Rural and remote Tasmania

I enjoyed visiting beautiful rural and remote Tasmania after the SPA conference.

Keynote presentation at III International Congress of the Portuguese Society of Speech Therapy

Tonight I was honoured to be the keynote speaker at the III International Congress of the Portuguese Society of Speech Therapy in Lisboa/Lisbon (from Australia). My keynote presentation was titled “Enhancing children’s speech using international evidence-based resources”. I was live tweeting links throughout my presentation @SharynneMcLeod. https://sptf.org.pt/iii-congresso-internacional-sptf/

Here is more information from my blog: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2023/05/keynote-presentation-for-iii.html

Contributing to policy discussions about early childhood education and early intervention

Over the past week I have had a number of opportunities to contribute to policy discussions about early childhood education and early intervention.

I was invited to contribute to the submission by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) to Productivity Commission Inquiry into Early Childhood Education and Care: https://socialsciences.org.au/publications/submission-productivity-commission-inquiry-into-early-childhood-education-and-care/

Here is a key recommendation that I was involved in crafting:

"Recommendation 6: Ensure universal access to early intervention within ECEC with proper oversight, consistency and coordination to reduce inefficiencies in across sectors, reduce vulnerabilities, and support children’s life outcomes."

I also had a long conversation with Jane Delaney, Early Childhood Policy Advisor for Speech Pathology Australia while in Hobart at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference.

Both conversations included the importance of providing accessible and universal early intervention for children to enable them to thrive throughout life.

Conversations with Jane Delaney at the SPA conference

 

Speech-Language-Multilingualism team at SPA2023

It was wonderful to met up with Speech-Language-Multilingualism team members at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Hobart. We made opportunities to caatch up and plan future research projects.

Jane McCormack, Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod, Suzanne Hopf, Helen Blake

Kate Margetson, Kerry Ttofari-Eecen, Helen Blake, Sharynne McLeod

Launching the IJSLP Sustainable Development Goals special issue at the SPA conference

While at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Hobart, I launched the special issue of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology on Communication, Swallowing, and the Sustainable Development Goals at the plenary session on Wednesday morning.

We took photographs of the authors and the SPA delegates so that we could show their support when we take this special issue to the United Nations.

I conducted a 1.5 hour workshop that included a video from co-guest editor Julie Marshall, and guest presentations from Bronwyn Hemsely, Fiona Given, Amy Freeman-Sanderson, and others.

I also met with a range of the authors to thank them for their excellent work with people who experience communication and swallowing disability.

Professor Bronwyn Hemsley co-authored papers addressing SDG 2, 3, 10, and 14

Dr Emma Quigan co-authored a paper with colleagues from New Zealand

Stephanie Weir and colleagues wrote about modern slavery

Amy Freeman-Sanderson wrote about sepsis

Fiona Given and Bronwyn Hemsley wrote about digital health autonomy

Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Hobart

It has been really exciting to attend the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Hobart. I have attended SPA conferences from 1989 - 2019, it was cancelled in 2020, then I attended online in 2021 and 2022. It has been wonderful to see old friends and make new ones.

The venue at Consitution Dock (Grand Chancellor Hotel) is a gorgeous backdrop for inspiring conversations.

Here are the presentations of our team:

• Plenary launch of the IJSLP special issue "Communication, Swallowing and the Sustainable Development Goals"
  
• T4A | Workshop: Sustainable Development Goals, speech pathologists, and people who experience communication and/or swallowing disability - Sharynne McLeod and Julie Marshall
  
• T3C | Panel: What you’ve always wanted to ask about speech sound disorders: A Q&A panel discussion 
• W3F | Children's speech development, assessment and intervention in 50 languages - Sharynne McLeod
  
• W3F | Oral presentations: Non-English sounds in English speech assessment: Patterns of cross-linguistic transfer in Vietnamese-Australian children’s speech - Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod and Sarah Verdon
  
• W3E | Oral presentations: Working with adults with communication support needs - Intelligibility Enhancement with a multilingual Spanish-English university staff member - Helen L. Blake and Sharynne McLeod

 

Children's speech development, assessment and intervention in 50 languages - Sharynne McLeod

Non-English sounds in English speech assessment: Patterns of cross-linguistic transfer in Vietnamese-Australian children’s speech - Kate Margetson

Members of the SSD Panel

Additionally, on Wednesday morning I have been invited to launch the IJSLP Sustainable Development Goals special issue on Communication and Swallowing prior to the keynote address.

