Multilingual Speech Assessment: Using an Implementation Science Framework to Explore Acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL)

Congratulations Kate Margetson who has just had the following manuscript accepted for publication that was written during her postdoc It is the next step in the research about the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL)

Margetson, K. & McLeod, S. (2025). Multilingual speech assessment: Using an implementation science framework to explore acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL). American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication. 
 

Here is the abstract

Purpose: The Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL) offers a new, evidence-based clinical protocol for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to assess speech in unfamiliar languages. This study used implementation science to investigate SLPs’ current multilingual speech assessment practices, determine the prospective acceptability of the SACHL, and compare current confidence to prospective confidence with the SACHL.
Method: The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and Theoretical Framework of Acceptability (TFA) were used to explore innovation deliverers’ (SLPs’ and student SLPs) prospective acceptability of the innovation (SACHL). Attendees at in-person and online SACHL presentations were invited to participate. 360 participants commenced an online questionnaire exploring current practices, transcription skills, confidence and acceptability of the SACHL. Statistical tests compared attendees at different presentations, SLPs and students SLPs, and monolingual and multilingual participants. 
Results: The majority of participants indicated low current confidence in assessing multilingual children. Most SLPs assessed, transcribed, and analyzed multilingual children’s speech in English; but rarely or never applied these practices in children’s home language(s). The majority of participants rated the SACHL as being culturally responsive, well-designed, easy to understand, and that it would increase diagnostic accuracy. There were concerns around the time burden in using the SACHL. Most (87.45%) indicated they would like to use the SACHL in clinical practice, and there was a statistically significant improvement between current confidence and prospective confidence.
Conclusions: The SACHL was evaluated by SLPs and student SLPs to be an acceptable clinical protocol to assess children’s speech in unfamiliar languages.

AJSLP special issue: Increasing Diversity in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Workforce

The American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology has just published a special issue titled "Increasing Diversity in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Workforce". Two** of the 12 articles have been written by members of our team. 

Here is the ASHA Leader Blog about the issue https://academy.pubs.asha.org/2021/09/ajslp-forum-highlights-the-importance-of-diversity-in-communication-sciences-and-disorders/ 

Abdelaziz, M. M., Matthews, J.-J., Campos, I., Fannin, D., Rivera Perez, J. F., Wilhite, M., & Williams, R. M. (2021). Student stories: Microaggressions in communication sciences and disorders. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1990–2002. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00286

Alicea, C. C. M., & Johnson, R. E. (2021). Creating community through affinity groups for minority students in communication sciences and disorders. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 2028–2031. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00342 

Daughrity, B. (2021). Exploring outcomes of an asynchronous learning module on increasing cultural competence for speech-language pathology graduate students. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1940–1948. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00196 

**Easton, C., & Verdon, S. (2021). The influence of linguistic bias upon speech-language pathologists’ attitudes toward clinical scenarios involving nonstandard dialects of English. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1973–1989. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00382 

Ellis, C., Jacobs, M., & Kendall, D. (2021). The impact of racism, power, privilege, and positionality on communication sciences and disorders research: Time to reconceptualize and seek a pathway to equity. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 2032–2039. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00346 

Ellis, C., & Kendall, D. (2021). Time to act: Confronting systemic racism in communication sciences and disorders academic training programs. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1916–1924. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00369 

Fannin, D. K., & Mandulak, K. C. (2021). Introduction to the Forum: Increasing Diversity in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Workforce, Part 1. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1913–1915. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-21-00258 

Guiberson, M., & Vigil, D. C. (2021). Admissions type and cultural competency in graduate speech-language pathology curricula: A national survey study. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 2017–2027. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00324

Hendricks, A. E., Watson-Wales, M., & Reed, P. E. (2021). Perceptions of African American English by students in speech-language pathology programs. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1962–1972. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00339 

**Hopf, S. C., Crowe, K., Verdon, S., Blake, H. L., & McLeod, S. (2021). Advancing workplace diversity through the Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1949–1961. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00380 

Unger, J. P., DeBonis, D. A., & Amitrano, A. R. (2021). A preliminary investigation of social justice perceptions among U.S. speech-language pathologists: Clinical implications. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 2003–2016. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00286 

Wong, A. A., Marrone, N. L., Fabiano-Smith, L., Beeson, P. M., Franco, M. A., Subbian, V., & Lozano, G. I. (2021). Engaging faculty in shifting toward holistic review: Changing graduate admissions procedures at a land-grant, Hispanic-serving institution. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(5), 1925–1939. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00383

Just published: our next VietSpeech journal article

Wang, C., Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Tran, V. H. (2021). Profiles of linguistic multicompetence in Vietnamese-English speakers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00296

