy

Participating in the tea ceremony

Meeting with the International Communication Project

Yesterday I was invited to present to the International Communication Project members about our work on the special issue of IJSLP to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and future plans. Members of the ICP are the presidents, CEOs and other office holders of:

• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
• Speech Pathology Australia
• New Zealand Speech-Language Therapists' Association
• Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
• Speech-Language and Audiology Canada
• Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists

Professor Pam Enderby, the incoming president of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics also was present. It was a productive meeting.

Working on the second edition of Interventions for Children with Speech Sound Disorders

While at the ASHA convention we finalised plans to work on the second edition of Interventions for Children with Speech Sound Disorders with Astrid Zuckermann, Melissa Behms and Stephanie Henderson from Paul H. Brookes Publishing. I look forward to working with my co-editors Dr Lynn Williams and Dr Rebecca McCauley, and all of our outstanding authors throughout the world.

Sharynne, Rebecca McCauley, Lynn Williams, Astrid Zuckermann, Stephanie Henderson

New ARC Discovery grant: Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence

Today Sarah Verdon and I learned that we received an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant to undertake a project titled: "Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence"(DP180102848). We have been awarded $312,051 for 2018-2020.
The ARC announcement is here
The CSU media release is here
Here is the proposal summary:

This Project aims to support Vietnamese-Australian children and families to maintain their home language, enhance speech skills in Vietnamese and English and equip English-speaking professionals to support multilingual children’s speech. The Project expects to develop a database of Vietnamese-Australian children’s speech acquisition and a Vietnamese-English speech program. Expected outcomes include enhanced language maintenance and scalable prototypes for other languages. Since the Vietnamese community are one of Australia’s largest migrant groups this Project should provide cultural, economic and social benefits for Australia including increased multilingualism, social cohesion, and enhanced capacity to participate in a globalised economy.

We are very excited to begin working on this project.
The ARC made their grants announcement while I was presenting an invited 1-hour session with Ben Pham and Giang Pham titled "Vietnamese children's speech and language: Latest clinical research" at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention in Los Angeles.

This year the ARC received 3,152 Discovery proposals and funded 18.5%. Funding was, on average 65.8% of the requested budgets. Charles Sturt University had a 25% success rate.

Celebrating the announcement of the grant at the ASHA convention in LA with Ben, Thora, Helen, Suzanne

The size of the ASHA convention

At the ASHA convention in LA there are 13,000+ delegates and 2,500+ sessions comprised of 38 short courses, 637 oral seminars, 261 flash sessions, and 1798 posters! There were over 500 international delegates (more than ever before) attending from 55 countries.

A small section of the exhibit hall

It's not Hollywood - it's ASHAwood

Thank you to the ASHA staff who organise the convention each year,
including my friend Gina Olwoch

Networking at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention

While at the ASHA convention, my students and I have enjoyed talking with many researchers we quote in our work.

Thora Masdottir (Iceland), Ben Pham, Suzanne Hopf, Lynn Williams (ASHA Vice President), Helen Blake, Anna Cronin, Karla Washington (University of Cincinnati)

Suzanne Hopf met her PhD examiners: Carol Westby and Brenda Louw

Anna Cronin, Ben Pham, Lilly Cheng, Dolores Battle, Helen Blake

Kathy Chapman, Mary Hardin-Jones, Anna Cronin, Nancy Scherer

Sharynne, Larry Shriberg (UWisconsin-Madison), Helen Blake

Pam Enderby (incoming President of IALP) and Sharynne

Presentations at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in LA

Ben Pham, Helen Blake, Suzanne Hopf, Anna Cronin and Sharynne at ASHA

My students, post docs and I are presenting eleven papers and posters at the at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in LA from 9-11 November:

1. Blake, H. L., Bennetts Kneebone, L. & McLeod, S. - Humanitarian migrants’ oral English proficiency and self sufficiency. Poster. 
2. Blake, H. L., & McLeod, S. (2017, November). Intelligibility enhancement for multilingual university staff and students: A retrospective record review. Oral paper.
3. Cronin, A., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. - Toddlers with cleft palate: Speech practices across four continents. Poster. 
4. Hopf, S. C., McLeod, S., & McDonagh, S. H. - Validation of the Intelligibility in Context Scale for multilingual Fijian school children. Poster. 
5. Hopf, S. C., McLeod, S., McDonagh, S. H., & Wang, C. - Culturally-sensitive practices supporting children's communication in Majority World countries: A Fijian perspective. Poster.
6. Masso, S., McLeod, S., Baker, E., & McCormack, J. - Polysyllables and emergent literacy development in preschool children with speech sound disorders. Oral paper. 
7. McGill, N., - Animation for education: The Speech-Language Pathology Referrals project. Poster.
8. Phạm, B., McLeod, S., & Harrison, L. J. - Assessing Vietnamese children’s intelligibility. Poster. 
9. Pham, G., Phạm, B., & McLeod, S. - Vietnamese children’s speech and language: Latest clinical research. Invited 1 hour seminar.
10. Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Wong, S. - The Principles of Culturally Competent Practice for speech-language pathologists. Oral paper. 
11. Washington, K. N., & McLeod, S. - Global tools and resources for pediatric SLPs: Supporting children around the world. Invited 1 hour seminar. 

Helen Blake's presentation

Ben Pham's presentation

Ben's poster: Sharynne, Thanh and Ben Pham

Anna's poster: Thora Masdottir (Iceland), Anna Cronin, Kathy Chapman (USA), Sharynne

Suzanne's poster: Thora Masdottir, Suzanne Hopf (Fiji), Helen Blake, Anna Cronin, Tricia McCabe

Nicole's poster: Travis Threats (USA), Sharynne, Bernice Mathisen (Australia), Seyhun Topbas (Turkey), an SLP (USA)

Ben Pham's poster received a Most Meritorious Poster Award

Enjoying LA with my PhD students

Most of my PhD students and I work in different cities and countries, so when we go to conferences we really enjoy spending time together. For a few days before the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention in Los Angeles, we enjoyed some of the highlights of LA.

Ben and Sharynne visiting Santa Monica

Helen, Ben, Sharynne, Minh, Ninh, and Anna
visiting the Happiest Place on Earth

Suzanne and Sharynne in Hollywood

Siblings of children with hearing loss

Some time ago Kate Crowe, Jacqui Barr and I were invited to write a piece titled "Siblings of children with hearing loss" for the Oxford University Press eBulletin  Raising and Educating Deaf Children: Foundations for Policy, Practice and Outcomes. It has been posted online here: http://www.raisingandeducatingdeafchildren.org/2017/10/16/siblings-of-children-with-hearing-loss/