Oslo: Logopedia for children

I was fortunate to visit the Bredtvet Resource Centre in Oslo that provides specialist assessment and intervention services for children and adults with communication needs across Norway. In addition, they aim to contribute to develop knowledge via research. In 2009 there were 33 speech therapists, 6 psychologists, 8 pedagogues, 1 physiotherapist, 2 ENT doctors, 1 dentist and 2 linguists working at the Resource Centre.  

I watched an intervention session in Norwegian with a 6-year-old boy who was an excellent skateboard rider and had difficulties producing consonants as a result of his cleft lip and palate. Marianne Moe and Jorunn Lemvik conducted the session.

Anne Berit Andreassen, the head of the department focussing on cleft lip and palate, voice, aphasia and dysarthria, provided a lot of information about how logopedia (speech pathology) in Norway developed as a part of special education, and how assessment and intervention is predominately free for all people who need it. We compared the problems for accessing rural services in Norway vs. Australia.

I also met Kristin Billaud Feragen and Ase-Marie Bergfall, who have just published an excellent book titled "Albin og Luna: Det Mystiske Speilet" a story book about two children with cleft lip and palate. It also contains information about cleft lip and palate, professionals who work with children and what to say to others if you have a cleft lip and palate.

Listening to children in Norway

Norway and the other Scandanavian countries have a strong tradition of pedagogy and listening to children. This was very apparent in so many places throughout Oslo. The Oslo City Hall has paintings of children on many of its walls, including the fresco of children in the annual Oslo day parade.

Many of the statues in the famous Vigeland Sculpture Park are of children (left).

Many street signs include children. However, my favourite place was the International Museum of Children's Art: a gallery completely dedicated to showing children's art from around the world in a setting that is vibrant with a child-friendly atmosphere. Most of the art has been collected around themes including "Fathers", and "Disasters". They were interested to hear of our "Children draw talking" art exhibition.

International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Conference, Oslo Norway

The 13th International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Conference, was held in Oslo Norway. It was an extremely stimulating conference with attendees from 26 different countries speaking even more languages. Speech acquisition around the world was a topic that was discussed frequently both within formal sessions and during the breaks.
I co-presented the following papers/posters:

• McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., Holliday, E. L., McCormack, J., McAllister, L. (2010, June). Children draw talking: Art exhibition. International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, Oslo, Norway.
• McLeod, S., McCormack, J., McAllister, L., & Harrison, L. J. (2010, June). Severity and nature of speech impairment in a community sample of 4- to 5-year-old children. International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, Oslo, Norway.
• Aldum, I. & McLeod, S. (2010, June). Afrikaans: Phonology, acquisition and assessment. International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, Oslo, Norway.

A number of my research students were in attendance and I enjoyed having time to talk about their research face-to-face (since most of my students are distance education students).

Sharynne with students and colleagues Inge Aldum (Perth, Australia),
Karla Washington (Canada), and Sandra Neumann (Germany)

ICPLA President: Sara Howard, ICPLA Vice President: Sharynne McLeod,
ICPLA Ex-president and editor of Clincial Linguistics and Phonetics: Martin Ball

I also worked on a number of books with colleagues, including Electropalatography for speech assessment and intervention, the second edition of the International guide to speech acquisition,  and  Multilingual speech sound disorders.
The City of Oslo hosted a welcome reception for us at the Oslo City Hall where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded each year.

The conference was held at a magnificent venue, the Holemkollen Park Hotel. We were there for the summer solstice, so experienced the very long summer days, and very short nights. Here is a view of the hotel taken at midnight, just as the sun had set, and just after the conference dinner/boat cruise on the Oslo fjord.

Oslo: Children's speech acquisition workshop

Norwegian Academy of Science

I was an invited speaker at a phonological acquisition workshop held at the Norwegian Academy of Science organsed by the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, the University of Oslo. My presentation was titled "Consonant cluster acquisition in Australian English-speaking children" and included a genealogy of Australian research about typical and atypical acquisition of consonant clusters. There have been 47 Australian papers published on this topic.

Listening to children in USA

I was invited to visit the Child Study Centre at ETSU to find out about the program and talk with the children. The children told me how they had been looking at maps and learning about the world, so were very excited to find out that I was from another country. I got permission to upload this photo of the children who showed me their maps, postcards, artefacts, and pretend school complete with a wombat student! After I left I posted the children an Australian postcard of a wombat. Later, I visited a toystore in another city and found this huge jigsaw globe. I am sure that the children would have loved it.

