Today I presented a workshop run by Catholic Education Tasmania titled "Speech Difficulties in EALD Leamers: The role of speech pathology" (11am - 5pm). It was wonderful to share our research and the rich and informative resources that we have made available on the Multilingual Children's Speech website to speech pathologists from across Tasmania. The food was delicious too!
I am very pleased to see that our invited chapter has been published (in Italian) in the following book:
Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Blake, H. L. (2025). Gli Speech Sound Disorders nei bambini plurilingue [Speech sound disorders in multilingual children]. In S. Piazzalunga, R. Salvadorini, N. Pizzorni, F. Todaro, & A. Schindler (Eds.). Speech sound disorders: Evidenze scientifiche e buone prassi riabilitative [Scientific evidence and best rehabilitative practices] (pp. 415-432). Erickson University & Research. https://www.erickson.it/it/speech-sound-disorders
It is exciting to see that this book will be used across Italy. Congratulations to the editors on the compilation of this important book.
Dear Colleagues,
First of all, we would like to wish you all a very happy New Year.
We are pleased to let you know that the Italian book on Speech Sound Disorders has finally been published: https://www.erickson.it/it/speech-sound-disorders
... Thank you for this wonderful achievement. We hope that this volume will become a reference textbook for Italian undergraduate and postgraduate Speech and Language Therapy programmes. The book will also be officially presented at the Italian Congress of Phoniatrics and Speech and Language Therapy in the coming months.
Thank you once again, and best wishes from all of us.
Silvia, Renata, Francesca, Nicole and Antonio
Silvia Piazzalunga, PhD
Speech-Language Pathologist, Adjunct Professor
Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences "L. Sacco"
"L. Sacco" Hospital
University of Milano, Italy
Congratulations to A/Prof Tamara Cumming who is an invited member of panel discussion on Culture, Educator Wellbeing and Children's Outcomes at the two-day National Workforce Forum hosted by the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority.
Today Dr Kate Margetson and I presented a 2-hour invited seminar titled "Help! How can I support multilingual children? Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL)" at the Central West Speechies' PD Day in Orange.
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| Karen Trengove (Learn2Communicate), Dr Kate Margetson (CSU), Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU), Dr Rebecca Sutherland (The University of Sydney) |
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| Dr Kate Margetson describing data from our research |
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| Dr Kate Margetson describing the SACHL |
This presentation was a really important day for Kate's postdoctoral research. We have had a 18month grant from the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) to consider how speech pathologists can support multilingual children, particularly in rural areas. Kate presented our work on the SACHL:
https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl
The attendees both provided a wonderful audience for research translation, but also for providing advice about how to make the SACHL better for all.
I have been invited to present a CSU masterclass in the series "Seeing like a researcher"
My topic that has been postponed until 2025 is: "Professional skills: Editing a book: From beginning to end"
I am honoured to be amongst my distinguished colleagues from CSU within this series: https://staff.csu.edu.au/researchers/research-support/seeing-like-a-researcher-masterclass-series
Here is what is written on the website:
“Seeing like a researcher” is a masterclass series that draws on the experience, skills, wisdom and advice of Charles Sturt’s research leaders. The series includes sessions on both research innovation themes and professional skills for research.
Research innovation sessions encompass advanced pathbreaking tools of analysis and are designed to showcase new discoveries in research and update Charles Sturt researchers on new ways of doing research.
Professional skills sessions provide advice on research challenges such as developing a high quality ARC/NHMRC application, building long term partnerships nationally and internationally, delivering high impact research, working with First Nations communities etc.
The “Seeing like a researcher” masterclass series will be an invaluable mechanism for building research culture by inspiring experienced academics looking to re-energise their research programs, and next generation researchers hungry for learning and career advice.
2024 has been a busy year (and this list doesn't include the regular conference presentations)!
The following invited article has just been published:
McLeod, S., Blake, H. L., & Margetson, K. (2024). Enhancing children’s speech using international evidence-based resources. Revista Portuguesa de Terapia da Fala [Portuguese Journal of Speech and Language Therapy], 17, 9-13. https://doi.org/17.21281/rptf.2024.08.03
Available here: https://www.aptf-rptf.com/c%C3%B3pia-carta-ao-editor-16-1
I have been invited to be a plenary speaker at the International Symposium on Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) 2025 to be held 16-19 June 2025 in Chania, Crete, Greece. I have just submitted the abstract for my presentation: https://speechandlanguage.louisiana.edu/ismbs/plenary-lectures
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.
