Launch of the Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-speech-development-in-languages-of-the-world-9780192868862) was launched at the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) conference in Patras, Greece on Thursday 26th June. This remarkable book was written by 173 authors from across the globe. It contains 1008 pages and 80 chapters covering 49 languages and 27 dialects with companion audio recordings of children and adults. A YouTube channel presents a free summary of each chapter (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/multilingual-childrens-speech-development)

International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) 20th conference, Patras, Greece

This week the 20th conference of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) is held from the 24th to 27th of June 2025 at the University of Patras, Conference and Cultural Centre, Greece, hosted by Dr Eleftheria Geronikou https://logoth.upatras.gr/en/icpla2025/

There are four of us representing Charles Sturt University: Dr Helen L. Blake, Dr Suzanne Hopf and Dr Kate Margetson - everyone has multiple roles during the conference. I am the President of ICPLA so have a busy week of duties. 

• Tuesday - I am chairing the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech and opening the conference
• Wednesday - I am chairing sessions, co-presenting a paper with Kate Margetson and Yvonne Wren, and I am receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Patras.
• Thursday -  I am launching The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World, co-chairing and presenting in a session with 16 presentations from around the world on multilingual children's speech (1:30-6:15pm), chairing the business meeting, and attending the conference dinner
• Friday -  I am co-presenting a paper with Helen Blake, presenting at the awards ceremony and farewell ceremony.

Honorary Doctorate - The University of Patras, Greece

Today (Wednesday 25th June 2025) I was honoured to be conferred as an Honorary Doctor of the Department of Speech and Language Therapy of the University of Patras, Greece.

https://www.upatras.gr/25-6-2025-teleti-anagorefsis-tis-sharynne-mcleod-distinguished-professor/ 

Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod with Rector Professor Christos J. Bouras

Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod with the Rector Professor Christos J. Bouras, Dean of the School of Rehabilitation Sciences Elias M. Tsepis and members of the Speech Therapy Department

Dean of the School of Rehabilitation Sciences Elias M. Tsepis, Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod, Professor Arhonto Terzi, Rector Professor Christos J. Bouras

Here is a description of the event from the University of Patras and the photograph below shows the order for the seven speeches:

The ceremony usually includes brief welcome addresses by university and school officials, a short presentation of the honoree, the reading of the official resolution in ancient Greek, and the conferral of the title. This is followed by the dressing of the honored person with the university toga and the presentation of the university medal. The event concludes with the honoree’s lecture, which typically lasts 30 to 60 minutes, depending on their preference.

Colleagues, friends and family from across the world were present to celebrate together

It was followed by a dinner with members of the Department of Speech and Language Therapy, my husband, colleagues from Charles Sturt University, and Prof Lynn Williams from USA.

What a very special day. 

 

International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech meeting in Patras, Greece

This morning members of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech met for 3 hours in Patras, Greece to advance our tutorial paper titled "Speech interventions for multilingual children who do not speak the same language(s) as the speech-language pathologist". We began this paper a number of years ago, and we were able to progress the work significantly this morning. Our thoughtful and robust discussions explored ways to work with children and families in different contexts, countries, cultures and languages. We look forward to sending an updated draft to the rest of the panel members in a month's time, so that we can finalise and submit the paper. 

 

Preparing for ICPLA

Today Helen Blake and I spent the day preparing for ICPLA. We worked on the feedback from the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech (IEPMCS) in preparation for tomorrow's meeting, the changes necessary to the 3 hour presentation on multilingual children's speech due to presenters not being able to attend due to the world's conflicts, ordering the cake for the launch of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World, networking with colleagues who have arrived at the conference hotel and answering and sending numerous emails. We are almost ready for ICPLA (and have such a wonderful view as our backdrop).

 

Travelling from Chania to Patras via Athens and Corinth

After the ISMBS conference concluded we had the weekend to fly and drive from Chania to Patras via Athens and Corinth. What a special ancient and modern part of the world to spend the weekend!

 

ISBMS in Crete concludes

The International Society of Bilingual and Monolingual Speech (ISMBS) conference has just concluded with a conference dinner and networking day exploring western Crete. We were able to have many rich conversations and create new friendships and collaborations. I have enjoyed being keynote at ISMBS and look forward to ongoing opportunities to work with attendees from across the world.

Prof Elena Babatsouli (ISMBS conference chair) with Sharynne 

ISMBS colleagues from Greece, Poland, and Moldova

Consonant cluster researchers: Sharynne McLeod with Paulina Zydorowicz, and Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

Conference dinner with chair Prof Elena Babatsouli, Dimitri, David, Helen, and friends from Italy and Moldova

Presentation to UNICEF UK

Today I co-presented an invited paper at the UNICEF UK  Child Rights Academic Research Network with my colleague Prof Yvonne Wren from Bristol University/Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK. 