Sharynne with Dr Suzanne Hopf at the AGM

Grand Chancellor Hotel - conference venue

Opening plenary

Rebecca brought her book for me to sign!

"Auteur" - My role as editor of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Langauges of the World?

I have just had someone send me this screen shot of the word "auteur" to describe the work I am doing as editor of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Langauges of the World.

Autuer: "A film director who influences their films so much that they rank as their author"

 After a series of meetings across many timezones, today I  sent a comprehensive email to 206 chapter authors discussing the following topics.

1. Meetings
2. Table of contents
3. Contracts
4. Maps
5. Audio files
6. PowerPoint summary
7. Conferences
8. Websites

The authors are AMAZING and are so committed to making a fantastic series of resources to support children's speech development in languages across the world.

Thanks to Dr Helen Blake and Dr Carolyn Gregoric and Dr Mark Filmer who are helping with tasks to get the manuscript and resources ready.

Children Draw Talking - Consensus data analysis phase

The Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Team (ECIR) is analysing the drawings submitted by children for the Early Childhood Voices 2022 (ECV2022) conference in the Children Draw Talking Global Online Gallery.

Initially, every member of our ~14 strong team had a series of drawings to analyse using different theoretical analysis tools. We found that we were not reliable enough across our interdisciplinary team - so are now in smaller teams to analyse one gallery per team. My team are analysing Gallery 2 with drawings from Indonesia. It's time-consuming - but a LOT of fun.

 

Laura Della-Pizzi, Sharynne, Nicola Ivory working on Gallery 2

Meetings to plan impactful research processes that will inform policy

On Monday I had excellent meetings with DVC-RE Mark Evans, Pat McKenna, Nilima Mathai from the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor - Research and Engagement and Hazel Dalton from the Rural Health Institute (RHI) to plan impactful research processes that will inform policy. I also got to say hello to a number of people at the ACCC, including Prof Wayne Hudson who is the next speaker in the Provocations Public Lecture Series (https://research.csu.edu.au/engage-with-us/provocations).

Hazel Dalton and Sharynne

Prof Wayne Hudson, Sharynne and Nilima Mathai at ACCC in Canbera

Provocations Public Lecture: Statistics

Statistics from my Provocations Public Lecture (20 April 2023): 

"Children should be seen AND heard: the importance of communication so children can thrive"

Video presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjaxZ97_D3Y

Royal Society of NSW blog: https://royalsoc.org.au/blog/western-nsw-branch-meeting-2023-1

Synchronous attendance 

• Tickets - 117 
• Face-to-face - 47 attendees
  
• Online - 132 views during the event
  

• 77 from Australia 
• 52 from Ghana 
• 1 from South Africa 
• 1 from Iceland 
• 1 from Nigeria

Asynchronous attendance - 67 views

 

Fellows and Members Assessment Committee of the Royal Society of NSW

Dr Susan Pond, President of the Royal Society of NSW invited me to become a member of one the RSNSW Council Committees, the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee (FMAC) https://royalsoc.org.au/council-members-section/506-rsnsw-fellows-and-members-assessment-committee. 