East Tennessee State University

From June 6-19 I visited the Centre for Excellence in Early Childhood Learning and Development at East Tennessee State University and worked with Professor Lynn Williams.

I presented two seminars as outlined on the ETSU website:

Prof. Sharynne McLeod, Prof. Marty Barrett,
Prof. Lynn Williams, and Prof. Stephen Camarata

• Speech sound disorders in children: Typical acquisition, prevalence, risk, and impact (ASHA CEUs event)
• Listening to Children through the Sound Effects Study (incorporating Children Draw Talking: Art Exhibition)

I have enjoyed working with many people while at ETSU.

Prof. Stephen Camarata drove from Vanderbuilt University to visit us and to discuss research and grants.

I enjoyed talking with

Prof. Becky Isbell about her research into children's art and listening to children

Prof. Nancy Shearer about her international work with children with cleft lip and palate

Prof. Brenda Louw about her work in Africa and her research into Afrikaans and Zulu speech acquisition

Prof. Wally Dixon about his research on children's temperament and language acquisition

Prof. Marty Barrett about computer programming assessments

Prof. Kerry Proctor-Williams, Dr. Sandy Countermine, Dr. Julia Herwig, and so many others. I was made to feel so welcome and learned a lot about people of the Appalachian Mountains and Tennessee.

ETSU professors

Children draw talking: Art exhibition on tour

Children Draw Talking is an art exhibition of illustrations produced by 157 4- to 5-year-old children in the Sound Effects Study. 143 children who had difficulty talking and making speech sounds were invited to draw themselves talking to someone. The resulting drawings have been identified with six focal points, including enlarged ears on the listeners and smaller mouths on the speakers.

The art exhibition has already been shown at the opening session of the 2009 Speech Pathology Australia Conference in Adelaide and the 2009 Asia Pacific Speech Language Hearing Association Conference in Hawai'i.

In 2010 it has been shown in the following venues:

June 7 to 11, 2010: Johnson City, TN, USA

East Tennessee State University (ETSU) at the Slocumb Art Gallery

Receptions: June 10, Thursday, 5 p.m. and June 11, Friday, 11 a.m.


Lecture: June 10, 5:30 to 8 p.m. and June 11, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Ball Hall Auditorium

Hosted by ETSU Center of Excellence in Early Childhood
http://www.etsu.edu/cas/art/slocumb/exhibitions/students.aspx

Slocumb Gallery, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA

June 23, 2010: Oslo, Norway

International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Assocation Conference
Approximately 200 people attended the opening session of the ICPLA conference and listened to a half hour presentation about our research with children and the background to the Children Draw Talking art exhibition. The exhibition was displayed throughout the conference.

ICPLA conference Holmenkollen Park Hotel, Oslo, Norway

July: Bristol, United Kingdom

University of the West of England

Hong Kong University

As part of my Future Fellowship I am travelling to a number of countries over the next 2 months.
The first place I visited was Hong Kong University. During my visit I presented two seminars for speech therapists across Hong Kong:

Children's speech acquisition

Prevalence, risk, and impact of childhood speech and language impairment

I learned about Cantonese, and worked with Dr Carol To and Pamela Cheung on children's speech acquisition. I also discussed research with Tara Whitehill, Anita Wong, Estella Ma, Brad McPherson, Brendan Weekes, Edwin Yiu, Manwa Ng, Lydia So, Diana Ho, Lorinda Kwan, and others from the department. I was also taken to many fantastic resturants, incluing the one pictured below where the whole deparment took me out to lunch! One delicacy that I was given was ducks' tongues (I am not sure if this was specially reserved for visiting speech therapists)!

Sharynne, Jessica and Tara Whitehill
visiting Lamma Island

Carol To, Sharynne, and Pamela Cheung at HKU

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Lunch with the staff from HKU

Listening to children

One of the privileges of this Future Fellowship is listening to children. I am about to visit countries from Asia to Africa (via USA, Europe and UK) as part of the Future Fellowship and am looking forward to talking with children and people who devote their lives to children's speech and language.

