CSU's Higher Degree Research (HDR) students

 Today I learned these interesting statistics from DVC-R about CSU's HDR (PhD, MPhil) students:

• 63% distance students
• 49% part time students
• 56% over 40 years of age and older
• 87.2% retention rate 

Holly has printed her PhD

There is a significant moment in writing a PhD - and that is when you print what you have written for the first time and start to read it as a book. Congratulations Holly McAlister for ticking off this important milestone.

 

Writing the final chapter of your PhD

Today Sarah Bartlett, Holly McAlister and I spent an hour looking at the formula for writing their final PhD chapters (then they write their first PhD chapter).

I always ask my students to print the work they have written and read it in hard copy before summarizing it in their final chapter. We were very impressed with Sarah's large pile of double-sided printing!

CeTasSSD PhD meeting

Today Felicity, Sarah V and I met to continue discussing Felicity's PhD based within our Catholic Education Tasmania Speech Sound Disorder (CeTasSSD) grant. We have now counted the number of children in 2026 who were assessed using the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP).

• 210 children have been assessed with the International Speech Screener + DEAP screener  (120 controls + 90 others)
• 140 students have been assessed with the DEAP Phon (not in the control group)
•  There are 120 controls (passed ICS, ICS-E and had no teacher concern) (who received ISS, DEAP Screener and DEAP Phon) 

Speech Pathology Australia National Conference

This week I am co-presenting the following papers at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference on the Gold Coast https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/Public/Public/CPD-events/SPA-conference/2026/Home.aspx

1. Marie Ireland and Sharynne McLeod: School speech pathologists’ navigation of nine tensions regarding evaluation and eligibility in USA 
2. Kate Margetson and Sharynne McLeod: Assessing children’s speech in unfamiliar languages: Acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL) 
3. Sharynne McLeod and Helen L. Blake: Resources in 131 languages and dialects: Multilingual minds have unlocked global knowledge about children’s speech 
4. Sarah Bartlett, Sharynne McLeod: Implications of caregiver-implemented intervention for three underserved communities

CSU speech pathologists at SPA2026: Sarah Bartlett, A/Prof Suzanne Hopf, Prof Sarah Verdon, D/Prof Sharynne  McLeod, Dr Marie Ireland

Keynote speaker Dr Anita Heiss with CSU delegates at the SPA2026 conference

Sarah B and Sharynne  having a PhD meeting at SPA2026

Marie Ireland presenting her research 

 

Ladders, trees and matrixes: Child-focused participatory action research frameworks for children with diverse communication abilities

Congratulations to our PhD student Holly McAlister who has just had the following article accepted for publication:

McAlister, H., McLeod, S., & Hopf, S. C. (2026, in press April). Ladders, trees and matrixes: Child-focused participatory action research frameworks for children with diverse communication abilities. Child Language Teaching and Therapy. 

Here is the abstract:

Several frameworks – including Hart’s Ladder of Participation (1992), Shier’s Models for Participation (2001, 2010, 2019), and the Lundy Model (2007) – have been developed to support children’s genuine participation as researchers. These child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) frameworks claim to increase children’s capacity to share their thoughts and opinions to change their lives and communities. This narrative review involved systematic database searches to identify application of these key C-PAR frameworks, and the extent of child participation by children with diverse communication abilities, particularly within the field of speech and language therapy research. Thirty-three papers were identified for descriptive analysis. Children included in these studies were aged between 2-18 years. Children were from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Jamaica, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Most studies included children with speech, language, and communication needs (n = 32, 96.99%) and one paper (3.03%) included children with a swallowing disorder. Most studies (n = 26, 78.79%) consulted children at the data collection stage, often using visual supports, but fewer papers also involved children at other stages of the research process (n = 7, 21.21%). Of these 33 papers, only 4 (12.12%) directly applied one of the C-PAR frameworks. Within speech and language therapy research, we can mature in our practice of involving children with diverse communication needs in all stages of a research project, to support their genuine participation as researchers.

Holly's presentation at The Treehouse

Yesterday Holly McAlister (my PhD student) presented an excellent seminar at the Children's Voices Centre Community Research Presentation. Her presentation was titled:

Weaving together culturally responsive and participatory action frameworks

Abstract: Frameworks developed in a Western context have dominated academic research for decades. However, it is vitally important when conducting research with communities from diverse cultural backgrounds that culturally responsive frameworks and methodologies are applied to support culturally safe and appropriate engagement for these communities. Child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) frameworks, such as the Lundy model (2007), have been developed on the background of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). Hopf and colleagues developed the Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework in 2021, with the aim of supporting culturally responsive practices on intrapersonal, interpersonal, intraprofessional, and interprofessional levels. Research methodologies have been developed by Pasifika scholars to support culturally responsive research engagement for Pacific Islander communities and include but are not limited to the Samoan fa’afaletui (Tamasese et al., 1997) and Tongan kakala (Johansson Fua, 2014; Thaman, 1997) methodologies. This presentation will compare research frameworks and methodologies developed within Western and Pasifika contexts for child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) and cultural responsiveness. The relationships between Western and non-Western methodologies and the process of decolonisation of academia and scholarship will also be discussed.