"The purpose of the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee is to lead the Fellowship (including Honorary and Distinguished Fellows) and Membership (including Associate Membership) Assessment (FMA) Program of the Society on behalf of Council. The FMA Program is designed to assess nominations of individuals wishing to become members of the Society according to criteria outlined in the Rules for Members, Fellows, and Distinguished Fellows." The terms of reference are here: https://royalsoc.org.au/images/easyblog_docs/RSNSW_TOR_FMAC_Committee_20210317.pdf 

The 2022 membership is:

• Chair: Professor Sean Brawley FRSN 
• Secretary: Professor Simon Ringer FRSN FTSE
• Members:
  
• Scientia Professor Rose Amal AC FRSN FAA FTSE, 
• Emeritus Professor The Hon. Peter Baume AC DistFRSN, 
• Ms Pamela Griffith OAM FRSN, 
• Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver AM FRSN, 
• Emeritus Professor Ian Sloan AO FRSN FAA, 
• Mr Rod Stowe PSM FRSN

Stats meeting between surgery

Thanks Caitilin for a very efficient quick meeting in between your surgical patients today! It is fun working with a person who is a speech pathologist and a dentist and a researcher. The data look great. The reliability looks great. We are almost ready to present this at our upcoming international conference.

SPH512 Meet and Greet with Prof Sharynne McLeod

Tonight I was interviewed by Bec Malcolm for the CSU "SPH512 Meet and Greet with Prof Sharynne McLeod". What a great group of people. We ended up chatting for over 90 minutes!

 

Here are the questions they asked in advance: 

SPEECH PATHOLOGY PROFESSION 

• 1. Where do you feel there is the greatest opportunity for influence as the speech pathology profession? 
• 2. It seems that speech pathology is a relatively young (and fast growing) discipline. What are the biggest changes you’ve seen? What do you envisage over the next 10 or 20 years? 
• 3. What is the biggest challenge that speech pathology is currently facing as a profession in your eyes? And how do you think we should look to overcome or address it? 
• 4. You work with and train both teachers and SLPs. Many of us are coming to SLP from an education background. What do you think are the most important things for us to know if that’s us - e.g. any specific challenges that brings etc. 

CHILDREN’S SPEECH TEXTBOOK

• 5. What was/is your vision for how "Children's Speech" is to be used by students and practising speech pathologists? To be read from cover to cover? Using the index to look up certain specific sections? To look up very specific information? Something else? 
• 6. I truly admire your dedication to evidence-based practice and rigor. The Children’s Speech seems like a very thorough textbook. But it was sometimes difficult to see the forest for the trees reading through different conflicting studies, e.g. risk factors for SSDs in ch.1. What is your best advice for students reading these sorts of parts of the book? 
• 7. What do you look for when choosing toys for assessment and intervention tasks? What are some of your favourites? 
• 8. When do you expect the next edition of your text book to be published? 9. What are the key updates you plan on making to the textbook that might be helpful for us to know for our studies now? 

 

Keynote presentation for the III International Congress of the Portuguese Society of Speech Therapy

I am very honoured to be invited to present a keynote speech at III International Congress of the Portuguese Society of Speech Therapy. The Congress will be held in Lisbon, Portugal and I will present my speech online on 27th May, 2023 

https://sptf.org.pt/iii-sptf-international-congress/

My presentation is titled "Enhancing children’s speech using international evidence- based resources"

Here is my bio in Portuguese (https://sptf.org.pt/programa/)

Sharynne McLeod, Ph.D., é terapeuta da fala e professora de aquisição da linguagem na Charles Sturt University, Austrália. Recebeu as honras da Associação Americana de Fala e Aprendizagem da Língua (2021) e de Membro vitalício da Speech Pathology Australia (2015). Foi editora-chefe do International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology e ganhou os Prémios Editoriais do Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (2018), American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (2019), e Topics in Language Disorders (2020). É membro da Academia das Ciências Sociais da Austrália, da Royal Society of New South Wales, membro certificado do Conselho Americano de Línguas e Distúrbios Linguísticos Infantis, Presidente do Comité da Fala Infantil da International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP), e foi Vice-Presidente da Associação Internacional de Linguística Clínica e Fonética. Foi co-autora de 13 livros e mais de 230 artigos de revistas e capítulos de revistas especializadas, centrados principalmente na aquisição da fala das crianças, distúrbios do som da fala, e multilinguismo. Em 2019, apresentou um discurso sobre direitos de comunicação nas Nações Unidas baseado num número especial do International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, que recebeu mais de 200.000 downloads. O jornal australiano nomeou-a Líder do Campo de Investigação em Audiologia, Terapia da Fala e Linguagem Patológica da Austrália (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022) e Melhor do Mundo com base na “qualidade, volume e impacto” da investigação no campo (2019).

