Submitted chapters for The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

I am enjoying editing the 30+ (of 77) chapters that have been submitted to The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World and look forward to receiving the rest: 

1. Afrikaans 
2. Arabic (Egyptian) 
3. Azerbaijani 
4. Dutch 
5. English (Appalacian) 
6. English (Cajun) 
7. English (Fijian) 
8. English (Irish) 
9. English+Spanish 
10. Finnish 
11. Flemish 
12. French(Swiss) 
13. Icelandic 
14. Irish 
15. isiXhosa 
16. Jamaican 
17. Kurdish 
18. Maltese 
19. Mandarin-Putonghua 
20. Maori 
21. Norwegian 
22. Persian-Farsi 
23. Polish 
24. Portuguese (European) 
25. Sesotho 
26. Slovak 
27. Slovenian 
28. Spanish (Andalusian) 
29. Spanish (Mexican) 
30. Swedish 

Additional chapters submitted this week

1. English (South African)
2. Hebrew (Israeli)
3. Setswana 
4. Japanese 
5. English (Canadian)
6. Samoan
7. Arabic(Kuwaiti)
8. Spanish(Chilean)
9. English(English)
   

Proud graduation moment

My daughter graduated with a Masters of Philosphy last night. I am a very proud mother and grateful to her excellent supervisors: A/Prof Jenna Gillett-Swan and Dr Nerida Spina

Psychometric properties of Persian version of Intelligibility Context Scale

 It's exciting to see the reach of our work:

Aghaz, A., Kazemi, Y., Hemmati, E., & Zarifian, T. (2022). Psychometric properties of Persian version of Intelligibility Context Scale in Persian-speaking children. The Scientific Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 10(6), 1270-1283. https://doi.org/10.32598/sjrm.10.6.22

Outgrowing speech sound disorders: A review of To, McLeod, Sam and Law (2022)

Carol Westby published a review of our recent article:

Westby, C. (2022). Outgrowing speech sound disorders. Word of Mouth, 34(1), 5-8. https://doi.org/10.1177/10483950221101453a 

To, C. K. S., McLeod, S., Sam, K. L., & Law, T. (2022). Predicting which children will normalize without intervention for speech sound disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 65(5), 1724-1741. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00444



 

DESE National Reference Group for disability funding in Australian schools

Over the past two weeks I have continued tasks and meetings in my role on the National Reference Group to consider the disability loading review for education in Australia. The Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) has engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting Australia to conduct a review of the loading. The project draws on the expertise of a National Reference Group, convened by DESE and made up of representatives from each jurisdiction department of education, National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Association. The project uses four methods to determine the costs of making adjustments for students with disability. To date 255 schools have been surveyed,  18,819 students with disability have been costed, and 40 case studies were created.

I was invited to review five of the 40 case studies, then the National Reference Group had a 4 hour meeting to discuss discrepancies between reviews undertaken.

 

Here is some of the background information for the case study review. 

"You have been nominated to participate in the Professional Judgement Approach based on your expertise in inclusive education. Please use the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data for Student with Disability (NCCD's) definition of a reasonable adjustment when you are reviewing each case study... 

"In Australia, public funding for schools is provided by the Commonwealth and State and Territory governments. Recurrent schools funding is based on the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) and includes six needs-based funding loadings for priority student cohorts and disadvantaged schools, one of which is a loading for students with disability (the loading). Since 2018, the students with disability loading has been informed by the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD) which collects information about the number of students with disability in schools and the adjustments they receive to ensure they can access and participate in school education on the same basis as other students. The current loadings are based on the median costs of providing adjustments at the supplementary, substantial and extensive levels of the NCCD... 

"The definition of reasonable adjustment under the NCCD: A reasonable adjustment: 

• supports a student with disability to participate in education on the same basis as other students 
• takes into account the student’s learning needs 
• balances the interests, including safety, of all parties, such as the student with disability, staff members and other students..."

 

Reporting and portraying disability - A useful resource

A useful resource Reporting and portraying disability in ABC content https://www.abc.net.au/edpols/reporting-and-portraying-disability-in-abc-content/13645960

ECV2022 - First official meeting of the conference chairs

Today was the first official meeting of the conference chairs for ECV2022. I am delighted to be sharing the role with Dr Shukla Sikder.