Book: Children's speech

Dr Elise Baker (The University of Sydney) and I have been working together on a number of projects. While we were in Melbourne we co-presented a paper on evidence-based practice for intervention for children with speech sound disorders. We also worked on a book proposal and chapters outlined in my Future Fellowship for a book titled Children's speech.

Speech Pathology Australia National Conference

The Speech Pathology Australia National Conference was held in Melbourne this year.

Mr Bill Shorten, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services opened the conference, and suggested that speech pathologists are "civil rights actors" (I completely agree!). I was invited by SPA to discuss our research into the prevalence and impact of childhood communication impairment with Mr Shorten at the end of the conference.

During the conference I co-presented the following studies:

• The Sound Effects Study: A four-phased study examining speech impairment in a community-based sample of 4- to 5-year olds
• The Sound Effects Study: Speech impairment in early childhood ascertained by direct assessment, speech pathologist, teacher, parent, and child report
• The Sound Effects Study: Speech impairment in Indigenous and non Indigenous Australian children and co-occurrence with difficulties with language, hearing, oro-motor, and pre-literacy. 
• The Sound Effects Study: The experience and impact of speech impairment in early childhood
• The Sound Effects Study: Access to and participation in speech pathology services for children with speech impairment
• Evidence-based intervention for children with speech sound disorders (Baker & McLeod)
• Nonword repetition: A systematic review of purposes, populations, languages and variables (Crowe, McLeod & Ching)

Speech Pathology Australia and Charles Sturt University promoted the Sound Effects Study through their media releases. We were interviewed on a number of radio stations and our work was reported in online newspapers as a result.

 Dr. Gregg Lof from MIH, Boston was a keynote speaker. It was a great honour to have Gregg in Australia and for Australian speech pathologists to hear his dynamic presentations.

Sound Effects Study writing retreat

The Sound Effects Study was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant from 2007-2009. Linda Harrison, Lindy McAllister, Jane McCormack and I spent 3 productive days in Melbourne writing papers from the Sound Effects Study. We submitted 1 paper and have 4 almost ready to submit. We also prepared to present 5 papers at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference.

Sound Effects Study website
Chinese English People's News story
Iespider news

Vietnam’s first speech therapy degree

Australian Volunteers International and Trinh Foundation Australia is supporting Vietnam’s first speech therapy degree, to start at Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine, in Ho Chi Minh City in September 2010. Students will undertake a two-year postgraduate diploma. I have been invited to be one of the first academics to teach in the course.

The agreement for the course to be established was signed by

• Professor Lindy McAllister, The University of Queensland
• Professor Nguyen Tan Binh, Rector of Pham Ngoc Thach University
• Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung, Professor of the ENT Department of Pham Ngoc Thach University and Director of ENT Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City

I will be teaching one subject within the course and will be working with the student to establish protocols for the assessment of children's speech as part of my Future Fellowship.

Trinh Foundation website

L-R Sue Woodward, Marie Atherton, Lindy McAllister, Alison Winkworth
and Sharynne McLeod at the Trinh Foundation fundraising night

Multilingual children with hearing loss: Communication choices and outcomes

Kate Crowe (centre) with her supervisors
Prof. Sharynne McLeod and Dr. Teresa Ching

On Friday 7th May Kate Crowe, my PhD student presented her endorsement of candidature session at Australian Hearing in Chatswood, Sydney. Her PhD is titled Multilingual children with hearing loss: Communcation choices and outcomes.
Here is her synposis:
Children with hearing loss often have difficulty acquiring language due to their reduced ability to perceive spoken language (McConkey Robbins, Green, & Waltzman, 2004). Caregivers of children with a hearing loss must make decisions regarding their child’s communication mode (e.g., oral, manual or mixed communication) at very early stages in their child’s development, and re-evaluate these decisions as their child develops (Wheeler, Archbold, Hardie, & Watson, 2009). Caregivers from multilingual families or families where the preferred language is not the dominant community language, must also decide which language or languages they will use with their child (Waltzman, McConkey Robbins, Green, & Cohen, 2003). This situation leads to four areas of investigation explored in this thesis, all of which have been relatively unexplored in the literature to date. Firstly, what is the demography of communication mode and language use of children with hearing loss? Secondly, which factors do caregivers consider when making decisions about communication mode and language use for their child with a hearing loss? Thirdly, which factors do professionals consider important when advising the caregivers of children with hearing loss about communication mode and language use choices? Finally, what are the speech, language and participation outcomes of children with hearing loss in terms of the impact of different language use options? The information gained from these investigations will assist caregivers and professionals in understanding how decisions about communication mode and language use are made and the possible impact of these decisions on the speech, language and participation of children with hearing loss. Results will be discussed in the framework of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health - Children and Youth (ICF-CY, World Health Organization, 2007b), making findings accessible to health and education professionals internationally.