Statistical learning or phonological universals? Ambient language statistics guide consonant acquisition in four languages

 What an exciting email to receive this morning:

"We are very pleased to inform you that your paper submission
"1812 - Statistical learning or phonological universals? Ambient language statistics guide consonant acquisition in four languages" has been accepted for presentation as a poster with full paper publication at CogSci 2023. We received 875 paper submissions this year. We accepted 155 (17.7%) papers for oral presentation and inclusion in the proceedings and 380 (43.4%) papers for poster presentation with full paper publication in the proceedings...The dates of the conference are July 26 – 29, 2023. Detailed conference schedules and guidelines about participation in the conference will be made available through the conference webpage: https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2023/"

This work represents a collaboration between Kate Crowe and myself and researchers from Cornell University (Steven Elmlinger, Pablo Contreras Kallens, Michael Goldstein, Katharine Wang).

Kallens, P. C., Elmlinger, S. L., Wang, K. S., Goldstein, M. H., Crowe, K., McLeod, S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2023). Statistical learning or phonological universals? Ambient language statistics guide consonant acquisition in four languages. CogSci2023, Sydney, Australia.

Here is the abstract:

What predicts individual differences in children’s acquisition of consonant production across languages? Considerations of children’s development of early speech production have traditionally emphasized inherent physiological constraints of the vocal apparatus that speakers generally have in common (i.e., articulatory complexity). In contrast, we propose a statistical learning account of phonological development, in which phonological regularities of the ambient language guide children’s learning of those regularities in production. Across four languages (English, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean), we utilized recent meta-analytic dataset of age of consonant acquisition spanning 28 studies. High-density measures of children's ambient language environment from over 8,000 transcripts of speech directed to over 1,000 children were used to assess how well the frequency of consonants in child-directed speech predict the age of consonant acquisition. Our results suggest that both frequency and articulatory complexity are related to age of acquisition, with similar results found for English, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. Consonants heard frequently by children tended to be incorporated into their production repertoires earlier and consonants heard less frequently are incorporated into production repertoires later in development. We discuss future directions that incorporate a statistical learning pathway towards learning to produce the sound patterns of the ambient language.

Author meetings - The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World will contain approximately 80 chapters written by 206 authors about 50 languages. Ensuring that all aspects of the project is consistent is a huge task - but made easy by the calibre and care of the excellent authors (researchers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, etc.). We are now up to the point of creating the maps, audio files, conference and online presentations of the chapters - so I decided to host author meetings. They are being held three times to suit as many time zones as possible. What a joy to see so many of my excellent colleagues to discuss this important project.

Author meeting option 1 - May 4 2023

Author meeting option 2 - May 5 2023

Author meeting option 3 - May 9 2023

Dr Helen Blake is working with me to prepare the online conference

ECIR Leaders Meeting

Today the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group leaders met to to plan more ways to support our research team to undertake and publish research to support young children, families and professionals. We have been holding weekly meetings researching the drawings drawn by the children for ECV2022, mapping publications based on papers from ECV2020 and ECV2022, and will host a face to face meeting in Bathurst in October.

Libbey Murray, Sharynne McLeod, Carolyn Gregoric, Suzanne Hopf

Congratulations Sarah Faulks on your scholarships

Congratulations to Sarah Faulks (our honours student) who won two awards last week:

• Kerin Health Scholarship: Sarah received this scholarship in recognition of her passion for rural allied health and my determination to give back to rural communities in my future career as a speech pathologist. This scholarship involved an extensive written application as well as an interview. 
• Executive Dean's Award for 2022: Sarah received this award in recognition of the high level of academic achievement in her studies undertaken in the 2022 academic year.