Children's Acknowledgement of Country

Across Australia most meetings and formal events begin with an Acknowledgement of Country to acknowledge the indigenous custodians of the lands. Young children also acknowledge country. 

• Here is the Acknowledgement of Country that was recorded by the children at the Towri Macs Centre in Bathurst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEg2ga0VYus. They allowed us to use it for our Early Childhood Voices 2020 conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDFBZW4-w3w&feature=youtu.be (starting at 1:07)
  
• Here is the Acknowledgement of Country with Darug subtitles from Summer Hill Childcare Centre in Sydney https://vimeo.com/225338339

Invitation to present the Autumn Lecture for Advances in Communication and Swallowing

I have been invited to present the Autumn Lecture for Advances in Communication and Swallowing based on our paper: Waiting list management: Professionals’ perspectives and innovations. Dr Nicole McGill is the first author of this paper, and worked with our team from Charles Sturt University to undertake a program of research about waiting lists. Our team includes: Dr Suzanne Hopf, Dr Kate Crowe, and Dr Cen (Audrey) Wang. I proposed that Nicole led the presentation and we summarised what we have learned about waiting lists from all of our research, focussing on the paper published Advances in Communication and Swallowing. What an exciting opportunity to share our work and potential strategies and solutions for managing speech and language therapy waiting lists.

The Spring Lecture for Advances in Communication and Swallowing was held in April with our Editorial Member, Prof Shaun O Keeffe (et al.) presenting their prize-winning paper on aspiration risk and risk feeding. Text about the spring lecture is on the journal page: https://www.iospress.com/catalog/journals/advances-in-communication-and-swallowing#extra and The video of the event is now online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSboOXREQ8k 

The papers that have been written to describe this work are listed below. We also developed a website with colleagues from NSW Health: https://wnswlhd.health.nsw.gov.au/our-services/speech-pathology/ 

1. McGill, N., McLeod, S., & Hopf, S. C. (2021). Waiting list management: Professionals’ perspectives and innovations. Advances in Communication and Swallowing, 24, 5-19. https://doi.org/10.3233/ACS-210026 
2. McGill, N., Crowe, K., & McLeod, S. (2020). “Many wasted months”: Stakeholders’ perspectives about waiting for speech-language pathology services. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(3), 313–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2020.1747541 
3. McGill, N., & McLeod, S. (2019). Aspirations for a website to support families’ active waiting for speech-language pathology. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 21(3), 263–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2019.1604802 
4. McGill, N., & McLeod, S. (2020). Waiting list management in speech-language pathology: Translating research to practice. Speech, Language and Hearing, 23(1), 2–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/2050571X.2020.1716471 
5.  McGill, N., McLeod, S., Crowe, K., Wang, C., & Hopf, S. C. (2021). Waiting lists and prioritization of children for services: Speech-language pathologists’ perspectives. Journal of Communication Disorders, 91, 106099. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2021.106099 
6. McGill, N., McLeod, S., Ivory, N., Davis, E., & Rohr, K. (2021). Randomised controlled trial evaluating active versus passive waiting for speech-language pathology. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 73(4), 335-354. https://doi.org/10.1159/000508830 
7.  McLeod, S., Davis, E., Rohr, K., McGill, N., Miller, K., Roberts, A., Thornton, S., Ahio, N., & Ivory, N. (2020). Waiting for speech-language pathology services: A randomised controlled trial comparing therapy, advice and device. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(3), 372–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2020.1731600

A special week with Kate and Marc from Iceland

What a special week to have Dr Kate Crowe and her colleague Marc Volhardt (https://english.hi.is/staff/mds) visiting Bathurst from Iceland. While they were here, Kate and Marc presented a lecture on the Bathurst campus: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2022/07/there-and-back-again-linguists-tale.html

Kate has not been to Australia since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the last time I saw her was at the ASHA convention in Florida in 2019. We have a number of projects we are working on together, a student we are co-supervising, and two book chapters that are due soon. We had time for work and play - and lots of catching up.

I was very happy to receive gifts of children's books in a range of languages, including Icelandic and Polish, to add to my bookshelf of children's books from around the world.

It was great to spend time together. Thanks for visiting.

