Over the next six months I have the honour of mentoring Professor Jillian Marsh from the School of Indigenous Australian Studies. Most of our meetings will be online as she is based in Albury; however, next month she will be visiting Bathurst.
Jillian identifies as an Adnyamathanha Yuraartu [Aboriginal woman from the northern Flinders Ranges region of South Australia] and her language is Yura Ngawarla. She has expertise in language and linguistics, archeology and the environment.
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.
Huge congratulations to my colleagues who have just been promoted. They do amazing work - and I'm so glad it has been acknowledged.
It was a pleasure to mentor them on this journey. Hooray!
Our Children's Voices Centre has collaborated to write another paper based on the informative Children Draw Talking data set - and it has just been accepted for publication. Hooray!
Gregoric, C., McLeod, S., Hopf, S. C., Downey, B., Rahman, A., Sikder, S., Zischke, C., Tran, V. H., Murray, E., McAlister, H., Ivory, N., Delli-Pizzi, L., Elwick, S., Dealtry, L., Davies, J. (2025, in press November). Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals by listening to children’s voices across the globe. Child Language Teaching and Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1177/02656590251406102
Here is the abstract:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015) represent a global agenda for achieving a sustainable future for people and the planet to inform decision and policy making at all levels. Children should have a significant voice in shaping the world they will inherit; indeed, SDG 17 is focussed on partnership for the goals. The aim of the present study was to investigate which SDGs are depicted in children’s drawings of themselves talking to provide researchers and policy makers insights into their perceptions about, and solutions for, the SDGs. The Children Draw Talking Global Online Gallery (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/research/childrens-voices) included 200 drawings from children from 24 countries. Children aged 2–12 years responded to the online prompt “draw yourself talking” and submitted their drawing and explanation. A 15-member interdisciplinary research team analysed the drawings to determine their alignment with the seventeen SDGs. Most of the 200 drawings (n = 191, 95.5%) could be coded with at least one SDG. Overall, there were 359 representations of SDGs coded across the data set of 200 drawings. Many children highlighted access to green public spaces and housing (SDG11), education (SDG 4), and decision-making (SDG 16) while others portrayed reducing inequality (SDG 10) and addressing poverty (SDG 1). This research demonstrated that children may be implicitly aware of factors related to the Sustainable Development Goals across their lives and provides an exemplar of how children’s voices could be included by inviting them to contribute drawings.
I am mentoring Dr Ros Cox in the writing and publication of her book "Vaccination is under threat: Communication is the solution". She pitches the book with the publishers today. Best wishes Ros! Can't wait to work with you on this.
It has been a privilege to mentor and support Dr Lucia Wursch in the submission of her grant to the Australian Research Council which was submitted yesterday. We had a chance to celebrate at the Vice Chancellor's morning tea this morning. Congratulations Lucia and best wishes for a successful outcome.
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| Associate Professor Ben Phạm with her family at the Temple of Literature |
I am so proud of my colleague Dr Ben Phạm who was promoted to Associate Professor by the Vietnamese Office of Professorship Council.
In 2024 there were only 27 candidates in Education Sciences who were promoted to Associate Professor across the whole of VietNam. Ben was the only one who specialized in Special Education for children with speech and language disorders.
She received the certificate from the Vietnamese Government on 29 November 2024 at the 1000 year old Temple of Literature in Ha Noi, Viet Nam, the
first University in Vietnam.
Ben and I visited the Temple of Literature together in 2016 and dreamed of this day when she would receive an award there https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-temple-of-literature-in-ha-noi_2.html
Congratulations Ben.
I am so honoured to continue collaborating with Ben in many ways since she began her PhD with me in 2014. Here is a paper that we wrote together that has just been published
Phạm, B., & McLeod, S. (2024). Considerations of dialect on the identification of speech sound disorder in Vietnamese-speaking children. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 59(6), 2208-2216. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12992
Congratulations to Jane Garner who has just learned she was promoted to Associate Professor. She does such important research with worldwide impact. I was honoured to work with her on her promotion documentation to ensure that her excellent work shone through the words and boxes.