 

Editors' meeting for our Early Childhood Voices chapter to be published by Springer

We had a great meeting as editors for our Early Childhood Voices chapter to be published by Springer. The book is due for submission 30th June, 2023

We have 19 chapters in the book. Ten chapters are currently being copyedited. The remainder are close to finalisation. It is looking great.

Andi Salamon, Sharynne McLeod, Linda Mahony, Jenny Dwyer

Guest lecture - University of Sydney DClinDent (Paediatric Dentistry) - May 2023

Today I gave a 2-hour guest lecture to the University of Sydney DClinDent (Paediatric Dentistry) students. It was organised by Dr Winey Wan who lectures at The University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University. The DClinDent students were undetaking the subject titled "Child assessment and Treatment Planning (DENT503). They had an interesting morning:

• 08:30 - 10:00: Lactation - face to face with Helen Mercieca (CHW lactation consultant) and Mikaela Bow (CHW speech pathologist speaking on lactation specific to craniofacial/CLP infants) 
• 10:15 - 12:30: Speech, language and communication - via Zoom with speech pathologist Prof Sharynne McLeod (speech pathologist) 

I really enjoyed discussing mouths, speech, language, communication and teamwork between dentists and speech pathologists.

Tri Faculty Support Scheme

Congratulations to the following students who have been successful with their Tri Faculty Support Scheme funding:

• Holly McAlister - translation of resources into Pacifika languages
• Marie Ireland - attendance at the ASHA convention in Boston
• Belinda Downey - copyediting support
  

19,129 views of IJSLP special issue on the Sustainable Development Goals since March 2023

The Sustainable Development Goals special issue of International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/iasl20/25/1) was officially published March 2023. Here are the statistics to date: 

• Total views = 19,129 
• Mean views per paper = 531 
• Range = 300-1124

 

Advocacy from US and UK about SDG18 Communication for All

Thank you Dr. Lynn Willams (US) for promoting our advocacy about communication for all and the Sustainable Development Goals in your interview with Kathy Brodie (UK), for her Early Years Summit (https://www.earlyyearssummit.com/).

https://video.bunnycdn.com/play/9918/1283088f-f4d7-4ecc-9ccb-8a3da1e714d4 (time 20-24mins)

McLeod, S., & Marshall, J. (2023). Communication for all and the Sustainable Development Goals. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 25(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2022.2160494

Graphical abstracts for journal articles

Kate Margetson has been creating graphical abstracts for her current journal articles to use on social media:

Margetson, K., McLeod, S., Verdon, S. & Tran, V. H. (2022). Transcribing multilingual children’s and adults’ speech. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699206.2022.2051073

Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2023). Cross-linguistic transfer and ambient phonology: Impact on diagnosis of speech sound disorders in a longitudinal bilingual case study. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech, 4(3) 311-339. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmbs.23672

Helping children find their voices

Late last year I was interviewed by a CSU Communications student - Here is the published article from The Junction - University Student Journalism from Australia, NZ and the Pacific

Helping children find their voices 

Charles Sturt University, Noah Secomb 

https://junctionjournalism.com/2022/12/20/helping-children-find-their-voices/

"I have a dreadful habit of running late. It might have only been a short walk from my room to where I was supposed to meet Australia’s leading speech pathology researcher, yet even with that in mind I found myself ten minutes late. “Hello! Good to see you!” chimes a voice in the courtyard. The voice belongs to Charles Sturt University Professor of Speech and Language Acquisition Sharynne McLeod. She begins talking as I frantically get myself together. “You know, this all came at such good timing. See, I’m due for surgery on Monday,” she says casually, as if she were just getting her car serviced. “They’ve found a cancer in here,” she says as she points from the bridge of her nose to her eye. “They’re going to cut somewhere thereabouts. At the end of it all, I might look completely different! So thank goodness you’re here to get a photo before that!” No pressure. 