Kate and Marc presented a lecture on the Bathurst campus

We enjoyed the Bathurst Winter Festival

COVID-19 rapid antigen tests are now part of visiting!

Catching up with our colleague Dr Audrey Wang

Inspiring PhD students

This week I have been inspired by my PhD students (something that occurs quite often). I love the early phases of the PhD journey when students think, read, and ponder about how they can make a difference in the world. Thanks Kate Margetson, Caitlin Hurley and Holly McAlister for great meetings this week.

There and Back Again: A Linguist’s Tale Living and Learning Under the Northern Lights

We are so excited that Dr Kate Crowe is back in Australia. Kate is an Adjunct at CSU but also works and studies at the University of Iceland. She is visiting with Mark Volhardt from the University of Iceland (https://english.hi.is/staff/mds) During their visit they presented at Charles Sturt University Thursday, 14 July 2022 at 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm - via ZOOM and in Bathurst

Visiting from Iceland, Marc Volhardt and Kate Crowe will talk about all things Nordic in this presentation. Both Marc and Kate live in Reykjavík and work at the University of Iceland. Marc teaches courses in Icelandic as Second Language, Linguistics, Danish, and Nordic Studies. Kate is a researcher in the Speech-Language Pathology focusing on supporting multilingual education. This presentation will touch on many aspects of life in Iceland and the Nordic countries and particularly on the languages spoken. Come along and learn some new words, and ponder the possibilities for future Nordic collaborations in your work.

 

School of Education Research Committee

Today I attended the SOE Research Committee. It is great to be amongst researchers who are excited about making a difference in the lives of children and teachers.

Meeting with Education Minister Jason Clare MP and Vice Chancellor Professor Renée Leon

I sincerely appreciated the opportunity to have lunch with Education Minister Jason Clare MP and Charles Sturt Vice Chancellor Professor Renée Leon to talk about about equity and access solutions for early childhood education, teacher education, children's communication and speech pathology that we've addressed in our Australian Research Council research.

Oral presentation at the 14th International Cleft Congress, Edinburgh

I have been working with a team of researchers from Bristol University and the Speech and Language Therapy Reserach Unit in Bristol. We have had the following paper accepted for presentation at the 14th International Cleft Congress (Cleft 2022) (https://cleft2022.com/) which is taking place in Edinburgh from 11th-15th July 2022: 

Exploring the association between intelligibility and language skills in 3-year-old children born with a cleft palate +/- lip 

Authors: Miriam Seifert, Lucy Southby, Amy Davies, Yvonne Wren, Sharynne McLeod 

The full program is here: https://cleft2022.com/cleft-2022-programme/

The Informed SLP reviews our latest article

The Informed SLP has reviewed many of our articles. I enjoy reading their version of our work and their translation of the findings for speech-language pathologists.

• That one time a journal article on speech sounds broke the SLP internet https://www.theinformedslp.com/review/that-one-time-a-journal-article-on-speech-sounds-broke-the-slp-internet? 
• When do children acquire consonants? A review of 27 languages https://www.theinformedslp.com/review/when-do-children-acquire-consonants-a-review-of-27-languages

This week, they have reviewed another of our papers: https://www.theinformedslp.com/review/talking-pictures 

Their review is based on this paper McCormack, J., McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., & Holliday, E. L. (2022). Drawing talking: Listening to children with speech sound disorders. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_LSHSS-21-00140

Page proofs about children's communication rights in ECEC

I really enjoy working on page proofs. They usually appear a number of years after a project begins. Today we finalised page proofs for this chapter that was part of Anna Cronin's PhD research: 

Cronin, A., McLeod, S., & Wren, Y. (2020, accepted August). Communication rights of young children in early childhood education and care. In F. Press & S. Cheeseman (Eds.). (Re)conceptualising children’s rights in infant-toddler early childhood care and education: Transnational conversations. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. 

Book series: Policy and Pedagogy with Under-three Year Olds: Cross-disciplinary Insights and Innovations, Vol. 4,

Disability Loading Review - case studies

I am on the Expert Panel for the Government's Disability Loading Review run by PwC. Today I joined a zoom session to learn how to rate case studies. These have been generated from PwC's research within schools. We have our final meeting on 22 July. This large project commenced in 2021. I look forward to finalising the advice we give to the Australian Government