Finally! We are at the horse phase of The Treehouse renovations. The painting has begun.
We began negotiations to have building 1451 on the Bathurst campus as the home of the Children's Voices Centre in 2023. Thank you especially to A/Prof Tamara Cumming and Lorraine Bennett for working with so many people across the university to get the painting started.
Our colours include Lemon Delicious, Happy, and Berkshire White.
We can't wait to move in.
Today it was such an honour to present our research learning and progress with the 100+ staff at the Orange Aboriginal Medical Service (OAMS) Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) day. We were given 45 minutes to discuss our 5-phase project that concludes at the end of June.
It has been such an honour and privilege to work alongside the amazing team to support children's speech, language, communication, and literacy. We hope that the books, resources and learnings we have planted grow roots and blossom in the future. We'd love to continue collaborations if there was a pathway forward.
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| Sharynne presenting at the OAMS CQI day on 30th May 2025 |
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| Sharynne and Sarah Bartlett spent the day with the OAMS team |
Today Dr Kate Margetson and I had the privilege of learning from Emeritus Professor Lindy McAllister. Lindy gave us advice about Kate's postdoc data - and undertaking the appropriate qualitative analysis. Lindy has co-edited two very helpful books on the topic:
Thanks Lindy!
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| Lindy, Vida and Sharynne |
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| Dr Kate Margetson, Sharynne and Lindy discussing qualitative analysis of SACHL data |
Today I had a fascinating day advising colleagues on how to consider the speech of children who speak languages other than English. The children's parents were concerned about their speech - and the current processes only allow for assessment in English.
We talked about the usefulness of the following websites:
and the processes that are recommended using the SACHL - https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl
Children Draw Health is the project we are doing to gain children's perspectives about health and access to health care from acrsso the world. Our first submission arrived this week. The drawing was by Artin, (6 years) who lives in Iran. Artin who has communication difficulties says
“If I play in the the park and visit my doctor he makes me feel ok everytime. Also my mom gives me comfort and help me to be healthy she cooks for us with love”.
I am not a fan of what AI is doing to research across the world. Here is another example of problems with AI.
One of my colleagues from another university was sharing that she had been marking student papers recently and saw that they had cited these papers - EXCEPT THEY ARE MADE UP! My colleague knew I hadn't written them and that they were fake - so now the students' papers are being referred for follow-up action.
This morning I was invited to the OAMS Elders' morning tea. It was organised as part of Australia's Biggest Morning Tea to raise money for the Cancer Council.
While I was there, I was able to share our learning and successes with the CEO Jamie Newman - and to have an update about the new hydrotherapy pool and other new initiatives. Jamie will be co-presenting our research at the upcoming Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Adelaide next month.
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| OAMS CEO Jamie Newman and Sharynne (shared with permission) |
I also learned about children's communication and books from the elders.
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| Learning from the elders (photo shared with permission) |
This has been a busy week for meetings to continue our work on the project to inform the World Health Organization about children's health and access to healthcare.
On Thursday 15th May (5pm) we had a meeting with Darryl Barrett (Technical Lead of the WHO Disability Programme) and Melanie Greaux (WHO Disability Programme) to update them on all of the work that has been undertaken over the past month.
To prepare for this meeting we also met on Tuesday 13th May to continue the work on our scoping review meeting (lead by Dr Kate Freire) and on Thursday morning we met to discuss the work on our Children's Perspectives of Health research that has three studies lead by myself, A/Prof Tamara Cumming and Dr Carolyn Gregoric.
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| Dr Kate Freire leading our scoping review meeting |
At the Global Disability Summit last month, "Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization signalled how disability inclusion is a priority for achieving health for all, even amidst turbulent times in global health and international development. In the opening session of the summit, he announced that WHO will launch a global initiative on health equity for persons with disabilities to build the strategic movement needed to promote the right to health for persons with disabilities." https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2025/04/02/default-calendar/global-disability-summit-2025
This morning Holly McAlister and I met to go through all of the papers submitted to the special issue of Child Language Teaching and Therapy "Listening to children with diverse communication". We have received a lot of fascinating papers. We are very grateful to the reviewers who have agreed to provide advice about each of the manuscripts and have just begun making decisions about some of the manuscripts.