The purpose of the Network is as follows:

"From the perspective of UNICEF UK, the broad intentions of the network are to:
- Develop an understanding of the scale and scope of research and other activities being undertaken on child rights in the UK
- Provide a forum for disseminating and sharing emerging and final research findings with the network, internal teams, and other key stakeholders such as programme implementers, in other words linking theory with practice.
- Create opportunities for scaling up research on child rights in general, developing the evidence base for our three UUK programmes and other relevant aspects of our work including advocacy and youth voice."

Our presentation was titled "Ensuring all children have a voice: Upholding a child’s right to communicate in the context of speech, language and communication needs". 

Here is today's program - packed with excellent presentations:

I was able to profile the work of the Children's Voices Centre and some of the work we have done over the years including:

• Roulstone, S., & McLeod, S. (Eds.). (2011). Listening to children and young people with speech, language and communication needs. J&R Press. http://www.jr-press.co.uk/communication-needs.html 
• Mahony, L., McLeod, S., Salamon, A., & Dwyer, J. (Eds.). (2024). Early childhood voices: Children, families, professionals. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56484-0
• McLeod, S. (2018). Communication rights: Fundamental human rights for all. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 3–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2018.1428687
•  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, 53(3), 713-731. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_LSHSS-21-00140
• McLeod, S., Gregoric, C., Davies, J., Dealtry, L., Delli-Pizzi, L., Downey, B., Elwick, S., Hopf, S. C., McAlister, H., Ivory, N., Murray, E., Sikder, S., Rahman, A., Tran, V. H., & Zischke, C. (2025). Children draw talking around the world. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. Manuscript accepted for publication.
  
  
  
  

Final report for our Rural Health Research Institute Commonwealth grant

Over the past 18 months we have been funded by a grant to the Charles Sturt University Rural Health Research Institute from the Commonwealth of Australia, represented by the Department of Health (Grant Activity 4-DGEJZ1O/4-CW7UT14):

We have learned, achieved, and, impacted children's speech, language and communication across rural Australia. The people involved in our project were: Dr Kate Margetson, Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Sarah Bartlett and Emily-Jane Woodhead - a great team.

Here is a short summary from our final report:

Improving access to speech pathology services for rural children with speech, language and communication needs (RHRI Project 8)

AIMS

1. The first aim of this project is to understand the prevalence and service requirements of children from a rural Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and to design a trial to improve access to speech pathology services that best meets their needs
2. The second aim is to equip rural SLPs to work cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, especially in languages they do not speak

SUMMARY OF OUTCOMES

 1.    Rural Indigenous children’s speech, language and communication
Five stages were undertaken to co-create evidence to support Indigenous children’s speech, language and communication within a rural Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organization (ACCHO).
Stage 1. Baseline practice data. Data regarding children’s communication were not routinely collected at the ACCHO. Children’s hearing was assessed. Ad-hoc speech pathology services were offered in partnership with local services.
Stage 2. Indigenous Australian children with SLCN. A longitudinal study of 1,534 Indigenous children compared outcomes for preschool children with parent-reported SLCN (30.4%) with those with no parent-reported concern. Concern was significantly associated with children’s literacy and numeracy outcomes at school across all NAPLAN subtests after controlling for covariates (e.g., age, sex, hearing, disability, socio-economic status) (McLeod, Harrison et al., 2025).
Stage 3. Resource review. The ACCHO child health navigator selected 56 children’s books by Indigenous authors then evaluated by 32 staff (149 evaluations) who highlighted culturally friendly design, connection with children, culture and language, and being easy to read (McLeod, Woodhead et al., 2025). Four Little Libraries were established at the ACCHO after consultation with local elders and children. 
Stage 4. Testing service models. Two service models for young children with SLCN were piloted demonstrating caregiver and educator support. First, experiences and engagement of parents of later talkers (18-36 months) was examined during the 16-week Target Word™ Hanen Program® for Parents (Bartlett, 2024). Second, feasibility and acceptability of two screening measures was examined with 48 rural children (24-35 months), 8 educators, 8 nurses and 48 parents (Matthews, 2025).
Stage 5. OAMS trial. A trial screening assessment and intervention program is underway co-designed with the ACCHO staff and local services to expand capacity (Bartlett, McLeod & Gregoric, 2025)
In the last month of the project, the ACCHO invited the research team to provide a 45-minute presentation at their Continuous Quality Improvement Day with over 100 ACCHO staff in attendance to summarise the findings. ACCHO staff (n = 52) provided reflective feedback to support consolidation for recommendations into policy and practice