Biography: Holly McAlister is a speech-language pathologist living and working on Wiradjuri country in Young, NSW. Holly completed an Honours degree in 2020 which looked at multilingual Fijian children’s speech sound development. Holly’s PhD research project brings together culturally responsive research frameworks and applies these to the question of how we can provide culturally responsive speech-language pathology services to children and families with Pacific Islander heritage, particularly those living in the diaspora in countries such as Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Holly has presented her research at national and international conferences in the Pacific, Asia and North America. Holly is also passionate about supporting children’s voices in research and advocacy for the regional allied health workforce.

It was very lovely to have her working in The Beehive at The Treehouse. She brought a bee to add to our collection of bees from visiting scholars around the world.

Congratulations Dr Lucy Rodgers

This evening I had a lovely time catching up with the new Dr Lucy Rodgers - who passed her PhD last month and will graduate in July. She was a visiting PhD scholar at the Children's Voices Centre in early 2025 as part of her Wellcome funded clinical PhD fellowship. She undertook her PhD at City St Georges, University of London, UK.. It is exciting to be working on postdoctoral grant applications with Lucy.

 Here is my blog post about her 2025 visit: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2025/04/visitor-to-cvc-lucy-rodgers-wellcome.html

Index for The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World has 80 chapters and is over 1500 pages. Most of the chapters are structured around a template to support comparisons across languages. Creating an index for the Handbook is a large task requiring attention to detail and a lot of pattern matching. I am so pleased that Wiebke Freese has worked with the template to create the index for chapters 6-80. Wiebke is visiting the Children's Voices Centre during February and is a PhD student at the University of Lubeck (Universität zu Lübeck), Germany. Her supervisor, Prof Annette Fox-Boyer co-authored the chapter on German speech development. Wiebke said she was surprised and impressed that there is so much research about children's speech across the world. Thanks Wiebke for supporting children's speech - you are a superstar!

Wiebke Freese working in The Beehive at CSU

Discussing the index with Dr Helen L. Blake and the CSU copyeditor Dr Mark Filmer

PhDs containing publications - Copyright resources from the CSU Library and Research Office

Thanks to Sarah Bartlett and Holly McAlister who organised a meeting to discuss PhDs containing publications with the Research Office and Library. Here are some resources that were shared.

Copyright for HDR students - https://www.csu.edu.au/copyright/for-research/hdr-students

Requesting permission to use copyright material - https://libguides.csu.edu.au/copyright-permission/requesting 

Open Access Licences  https://opentext.csu.edu.au/oalicences/
by Jane Bowland and Lyndall Holstein

Book Description:This OER is a practical guide for Charles Sturt University staff, researchers, and students. It covers how to reuse openly licensed works in study, teaching, and research; the meaning of Creative Commons licences and how to apply them when publishing theses, research outputs, and open education resources (OER). 

Figure permissions:

• CCC - https://marketplace.copyright.com/rs-ui-web/mp
• PLS - https://www.plsclear.com/Home/Index

 

Congratulations to the CVC affilates who have been promoted this year

The 2025 promotions at Charles Sturt University have just been announced. Congratulations to our talented CVC affiliates
Level C - Senior Lecturer
Laura Hoffman – Allied Health, Exercise and Sports Sciences
Jessica Sears  - Education
Lucia Wuersch – Business
Level D – Associate Professor
Leanne Gibbs – Education
Suzanne Hopf – Allied Health, Exercise and Sports Sciences
Level E - Professor
Sarah Verdon – Allied Health, Exercise and Sports Sciences

Also, congratulations to Professor Jane McCormack - who was promoted at ACU.

APA7

 I am about to have a new PhD student in 2026 - and here is the email I sent to her this morning:

As you begin your PhD next year, please ask Santa for an APA7 publication manual - and engage in holiday reading. I think it’s important to read it from beginning to end. It’s so useful and is used in almost every  journal you will publish in (and your dissertation) The version with tabs is the fancy one. I created my own tabs https://apastyle.apa.org/products/publication-manual-7th-edition (I think you can buy it from other places too)

Caregiver-implemented Hanen® programs: A narrative review of programs for children with speech, language and communication needs

Congratulations to Sarah Bartlett who has had her first journal article accepted for publication from her PhD: 

Bartlett, S. & McLeod, S. (2025, in press December). Caregiver-implemented Hanen® programs: A narrative review of programs for children with speech, language and communication needs. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

Here is the abstract: 