This morning was the CSU Conscia Mentoring Program - End-of-Program Celebration.
I have been a mentor for Belinda Cash, and also a group of colleagues about writing/editing books. It has been a productive year - and I have learned a lot.
CSU had 56 mentors and 83 mentees this year.
Here is the summary of the celebration event:
This program has provided a valuable opportunity to learn from experienced researchers, enhancing your skills in research capabilities, outputs, and leadership, as well as supporting your career development.
This celebration will be a chance to share your experiences, provide feedback, and offer suggestions for future initiatives.
An overview of how this program can enhance your Research Performance Indicator (RPI) will also be provided.
We look forward to celebrating with you!Cathy LeCerf
on behalf of the Faculty Associate Deans of Research
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.
This morning Dr Belinda Downey and I recorded the Early Childhood Voices 2024 conference co-chairs welcome:
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| Dr Belinda Downey and Prof Sharynne McLeod - ECV2024 conference co-chairs |
BD: Greetings from the Wiradjuri lands of New South Wales, Australia. I'm Dr. Belinda Downey,
SM: and I'm Professor Sharynne McLeod.BD: We are the co-chairs of ECV2024 - the Early Childhood Voices Conference - at Charles Sturt University, Australia.
SM: The Early Childhood Voices Conference began in 2020 and this is our third conference.
It is a free online interdisciplinary conference focusing on children.
At ECV we share research about innovative methods, theories, and partnerships with children, families, and practitioners that support social justice during early childhood and within the early childhood sector.
BD: ECV 2024, is organised by the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group at Charles Sturt University in Australia.
There are 3 ways to participate,
- Attend the conference online from the 25th to the 28th of November 2024 – watching the online recordings at times that suit you
- Join online yarning sessions to discuss topics relevant to the conference on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during the week of the conference.
- Enjoy the Children Draw Playing Global Online Gallery – where approximately 200 children from across the world present their views of playing.
SM: We are so excited to welcome over a 1000 people from 54 countries who have registered to attend. We hope you enjoy listening to our 4 excellent keynote presentations and the 147 oral presentations across two streams:
- 71 papers in the “Early childhood voices: International interdisciplinary research” stream (71 abstracts)
- And 76 papers in the “Multilingual children's speech development” stream. These papers are presented in English and in many other languages including Kurdish, Jamaican, Icelandic, Danish, Turkish, and Swedish.
The peer reviewed abstracts are published online and in the Conference proceedings.
BD: Thank you to our amazing colleagues from Charles Sturt University for working hard on committees to ensure this conference is a success. We particularly thank our wonderful conference secretary, Dr Carolyn Gregoric.
We hope that by participating in ECV2024 you are inspired to listen to children’s voices, advocate for children and social justice during early childhood.
BD&SM: Welcome to our conference!
Congratulations to Associate Professor Ben Pham who has just been promoted by the government of Vietnam. We are so proud of you!
Ten years ago Ben came to Bathurst to undertake her PhD with me. It has been an honour to work alongside Ben for the past decade. Her research has had a huge impact on the world's understanding of how Vietnamese children learn to speak.
Our CSU editorial team met again today - and submitted our book proposal for a second edition/volume of Early Childhood Voices: Children, Families, Professionals (2e). We have already received an initial positive response from the commissioning editor.
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| Editorial team: Shukla Sikder, Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Verdon, Lysa Dealtry, Sheena Elwick |
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Academic Affairs & Research Education Team have invited me to host a table on “Engaging in International Research Collaborations” at the Research Roundtables during the 2024 ASHA Convention (Friday, December 6, 2024). They have invited Dr. Giang Pham from San Diego State University to co-host the table with me and Dr Helen L. Blake and Dr Kate Margetson to attend as my collaborators. I have enjoyed this role a few years ago at an ASHA convention - so look forward to participating again.
Here is their description:
The Research Roundtables offer researchers, including students interested in research careers, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty, the opportunity to meet and learn from experienced researchers and funding agency staff. We hope you will be able to host a Research Roundtable. Your willingness to share your experience and knowledge is greatly appreciated by researchers in our professions.