Advancing workplace diversity through the Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework

The following article has just been accepted for publication: Hopf, S. C., Crowe, K., Verdon, S., Blake, H. L. & McLeod, S. (2021, accepted March). Advancing workplace diversity through the Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 

Here is the abstract: 

Purpose: Diversification of the profession is an important element of combating racism, bias, and prejudice in the speech-language pathology workforce at national and systemic levels. However, national and systemic change needs to be combined with equipping individual speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to adapt to the challenges that they face to engaging in culturally responsive practice. This paper presents four interacting levels of practice within the Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework (CRTF): (1) intra-personal practices, (2) inter-personal practices, (3) intra-professional practices, and (4) the inter-professional practices.
Conclusion: CRTF is a practical, strengths-based framework that draws on international research and expertise to expand personal and professional practice and describe critical behaviors within the workplace that can be used to promote principles of evidence-based practice and social justice, especially when working with people from non-dominant cultural or linguistic groups.

Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework (CRTF)
(reproduced with permission from Hopf, Crowe, Verdon, Blake, & McLeod, 2021)

 

Children's English consonant acquisition in the United States: A review

Our US consonant acquisition review paper has been published overnight (OPEN ACCESS):

Crowe, K., & McLeod, S. (2020). Children's English consonant acquisition in the United States: A review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-19-00168

The new posters have been uploaded : https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/

(The US posters are located below the posters for English acquisition across the whole world. Note the different images in the top right corner – either children around the world or around the US flag)

This paper used the same methods as the McLeod and Crowe (2018) paper that analysed data across 27 languages (OPEN ACCESS).

McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27, 1546-1571. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100

To support the application of this research to practice, we have co-authored the following paper that is currently in press (but not yet available online):

Ireland, M., McLeod, S., Farquharson, K., & Crowe, K. (2020, in press June). Evaluating children in U.S. public schools with speech sound disorders: Considering federal and state laws, guidance, and research. Topics in Language Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000226

It would have been great to be able to present this work in our invited session at the ASHA convention this year, but it has been cancelled due to COVID-19.

There has been a LOT of positive social media interest in this paper already. For example,

ASHA awards ceremony: Official photos

The official photos from our ASHA awards ceremony have just arrived. It was a very special night shared with very special people. Here is the CSU media release.

Dr Kate Crowe and Prof Sharynne McLeod receiving the AJSLP editor's award from Prof Mabel Rice

Sharynne and Kate

ASHA journal award winners

Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU, Australia), Dr Karla Washington (US), Dr Kate Crowe (CSU and Iceland), Dr Thora Masdottir (Iceland), Dr Helen Blake (CSU and UTS Australia), Dr Michelle Brown (CSU, Australia)

Prof Lilly Cheng, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Helen Blake, Prof Dolores Battle

CSU Media: "Another international award for leading Charles Sturt researchers"

Thanks CSU Media for so eloquently celebrating this award with us:

• "Another international award for leading Charles Sturt researchers" https://news.csu.edu.au/latest-news/another-international-award-for-leading-charles-sturt-researchers

• The story was also featured in the Campus Review (4 Dec 2019): "The award-winning Charles Sturt paper that 'broke' the internet"
• Here is the impact of our paper and how it is being used around the world

Campus Review story: "The award-winning Charles Sturt paper that 'broke' the internet"

Supporting students' critical thinking about developmental norms

While at the ASHA 2019 convention in Orlando, FL Dr Kate Crowe and I met Dr. Alyssa Boucher from Boston University and were inspired by her innovative way to support her students' critical thinking using our recent journal article about children's speech acquisition across 27 languages.
She asked her students to

• read the AJSLP journal article, 
• watch my video presentation about the article, 
• listen to Kelly Farquharson and Holly Storkel's episode on See Hear Speak podcast,
• (an alternative could be to listen to the SLPToolkit podcast),
• read the InformedSLP blogpost about how the article broke the SLP internet,  
• download the posters, 
• look at a summary of speech acquisition studies for English
• look at speech acquisition studies across the globe,
• and discuss in class.

**(All of these resources are free to download)
She then gave her students the following exam question:

“A fellow SLP in your school district stops by one day to ask you about the “new norms.” She’s in a panic and worries this will increase her caseload. Using McLeod and Crowe (2018) and the other related resources, (kindly) debunk the “new norms” hysteria and help your colleague to interpret the results of the study and the implications for determining special education eligibility.”

What a great way to support students' critical thinking.