Purpose: Hanen® programs have been used by clinicians to support caregivers of young children with communication needs to learn optimal ways to respond in everyday interactions and facilitate child-oriented strategies that promote interaction and language. This review aimed to evaluate peer-reviewed literature regarding Hanen® programs for children with speech, language, and communication needs regarding the credibility, nature, quality, scope of the research, and outcomes of the research findings.
Method: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) protocol was used. Of 196 papers documenting Hanen® interventions, 57 papers met inclusion criteria. Studies were synthesized and evaluated to rate (a) credibility/ levels of evidence, (b) nature of existing research: efficacy, effectiveness, and perceived effectiveness, (c) quality of the studies, (d) scope of evidence, and (e) outcomes for each Hanen® program for children with speech, language, and communication needs.
 Results: Credibility: Studies of Hanen® programs were reviews (7%), randomized controlled trials (17.5%), non-randomized controlled trials and mixed methods (31.6%), case-control or cohort studies (26.3%), qualitative reviews (1.8%) or employed qualitative methods (15.7%). Nature: The majority were efficacy studies (57.9%), others were perceived effectiveness (24.6%), and effectiveness studies (8.8%). Quality: Few studies were rated as high quality. Scope: Most studies related to two Hanen® programs (It Takes Two To Talk® and More Than Words®) conducted across eleven countries (Canada, USA, Spain, Turkey, Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Australia, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Malaysia), and a few studies evaluated adaptations of Hanen® programs (e.g., telehealth). The studies reported on dyad interactions; child language, behavior, and autism; and caregiver perceptions, stress, and self-efficacy. Outcomes: Evidence supporting significant communication outcomes for different programs exists; however mixed results demonstrate a variety of language, interaction, acceptability, feasibility, and maintenance outcomes. 
Conclusions: A range of evidence supports the use of Hanen® programs in its original format, with acceptability reported by families from target communities (e.g., middle class families) and educators (e.g., westernized countries). Effectiveness studies in real world contexts conclude that future research could evaluate content flexibility and adaptations to meet a diversity of families and communities. A precision family initiative (PFI) has been suggested to shift future research from does Hanen® work, to how can Hanen®-based intervention optimize outcomes for individual families.

Farewell Camilla and family

We have loved having Camilla Porsanger and family visiting the Children's Voices Centre over the past few months. Camilla is undertaking her PhD through Nord University in Norway focusing on Sami children's language learning. We have learned so much from Camilla and her family and will miss them. We look forward to ongoing collaborations.

 

 

Higher Degree Research (HDR) students

Higher degree research students (HDR) are wonderful colleagues who bring their experiences and contexts to undertake quality impactful real-world research.

• Congratulations to Cathie Matthews who has completed all of the requirements to graduate with an MPhil this week!

What a joy it is to learn from and give ideas to PhD students. This week has been a wonderful time of discussion with the following PhD students:

• Sarah Bartlett (CSU PhD student supervised by myself and Dr Carolyn Gregoric)
• Anniek van Doornik (UUtrecht PhD student co-supervised by myself) 
• Arifa Rahman (CSU PhD student supervised by Dr Shukla Sikder) 
• Felicity Laurence (2026 PhD student supervised by myself and A/Prof Sarah Verdon)
• Nikki Simone (QUT PhD student visiting CVC and The Treehouse)
• Camilla Porsanger (Nord University PhD student visiting CVC and The Treehouse) 

Sarah B, Sharynne, Carolyn

 

Sharynne, Camilla and Tamara enjoying the Australian sunshine and blue sky

Arifa Rahman

Tamara, Nikki, Sharynne  and Camilla

Anniek and Sharynne looking at CSU PhD students' final chapters

Cultivating Collaborative Practice to Sustain and Retain Early Childhood Educators

Congratulations Belinda on the acceptance of your article from you PhD

Downey, B., Gibbs, L., Letts, W., & McLeod, S. (2025). Cultivating collaborative practice to sustain and retain early childhood educators. Education Sciences, [Manuscript accepted for publication]. 

Official WHO photos of the CSU team

Holly McAlister

Distinguished Professor Sharynne  McLeod

Dr Helen L. Blake

Presentation about Sami language maintenance at the Children's Voices Centre

We were honoured to have a presentation by Camilla Porsanger at the Children's Voices Centre today. She shared with us about the history of the Sami community and languages (North, Lulu and South Sami) and the work she is doing with others in Norway to maintain Sami language and to support children with special needs. She is undertaking such important work.

 

 We concluded her presentation with sharing welcome home soup and some florentines.

Planning for Lucy to come back to CVC

This afternoon I met online with Lucy Rodgers (UK) to discuss her next grant application so that she can come back to the Children's Voices Centre. We really enjoyed Lucy's visit earlier this year, so look forward to her coming again.

 

Belinda's PhD - the final step

I was thrilled to receive a copy of Belinda Downey's bound PhD thesis today. What a significant moment - to hold the final product. Congratulations Belinda. Here is the link to the online version of her thesis titled "Staying in Early Childhood: Struggle, Hope and Connection": https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/staying-in-early-childhood-struggle-hope-and-connection