StoryBabies research has begun

Dr Michelle Brown is my postdoctoral scholar as part of my CSU Senior Research Fellowship. This week her StoryBabies research to learn from speech-language pathologists has begun. Very soon, she will also open a questionnaire for early childhood educators.

If you are a speech-language pathologist (therapist) and work with children aged 0-2 years, please complete the questionnaire here: https://www.research.net/r/StoryBabies-SLP

Thank you to the SLM team for your support in 2019

Thank you so much to the following 20 people who have been part of the SLM team and have provided magnificent support throughout 2019

• Helen Blake - PhD student 
• Dr Michelle Brown - Postdoc 
• Anna Cronin - PhD student 
• Dr Kate Crowe - Research fellow 
• Dr Suzanne Hopf - Colleague
• Kylie Huynh - VietSpeech Research assistant 
• Kate Margetson - VietSpeech Project officer
• Dr Sarah Masso - Colleague 
• Holly McAlister - Honours student 
• A/Prof Jane McCormack - Colleague
• Nicole McGill - PhD student 
• Dr Ben Pham - Research fellow 
• Olivia Richards - StoryBabies Research assistant 
• Jake Sheader - Research assistant 
• Lily To - VietSpeech Research assistant 
• Dr Van Tran - PhD student 
• Dr Sarah Verdon - VietSpeech Co-investigator 
• Dr Cen (Audrey) Wang - VietSpeech Project officer

and special thanks to:

• Donna Bateup - SOTE Admin 
• David McLeod - Super supporter 
• and all of my colleagues across the world

Our work together means we have to trust each other in many ways as we grow to be better researchers, better people, and to create new knowledge that will benefit the world.

Finally, thanks to the Faculty of Arts and Education, Charles Sturt University, NSW Health, and the Australian Research Council for funding our research in 2019.

2019 Christmas tree filled with memories from around the world

Dr Michelle Brown's SpeakUp podcast

Dr Michelle Brown's SpeakUp podcast titled "Reading with babies" is available here:
https://soundcloud.com/speechpathologyaustralia/reading-with-babies-s01-ep06%20
There have been over 600 downloads in 24 hours!
More details (including the transcript) are here (podcast number 6).
Congratulations Michelle!

New grant: "StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children"

Congratulations Dr Michelle Brown who has been awarded a Forest Hill Grant from the The Foundation of Graduates in Early Childhood Studies titled: "StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children". This is going to be a very useful grant.

Here is the description

Literacy difficulties have lifelong implications for academic achievement, employment, mental health, and quality of life. Early storybook reading (ESR) is considered one of the most effective methods early childhood educators (ECE) and parents can engage in to strengthen language development to establish a solid foundation for children’s later literacy success. While it is widely accepted that reading is important with babies and young children, much of the information available to early childhood educators (ECE) and parents on ESR is anecdotal and not based on empirical evidence that has demonstrated that the recommended strategies support language development. Moreover, there is limited information for multilingual families and access to services may be a barrier for families who live in regional/remote areas. This project, StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children, aims to empower ECE and families across Australia and abroad, who work with multilingual families by providing an ESR intervention through two video recorded workshops. These workshops will include families from two different languages (such as Vietnamese, Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, and Mandarin) and will be based on an ESR intervention that was previously found to be effective (Brown, Westerveld, Trembath, & Gillon, 2018). Innovation will be demonstrated by focusing on multilingual families and supporting access to ECE and families who live in regional/remote locations. These two ESR workshops will include information and video recorded demonstrations of reading with multilingual babies and young children. StoryBabies will be freely available to ECE and families through a public website such as The Multilingual Children’s website created by Professor Sharynne McLeod.

Aims and objectives of the project: StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children aims to equip early childhood educators and families with information and video demonstrations of how to strengthen language development with multilingual babies and young children, through early storybook reading. StoryBabies also aims to support early childhood educators and families with access to this freely available, evidence based resource regardless of their location.

Dr Michelle Brown with Prof Sharynne McLeod (post doc supervisor) and Prof Gail Gillon (PhD supervisor) who have supported her research into early storybook reading

Early storybook research profiled at three conferences

Over the next 2 months Dr. Michelle Brown (my postdoc) is presenting her research at three conferences as part of her CSU Senior Research Fellowship postdoc:

• Speech Pathology Australia National Conference (SPA)- Brisbane, 3-5 June - "Reading with babies impacts literacy, language, and numeracy skills at 8-9 years"
• Australian Literacy Educators Association (ALEA) - Melbourne 9-12 July - "Reading with young children promotes literacy and language development nine years later "
• Macquarie University Infants and Toddlers Conference - Sydney 19 July - "Reading during infancy strengthens academic achievement" (Brown, Wang & McLeod)

Additionally, Michelle's research will be profiled in a Speech Pathology Australia SpeakUp podcast. Congratulations Michelle!