Interprofessional Leadership in Health and Higher Education

Today our visiting scholar, Professor A. Lynn Williams. presented a seminar titled "Interprofessional Leadership in Health and Higher Education": An interactive seminar for academic leaders and staff highlighting collaborative and distributed leadership approaches in health and higher education. The seminar was both online and face-to-face and we had attendees in Bathurst, across the CSU footprint, and in Fiji and Vietnam! 

Here is Prof Williams' bio:

Professor A. Lynn Williams, PhD, CCC-SLP is Professor in the Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology at East Tennessee State University (ETSU), USA. She was founding Dean of ETSU’s College of Health Sciences, and 2021 President of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). An internationally recognized expert in speech sound disorders, she has led innovative interprofessional education initiatives and currently serves as Vice President of the National Academies of Practice, advancing collaboration to improve education, research, and patient care.

Leadership and retention in early childhood education

Congratulations to Belinda Downey who has just had this paper published from her PhD: 

Downey, B., Letts, W., Gibbs, L., & McLeod, S. (2024). Leadership and retention in early childhood education. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 49(4), 343-357. https://doi.org/10.1177/18369391241286935 

Here is the abstract: 

Global early childhood education workforce shortages have highlighted the importance of recruitment and retention. The development of effective leadership has not been a retention policy focus even though effective leadership has been identified as an important driver for improving working conditions and supporting educator retention. The aim of this research was to investigate what factors affect retention focussing on retention challenges for leaders in an under researched context. Participants were 34 early childhood educators in the Northern Territory of Australia. A constructivist grounded theory methodology framed the research and the data analysis, and a constant comparative method was used to generate categories. The lack of learning on leadership, coupled with competing priorities, were identified as critical factors that contribute to increased attrition. However, informal mentoring was found to support both the positional and emerging leaders, increasing the probability of their retention regardless of their access to leadership development.

ECIR Leadership Team

The Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group has been funded by the Sturt Scheme for the past 3 years (2022, 2023, 2024). The distributed leadership team consists of: Sharynne McLeod (administrative lead), Julian Grant, Suzanne Hopf, Libbey Murray, and Sarah Verdon. Carolyn Gregoric is the Research Officer for ECIR. There are over 50 people (staff, adjuncts, HDR students) across all three faculties of CSU who are members. We are a very supportive and productive group. Current team projects are: the ECV2024 conference, two edited books, and the Children Draw Playing Global Online Gallery. There are also a number of grants, books, and research projects that are being undertaken by the team.

We are currently working on the transition to the exciting new Children's Voices Centre. 

I am very pleased to be working with such wonderful people - and to have the support of the leadership team at our meeting today.

Carolyn, Sharynne, Suzanne, Libbey

Leadership and retention in early childhood education

The following article has been accepted for publication from Belinda's PhD. Congratulations Belinda. Downey, B., Letts, W., McLeod, S. & Gibbs, L. (2024). Leadership and retention in early childhood education. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/18369391241286935

Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme

Today I have had three excellent meetings with members of the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme.

1. Leadership meeting

2. Weekly meeting with Dr Carolyn Gregoric

3. Children Draw Talking research meeting

We are such a productive research group. Our distributed leadership model enables such richness of experience and collaboration.

We provide an internship model of peer-to-peer research capacity building where people actively contribute to research with the support of mentors. Research activities include: organising conferences, editing books, writing book chapters, running research projects, analysing data, writing journal articles, and supporting members to apply for promotion and grants. 

 

Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research (ECIR) Sturt Scheme leadership meeting

Today we had a 4.5 hour Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research (ECIR) Sturt Scheme leadership meeting to celebrate 2022 and plan for 2023 and 2024.

The ECIR leadership team consists of

• Professor Sharynne McLeod (Education) - team leader for 2023
  
• Professor Julian Grant (Nursing)
• A/Professor Sarah Verdon (Allied Health)
• Dr Libbey Murray (Education)
• Dr Carolyn Gregoric (Research Officer)

We have fabulous plans for our research to support children around the world to thrive, and to support their families, the professionals who work with them. We also have plans for mentoring the 30+ researchers (academics, HDR students and adjuncts) who are associated with ECIR.

Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Prof Julian Grant, Dr Libbey Murray, A/Prof Sarah Verdon

ECV2022 update, planning, and committee meetings

There has been a lot of work this week for ECV2022: https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2022/

Here are the current numbers: 

• 1206 registrations from 69 countries 
• 118 abstracts from 25 countries 

A number of meetings have been held today including:

• ECV2022 Chairs meeting about keynotes, social media, submissions, panel discussions, ethics, copyediting, etc.
  
• ECV2022 Scientific Committee information session about ECV2022 conference abstract review
• ECV2022 Children's Voices Committee to plan the invitations to be sent across the world for children to contribute to ECV2022

ECV2022 Scientific Review Committee: Kelly Tribolet, Sharynne McLeod, Anne McLeod, Jessamy Davies, Kate Martgetson, Linda Mahony, Van Tran, Libbey Murray, Jahirul Mullick

 

Women in Leadership

My colleague gave me the book "Women in Leadership" as a Christmas present and I have learned a lot from reading it. Yesterday, the authors, Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala were interviewed here: https://www.cgdev.org/event/conversation-julia-gillard-and-ngozi-okonjo-iweala-women-and-leadership

Providing feedback to the World Health Organization

Today I submitted feedback about proposals to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to the World Health Organization on behalf of 24 speech-language pathologists from across the world (UK, US, Fiji, The Netherlands, Iceland, Australia, etc.).  We plan to provide more feedback when new proposals are welcomed.

APSSLH Executive Council Members Meeting

Today I attended the APSSLH Executive Council Members Meeting. We discussed issues including the delay of our conference that was to be held in Hong Kong (due to COVID-19). The last conference was held in Japan in 2017. We also discussed changes to committee members' terms of office that are linked to the conference dates. The current committee members are below:

The timezones for our meeting were:

Some of the timezones for the APSSLH Meeting (+ New Zealand)

CSU promotion committee and mentoring

I have been invited to be involved in the CSU promotion process this year as a mentor and panel member (as I had done last year).

I attended an information session this morning to learn about the 2020 round. I was pleased to see information that teaching evaluations for the first semester of 2020 will not be included (unless requested) to accommodate the disruptions as a result of COVID-19.
This information on promotion readiness was useful:

Don't repeat information. Don't use the same evidence from previous applications. Referees should be able to independently comment on your career trajectory within the disciplinary context. They should comment knowledgably about where you sit based on academic standards. They should be outside of CSU, and typically should not include your PhD supervisor or recent co-authors. Applicants are encouraged to contact their supervisors and request a mentor early in the process.

Starting the academic year in the School of Teacher Education

To commence the academic year in the School of Teacher Education, our Head of School Carol Burgess and Donna Bateup hosted a morning tea welcoming new staff. Afterwards Dr Helen Logan (SOTE Research Committee Chair), Dr Tamara Cumming (SOTE HDR coordinator) and I held a research welcome to new staff where we discussed our research histories and passions. We will hold a research CV writing workshop in a couple of weeks' time.

SOTE staff - February 2020

Belinda, Lana, Stacey, Helen, Andi, Tamara, Sharynne, Rahul, Jessica (Brian not pictured)