Workshop at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children

Yesterday Dr Kate Crowe and I presented a 4-hour workshop at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC) Renwick Centre. The workshop was titled: Multilingual speech acquisition: Strategies for working with multilingual children with hearing loss. The enthusiastic audience included teachers of the deaf, speech pathologists and a pediatrician. One participant even flew from Brisbane to attend. Here is the abstract

The cultural and linguistic diversity of Australian children, including children with hearing loss is increasing. Educators and clinicians require knowledge of typical and atypical speech acquisition across a range of languages to meet the needs of the children and families they provide services too. In this workshop Professor McLeod and Dr Crowe will: 

• summarize the multilingual diversity of Australia’s children, including of Australian children with hearing loss
• outline factors families consider when selecting languages for children with hearing loss
• provide an overview on the International Phonetic Alphabet for transcription of typical and atypical speech across a range of languages common in Australia
•  compare and contrast the phonetic inventories of English and a range of languages common in Australia
• describe phonological processes in a range of languages
• provide tools and strategies for assessing speech skills in languages other than English  

Kate Crowe, Sharynne McLeod, Sally Hewett, Ali Burdon and Sharon Hurt at RIDBC

Sharynne and Kate before the workshop at RIDBC

Page proofs

Kate Crowe has just received the page proofs for her final paper of her PhD:
Crowe, K., McLeod, S., McKinnon, D. H., & Ching, T. Y. C. (in press, February 2014). Speech, sign, or multilingualism for children with hearing loss: Quantitative insights into caregivers’ decision-making. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.
We look forward to seeing this paper published soon.

“Part of our world”: Influences on caregiver decisions about communication choices for children with hearing loss

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication:

Crowe, K., Fordham, L., McLeod, S., & Ching, T. Y. C. (2013, in press February). “Part of our world”: Influences on caregiver decisions about communication choices for children with hearing loss. Deafness and Education International.

Here is the abstract

Caregivers of young children with hearing loss make decisions about which communication mode/s and spoken language/s their children and family will use. Influences on decision-making about communication were examined for 177 caregivers of Australian children with hearing loss through a questionnaire. The majority of the 157 children used speech as part or all of their communication system (n = 138, 87.9%), and approximately one-third of the children (n = 52, 33.1%) currently or had previously used sign as part or all of their communication system. Twenty-two (14.0%) children and 35 (19.8%) caregivers used a spoken language other than English. Four themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of caregiver responses about the most important influences on their decision-making. Theme one identified caregivers’ sources of information, including advice from professionals, family, and friends, as well as caregivers’ own research and preferences. Theme two related to practicalities of communication within the family and the community, as well as the need for one language or communication mode to be acquired before another was introduced. Theme three described the influence of children’s individual characteristics on caregivers’ decision-making, including children’s ability to access speech through audition, communication skills, additional disabilities, and children’s own preferences about communication. Finally, in theme four caregivers expressed their hopes for their children’s future lives, specifically fostering a sense of belonging, creating future opportunities and successes, and giving children the opportunity to choose their own method of communication. The findings can assist families and professionals to make informed decisions about children’s communication.

Here is a post from June 2012 showing Kate analysing the data for this paper