The following paper has just been published. It is an invited journal article based on the lecture I gave for the Royal Society of New South Wales last year that was part of the 2023 Royal Society of New South Wales and Learned Academies Forum: “Our 21st Century Brain” https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2023/11/invited-presentation-our-21st-century.html
McLeod, S. (2024). Children’s communication and the developing mind: A challenge for Australia. Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 157, 43–48. https://royalsoc.org.au/images/pdf/journal/157-1-11McLeod.pdf
There are many excellent papers in the special issue:
https://royalsoc.org.au/images/pdf/journal/157-1-web-complete.pdf
THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF N.S.W. AND FIVE ACADEMIES FORUM: OUR 21st CENTURY BRAIN
We have just had the following invited paper accepted for publication in the Portuguese Journal of Speech and Language Therapy:
McLeod, S., Blake, H. L. & Margetson, K. (2024, in press). Enhancing children’s speech using international evidence-based resources. RPTF - Revista Portuguesa de Terapia da Fala [Portuguese Journal of Speech and Language Therapy] https://www.aptf-rptf.com/
Today began my visit to the University of Bristol as the Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor (20 April - 26 May 2024). I am based in the Bristol Dental School with Professor Yvonne Wren: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/international-research-development/visiting-researchers/visitors-for-202324/sharynne_mcleod/
I am honoured to be working with Professor Yvonne Wren, PhD, MEd, BSc (Hons), FRCSLT
- Professor of Speech and Communication, University of Bristol
- Professor of Speech and Language Therapy, Cardiff Metropolitan University
- Director, Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit, North Bristol NHS Trust www.speech-therapy.org.uk
- Chief Investigator – Cleft@18-23, NIHR Programme Grant, Bristol Dental School, University of Bristol
- Chief Investigator - The Cleft Collective, Bristol Dental School, University of Bristol, www.cleftcollective.org.uk
- Chief Investigator - MISLToe-SSD, North Bristol NHS Trust, MISLToe SSD | North Bristol NHS Trust https://www.nbt.nhs.uk/bristol-speech-language-therapy-research-unit/bsltru-research/misltoe-ssd
Here is the project we are working on together:
Children born with cleft palate: Intelligibility and participation
Up to 1 million people in the UK have a communication disability which affects their ability to express themselves or to understand others. Our ability to communicate is impacted by our intelligibility and if we cannot make ourselves understood, then we will struggle to function in society. In particular, the impact on activities and participation, as defined by the World Health Organization can be significantly diminished, leading to social isolation and the potential for an impact on wellbeing and mental health, educational and occupational outcomes. Rarely will a clinician be aware of these difficulties as individuals can become quite adept at hiding their difficulties. Professor McLeod’s work has helped to draw attention to communication rights of all people with communication impairment and the difficulties that children with speech sound disorder in particular face in terms of everyday life as a child. Children born with cleft palate are at particular risk of communication disability as a consequence of problems with intelligibility. Using data from The Cleft Collective, the large-scale national cohort study of over 10,000 participants led by Dr Yvonne Wren at Bristol Dental School, Professor McLeod and Dr Wren will explore intelligibility in affected children using the Intelligibility in Context Scale. The Scale was developed by Professor McLeod and has now been translated in over 60 languages and is used worldwide. The outputs will provide unique reference data for children born with cleft, taking into account additional factors such as cleft subtype and syndromic status. Further analysis will enable us to determine the impact that differences in intelligibility in this population has on children’s levels of activity and participation.
During her visit and through her planned talks, Prof McLeod will raise awareness of communication disability and highlight additional challenges and benefits when working with multilingual individuals. Professor McLeod is hosted by Dr Yvonne Wren from the Bristol Dental School.
Lectures and seminars include:
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| Accommodation at The Principal's House, University of Bristol |
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| Prof Yvonne Wren and Prof Sharynne McLeod at Oakfield House, University of Bristol |
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| Prof Sharynne McLeod and Prof Yvonne Wren celebrating our first day at Lido |
Jane McCormack and I have just had two chapters published in the fourth edition of Health and Wellbeing in Childhood