What wonderful news. Our innovative interdisciplinary Children Draw Talking paper has been accepted for publication today:
McLeod, S., Gregoric, C., Davies, J., Dealtry, L., Delli-Pizzi, L., Downey, B., Elwick, S., Hopf, S. C., Ivory, N., McAlister, H., Murray, E., Rahman, A., Sikder, S., Tran, V. H., & Zischke, C. (2025, in press). Children draw talking around the world. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. Manuscript accepted for publication.
Here is the short summary
200 children from 24 countries drew who they talk to (friends, family, animals, professionals), when and where they talk (outside, at home), what they talk about (toys, animals, friends, family), and how they feel about talking (happy). These insights promote understanding of children’s communication and inform how children’s insights can be included in assessment and intervention.
Here is the abstract
Purpose. The purpose of this study is to determine how children from across the world draw themselves talking and to apply an interdisciplinary analysis to understand children’s perspectives to improve delivery of services at school.
Method. Participants were 200 children from 24 countries who submitted a drawing of themselves talking to someone using the Early Childhood Voices Drawing Protocol. Drawings were uploaded to Charles Sturt University’s Children Draw Talking Global Online Gallery. The participants were 2–12 years (M = 6.13), spoke 23 languages, and 28.5% of caregivers reported concerns about their children’s talking. A 16-member interdisciplinary research team analyzed the drawings using: descriptive, developmental, focal point, meaning making, and systemic functional linguistics transitivity analysis frameworks.
Results. Children could draw themselves talking. The participants’ age and ability to draw a human figure was strongly correlated. Most participants reported they felt happy about talking and drew themselves talking to one or more conversational partner(s), with focal points that included body parts and facial expressions, talking and listening, proximity to others, relationships and connections, and positivity and vibrancy. The cultural-historical meaning making analysis identified ten themes: relationships, places, actions, natural elements, human-made elements, cultural experiences, logical thinking, emotion, imagination, and concepts. The systemic functional linguistics transitivity analysis identified 71 processes, 134 participants, and 48 circumstances indicating richness in the children’s depictions of talking.
Conclusions. Children across the world can use drawing to communicate who they talk to (friends, family, animals, professionals), when and where they talk (outside, at home), what they talk about (toys, animals, friends, family), and how they feel about talking (happy). These insights promote understanding of children’s communication and inform how children’s insights can be included in assessment and intervention.
The children’s drawings are available here:
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| 200 children from 24 countries drew themselves talking |
I am on the Speech Sound Disorders in Children Committee for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention. Today I completed all of my reviews of the abstracts submitted for consideration to be presented at the conference in November.
This morning I met with Dr Nick Ruddell to discuss the many areas of collaboration between CVC and the School of Indigenous Australian Studies (SIAS). One of the areas of collaboration are that we are co-hosting the visit of Camilla Porsanger from Nord University later this year.
14th May - Nick and I met with Camilla to organise her visit. We are looking forward to welcoming her.
This morning I discussed the plans with Prof Lynn Williams to visit the Children's Voices Centre as our visiting scholar in the second half of the year. We have so many exciting plans - I can't wait until she is here.
Today Lorraine Bennett began as the Senior Administration Officer for the Children's Voices Centre. Welcome Lorraine. We are thrilled to have you working with us and supporting our endeavours.
Today the Children's Voices Centre held a 2-hour workshop with our visiting scholar Dr Red Ruby Scarlett. We explored arts-based practices for listening to and inspiring young children. We theorised and explored paper, brushes, paint and colour during the workshop. Thirteen people attended from Bathurst, Adelaide and across NSW.
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| CVC Associate Directors A/Prof Kathy Cologon and A/Prof Tamara Cumming |
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| Dr Red Ruby Scarlett |