Extra information:

1. Chapter 6 in Children's Speech (McLeod & Baker, 2017) provides a clinically-oriented overview of children's speech acquisition and available evidence. (Currently available for free to US and Canadian students during COVID-19 shutdown at https://studentresponse.redshelf.com/search/?terms=0132755963)
2. We were thrilled that this paper won the Editor's Award from the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology that was presented at the 2019 ASHA convention in Orlando, FL. Some photos are here and some associated media is here.
3. Dr. Kate Crowe and I recently have analysed speech acquisition data from children in the US (excluding the rest of the world). The paper is currently under revision in a journal - and we are hoping that it may be published in 2020.

Dr. Kate Crowe, Dr. Alyssa Boucher, Prof Sharynne McLeod

@SLPToolkit Podcast

InformedSLP blogpost

McLeod & Crowe (2018) infographic poster

AJSLP Editor's Award

The American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology has awarded Dr Kate Crowe and myself the prestigious Editor's Award for 2018 for the following article:
McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27, 1546-1571. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100
Freely available here : https://ajslp.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2701897
The free images for English consonant acquisition are here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition

Here is the ASHA website announcing all of the award winners: https://on.asha.org/2KTVq3Z
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has over 204,000 members, and over 15,000 people attended the convention. They publish 4 journals, so it was a great honour to receive this award. We also received an Editor's Award last year for another ASHA journal (details here).

Our paper not only won the Editor's Award, but has been described as the paper that "broke" the speech-language pathology (SLP) internet due to the discussion about the impact it would have on SLPs' daily practices: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2019/04/impact-apparently-we-broke-internet.html

Here is the news release from the University of Iceland about our award:
In English: https://english.hi.is/news/awarded_for_best_scientific_article_in_speech_pathology
In Icelandic: https://www.hi.is/frettir/verdlaunud_fyrir_bestu_visindagreinina_i_talmeinafraedi

ASHA Awards Ceremony announcement of our award

Dr Kate Crowe and Prof Sharynne McLeod

All of the ASHA journal editors' awardees

Sharynne and Kate with Dr Lemmietta McNeilly (ASHA Chief of Staff)

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology Editor's Award for 2018

Wow! Kate Crowe and I have been awarded the prestigious American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology Editor's Award for 2018 for the following article.

McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27, 1546-1571. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100
Available: https://ajslp.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2701897

Here is the ASHA website announcing all of the award winners: https://on.asha.org/2KTVq3Z
Here is the email from Mike Cannon from ASHA

Congratulations! The editor-in-chief and editors of the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology have selected your article, “Children's Consonant Acquisition in 27 languages: A Cross-Linguistic Review,” as the winner of the 2018 Editor’s Award. An Editor’s Award is truly a high honor, with selection limited to the most impactful works that meet the highest quality standards in research design and presentation. The award will be presented during the Researcher-Academic Town Meeting (RATM) at the 2019 ASHA Convention in Orlando, FL. It will also be mentioned during the main awards ceremony at Convention...

This is doubly exciting because last year, we won the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: Speech Editor's Award from the same association.

Free graphics summarizing a portion of the paper:

• English consonant acquisition: Treehouse (A4 .pdf) (US letter.pdf)
• English consonant acquisition: Steps (A4 .pdf) (US letter.pdf)
• 4 languages: English, Japanese, Korean and Spanish acquisition (A4 .pdf) (US letter.pdf)

ASHA's most shared articles in 2018

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has published a blog today titled: In case you missed it: Our most shared articles of 2018.
https://academy.pubs.asha.org/2019/02/in-case-you-missed-it-our-most-shared-posts-of-2018/

The first article in the blog was ours!
Children’s Consonant Acquisition in 27 Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Review by Sharynne McLeod and Kathryn Crowe

Here is the altmetric score (275): https://asha.altmetric.com/details/47435915#score
It states:

"Altmetric has tracked 12,465,602 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric."

Speech acquisition posters

We have just created some speech acquisition posters that graphically present findings from our recent outlined in the following paper:
McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100
The journal article can be downloaded for free here:
 https://ajslp.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2701897

The posters can be downloaded for free here:
https://www.csu.edu.au/research/vietspeech/publications

More information and resources about speech acquisition is available from our Multilingual Children's Speech website:
http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition
http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acq-studies

Speech and language acquisition of Jamaican children

Dr Karla Washington is currently in Jamaica continuing her research to document speech and language acquisition of Jamaican children. She is from the University of Cincinnati and they have published a media release about her work here: http://healthnews.uc.edu/news/?/28669/
The media release also describes our recent publication in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology about using the Intelligibility in Context Scale in Jamaica. Congratulations Karla and all the members of your team who are undertaking this important work with children in Jamaica.
One of my blog posts from my visit to Jamaica with Karla is here.