Today I met with A/Prof Belinda Cash for our monthly mentoring meeting. One of the topics we discussed was how important it is to translate our Q1 journal articles to user-friendly formats (videos, posters, resources etc.).
Here are some examples of ways that we have translated our research into user-friendly formats
1. VIDEO "The Lifelong Effects Of Speaking Multiple Languages" Multilingualism is a superpower! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBrXmRW7lwg
Based on:
Blake, H. L., McLeod, S., Verdon, S., & Fuller, G. (2018). The relationship between spoken English proficiency and participation in higher education, employment and income from two Australian censuses. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(2), 202–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2016.1229031
McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(4), 1546–1571. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100
2. RESOURCES "VietSpeech SuperSpeech - Maintaining home languages" https://www.csu.edu.au/research/vietspeech/info
Based on:
McLeod, S., Verdon, S., Tran, V. H., Margetson, K., & Wang, C. (2022). SuperSpeech: Multilingual speech and language maintenance intervention for Vietnamese-Australian children and families via telepractice. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 53(3), 675-697. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_LSHSS-21-00146
3. POSTERS "Learning English consonants"https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition
Based on:
McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(4), 1546–1571. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100
Crowe, K., & McLeod, S. (2020). Children's English consonant acquisition in the United States: A review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(4), 2155–2169. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-19-00168
4. VIDEO "ON-TRAC - transitioning to residential aged care" https://youtu.be/DKPSTt4ihyk
Based on:
Fealy, S., McLaren, S., Nott, M., Seaman, C.E., Cash, B., & Rose, L. (2024). Psychological interventions designed to reduce relocation stress for older people transitioning into permanent residential aged care: A systematic scoping review. Aging and Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2024.2340731
(Created by Gareth Smart - CSU digital media technologist - DLT)
Congratulations to my colleague Julie Malone who has been elected to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association as:
Board Member at Large in Speech-Language Pathology
Julie D. Malone, CCC-SLP
Here are the other position holders:
President-Elect
Linda I. Rosa-Lugo, CCC-SLP
Vice President for Academic Affairs in Speech-Language Pathology
Rachel Glade, CCC-SLP
Vice President for Audiology Practice
Kevin Kock, CCC-A
Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy (one-time, two-year term)
Lou Malerba, CCC-SLP
Vice President for Science and Research
Nidhi Mahendra, CCC-SLP
Julie and I first began working together in 1997 when she spent time at The University of Sydney.
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I have held regular mentoring meetings with two groups of colleagues to work on developing book proposals, then editing books as part of our Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group (ECIR). Our Springer book group met today (Sheena Elwick, Shukla Sikder, Lysa Dealtry) and our Multilingual Matters book group have just had their proposal accepted and we are about to meet to discuss the proposed contract from the publisher.
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| Lysa Dealtry, Sharynne McLeod, Shukla Sikder, Sheena Elwick |
Congratulations to my colleague Dr. Karla Washington at the Universitiy of Toronto who has been named as a Canada Research Chair in Monolingual and Multilingual Paediatric Speech-Language Pathology (Tier 2). Here is a description about her work and appointment:
Speech sound disorder (SSD) and developmental language disorder (DLD) present significant barriers to academic and social participation, with the potential to negatively impact the speech and language development of children globally. Dr. Washington’s overarching research goal is to support children’s human right to effective communication by improving diagnosis and treatment of these disorders. Her research addresses misdiagnosis of SSD and DLD in multilingual preschoolers in an understudied context (Jamaican Creole-English) through diversification of theoretical and empirical approaches. She also aims to characterize the neural basis of DLD, with the goal of better understanding memory-language mechanisms underlying grammar learning and impairment.
I have just been accepted into the CSU Conscia Research Staff Mentoring program and will be mentoring CSU staff members during 2024.
https://research.csu.edu.au/research-support/researcher-development/mentoring/conscia
The Conscia Research Staff Mentoring Program pairs staff with a research work-function with a more experienced academic research mentor to develop their research career, meet research goals, and strategize for future academic success.
We attended an information session about the Conscia program that schedules and tracks goals and evidence regarding mentoring.
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| Learning from one another during our mentoring session |