Occasional address at the CSU graduation

I was invited to give the occasional address at the Charles Sturt University Faculty of Education graduation ceremony today. My address was titled 'Every child is important'. It was wonderful to see the proud smiles of the graduating students.

With Chancellor Lawrie Willett

Presenting the occasional address

IJSLP accepted by Medline

I have just learned that IJSLP has been accepted for indexing by Medline. This is a very significant moment for the journal and will ensure that our work is seen by many more readers throughout the world. Our acceptance into Medline continues the exciting trend of the inclusion of IJSLP into the world's top databases. This continues the success of the journal over recent months: IJSLP has been accepted into PsychINFO, SCOPUS, and ISI (Spcial Sciences Citation Index) and now Medline!

Multilingual Australia

Australia is a very multilingual society. Of the languages other than English reported to be used at home, the most dominant languages are Italian (10.4%), Greek (8.0%), Cantonese (7.8%), Arabic (7.7%) and Mandarin (7.0%) (Australia Bureau of Statistics, 2006). In order the most frequent languages spoken are:

• Italian
• Greek 
• Cantonese
• Arabic
• Mandarin
• Vietnamese
• Spanish
• German
• Hindi
• Macedonian
• Croatian
• Australian Indigenous languages
• Korean 
• Turkish
• Polish
• Tagalog
• Serbian
• French
• Indonesian
• Filipino
• Maltese
• Russian
• Dutch
• Other Chinese languages
• Japanese
• Tamil
• Sinhalese
• Samoan
• Portuguese
• Khmer
• Persian
• Hungarian
• Dari 
• Other Iranic languages
• Other languages

Amazing Australia

As part of my Future Fellowship I have travelled to different places in Australia. Here are a few photos to show our amazing country.

Speech Pathology Australia National Tour

Speech Pathology Australia National Tour:
Working With Children From Multilingual Backgrounds
Presented by Associate Professor Cori Williams

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) National Tour presented by Cori Williams. It was wonderful to listen and learn from Cori and to discuss these important issues with other SLPs including Kate Crowe, my PhD student who also went to Canberra for the day. A number of SLPs from Canberra work with children of diplomats, so conducting intervention in these children's home languages is very important for when they return to their home countries.

Cori and I have designed a questionnaire that is being given to each of the participants in the SPA National Tour workshops to find out about Australian SLPs' beliefs and practices about working with children from multilingual backgrounds. Cori has now finished two of her eight presentations, so we look forward to analysing the data when she is finished.

Associate Professor Cori Williams and Professor Sharynne McLeod
thinking about multilingual speech in Canberra

HCSNet Workshop: Advances in Speech Production

This week I attended the HCSNet Workshop: Advances in Speech Production: Tools, Techniques and Recent Research at University of Western Sydney, Milperra.
There were many distinguished speakers:

• Christian Kroos (MARCS Labs, UWS) Making speech production transparent: The AHAA and Face & Voice laboratories at MARCS
• Douglas Whalen (Haskins Laboratories, U.S.A.). Ultrasound investigation of speech articulation dynamics
• Mark Tiede (Haskins Labs & MIT, U.S.A.). Uses and abuses of ElectroMagnetic Articulometry (EMA)
• Andy Butcher (Flinders U) Electropalatography (EPG): Tracking the spatio-temporal patterns of tongue-palate contact.
• Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson (U British Columbia, Canada). Time to re-think temporal control of communicative behavior
• Roland Goecke (U Canberra). Tracking faces without artificial markers

I co-presented 2 papers:

• Adaptation to the electropalatograph (EPG) palate: Consonant acoustics, listener perceptions, and speaker rating (Sharynne McLeod and Jeff Searl)
• Combining ultrasound and electropalatography (EPG) for research into speech production (Sharynne McLeod and Alan Wrench)