 A public service announcement for cancer screening Professor McLeod’s experience with cancer began in 2018. “I’ve been very open with this the whole time. I feel like I’m a public service announcement to tell everybody to go for cancer screening. In 2018 I went for routine screening and they said, ‘oh my goodness, have a surgery next week.’ Then I had chemotherapy and radiotherapy and other treatments that lasted for the next year.” But Sharynne’s personal battle with cancer was just another chapter to an already incredible and unpredictable life. As we move to her office of 19 years on the Bathurst campus of CSU, Professor McLeod’s illustrious career becomes tangible. 

Bookshelves are full to overflowing with academic publications and there’s an entire shelf dedicated to the books she’s written or co-authored. Newspaper cuttings are hanging over the edges while the walls are covered with posters, kids art or handmade gifts from past students. Then in the corner is the filing cabinet with awards and accolades piled on top. Each framed certificate tells a unique story in the career of Professor Sharynne McLeod. A group of people in a room Sentimental photos taking centre stage on the filing cabinet. Photo by Noah Secomb. After ten years working at The University of Sydney, Professor McLeod received a teaching excellence award, despite receiving no formal teaching qualifications. “Academics never got taught how to teach!” she says with a smile. “Except at CSU … you actually have to do courses on being a good teacher. And that was complex for me, because I had to do the course, but I was teaching in it at the same time!” Young Sharynne was the first in her family to graduate high school, first to go to university and certainly the first to complete her Masters. “My parents were so excited if I anything-ed!”

After landing a teaching contract at The University of Sydney, Sharynne found herself co-ordinating the honours students, working full time, completing her PhD in the area she was lecturing in and having two kids. “That was a bit of a challenge,” she says rather nonchalantly. Also in the pile of achievements is her certificate from the Royal Society of NSW bestowing her a fellowship. An honour which as she put it, “Sounds quite nice doesn’t it!” Then Sharynne pulls out one of her most recent achievements. She received Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, who officially changed the rules to allow Professor McLeod to be the first non-American to win the award. “What that award enabled me to do was to speak on the radio about why children’s speech matters, and how we need to support their communicative capacity,” she said. “Every time I get these awards, to me it’s another opportunity to speak and make a difference in a child’s life.” 

If it’s small and boring, we don’t do it Once Sharynne sits down, she is quick to divert the conversation to her PhD students. “They are amazing because their hearts are in it and they do such interesting work. If their research is going to be small and boring, we don’t do it. So of course they’re going to win awards! They’re brilliant!”

While talking with Sharynne, it becomes clear where her priorities are. No matter how many framed awards lay stacked against the wall, or how many books ‘by Prof. Sharynne McLeod’ line the shelves, she and her team remain focused on one goal. “I’ve just been very blessed to have amazing people around me that I just learn so much from. We wake up every morning and go, will this make a difference in a child’s life. If we can’t see that it will, we say well, it’s not worth doing that and move on to something else.” Despite any challenges that may have come her way, Sharynne McLeod has garnered an impressive catalogue of writing. She has published 11 books, over 230 peer reviewed journal articles and chapters, nearly 10,000 citations according to Google Scholar and over a quarter of a million views on her professional blog. She has been named the world’s best in her field, presented her research to the United Nations, and is in the process of writing another two books, guest editing a journal and supporting her PhD students. She is a physical embodiment of hard work and a product of what free tertiary education can lead to. And yet, Sharynne remains outward focused. “We’re given gifts to do whatever we can, to enable people to thrive and do their best. That’s really the underpinning of what I do.”"

 

Morning tea for School of Education colleagues

This morning I organised a morning tea to say thank you and farewell to School of Education colleagues: Greg Auhl, Donna Bateup and Lana McCarthy. It was lovely to celebrate their contributions and to spend time with colleagues.