2.    Rural multilingual children’s speech, language and communication
Three stages were undertaken using an implementation science framework to co-create evidence to develop and test the feasibility of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL) (Margetson & McLeod, 2015), a clinical protocol to equip rural SLPs to using culturally responsive, collaborative practices.
Stage 1. Workshops. Seven workshops were provided (person and online) to train SLPs and SLP students in the SACHL to enable them to assess multilingual children (in languages that the SLPs do not speak). 
Stage 2. Feedback. 459 SLPs and SLP students who attended the workshops and responded to a questionnaire to provide feedback on the acceptability of the SACHL, recommendations for change and barriers and facilitators to using the SACHL in clinical practice.
Stage 3. Resource development. Fifteen multilingual SLPs and SLP students volunteered to collaborate with the research team to develop language-specific resources for the SACHL (e.g., Vietnamese, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese) and participated in focus groups to provide specific feedback on the protocol and implementation 

Findings from both objectives have been synthesised providing recommendations to improve access to speech pathology services for children with SLCN in rural settings that is culturally safe and effective.

RHRI Symposium

The RHRI Symposium was held 17-18  June in Orange to celebrate  the research funded by a grant to the Charles Sturt University Rural Health Research Institute from the Commonwealth of Australia, represented by the Department of Health (Grant Activity 4-DGEJZ1O/4-CW7UT14).

We presented (virtually) two papers based on the successful outcomes of Project 8: – Improving access to speech pathology services for rural children with speech, language and communication needs 

• Improving access to speech pathology services for rural Indigenous children (Sharynne McLeod, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Sarah Bartlett, Christie Cain, Jamie Newman, & Carolyn Gregoric)
• Assessing multilingual children in languages not spoken by the clinician: Using an implementation science approach to enhance rural speech pathology services (Kate Margetson & Sharynne  McLeod)

Our research was so productive - in terms of the impact on our learning, communities' support for children's speech, language and communication, and academic outcomes.

Keynote at International Society of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) conference, Chania Greece

I am keynote speaker at the International Society of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) conference in Chania, Greece (16-19 June 2025). Details of my keynote address are below. Dr Helen Blake and I are also presenting a paper titled: "Audio and video recordings supporting multilingual children's speech" and Helen is co-presenting a poster with her PhD student.

There are 52 oral presentations and 21 posters with attendees from 26 countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR China, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Moldovia, Poland, Portugal, Tomania, Spain, Taiwan, The Netherlands, UAE, UK, USA). 

Prof Elena Babastouli ended her opening address with the following quote: "Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises" (Demosthenes).

It is always great to share knowledge with colleagues from across the world - and this conference in Chania is special. 

The ISMBS conference venue on the Chania harbour

Sharynne and Helen Blake at the Arsenal 

Sharynne's keynote

Colleagues who have written chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World from Wales, Poland, Cyprus and Greece

Prof Elena Babatsouli (ISMBS chair), Sharynne and Prof Kakia Petinou Κάκια Πετεινού (ISMBS committee)

Helen presenting her paper with Sharynne  cheering in the background

Multilingual Minds are Unlocking Global Knowledge, γνώση, 认识, إدراك, דַעַת, ज्ञान …
Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod
Children’s Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Global understandings of speech, language, and communication encompass knowledge from 7,000+ languages. Communication professionals who read English have access to research and evidence-based resources, assessments, and interventions in approximately 100 languages. Critiques of psychology and linguistics report that research has focussed on English, northern hemisphere Indo-European languages (Draper et al., 2023; Kidd & Garcia, 2022), and “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies” (Henrich et al., 2010). This presentation will commend the work of multilingual minds (researchers, professionals, and translators) who provide English-language access to global knowledge about speech, language, and communication. It will outline the decade of work of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, and knowledge contained within global initiatives including:

• The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World
• Multilingual Children’s Speech website (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/speech-acq-studies)
• Crosslinguistic Phonology Project (https://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca/), 
• Multilingual Families Lab Familles Multilingues (https://bilingualacquisition.wordpress.com/)
• CHILDES (https://childes.talkbank.org/) and PhonBank (https://phon.talkbank.org/)

The presentation will conclude by challenging our reliance on English as the medium for knowledge dissemination and acknowledging the future potential of our connected multilingual world for greater understandings of speech, language, and communication.

 

Travelling to Greece

I broke my ankle a month ago - so it has been fun travelling on 4 planes (38 hours) to make it to Greece for the International Society of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) conference this week and the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) conference next week in Patras. Thanks Helen and David for your support!

Today it has been fun negotiating cobblestones, ancient walkways, and tourists in Chania with a cam boot and crutches.

Chania (Crete, Greece) is a Venetian fortress town built around the harbour. The sandstone walls and buildings contrast with the blue ocean - and make a stunning backdrop for the ISMBS conference this week.