CSU media: Device or advice? – online speech pathology solutions trialled in NSW

CSU has just issued a media release summarizing the outcomes of our NSW Health Grant:
"Device or advice? – online speech pathology solutions trialled in NSW"

Waiting lists in the Northern Territory

Last night Nicole McGill presented a workshop to the Northern Territory (NT) branch of Speech Pathology Australia. Her topic was "The Wait Lifting Study: Understanding and managing speech pathology waiting lists". She provided insights from her research to support the NT project on waiting lists. Congratulations Nicole - it's great to see the impact of your work even before you have submitted your PhD.

Elements in phonological intervention: A comparison of three approaches using the Phonological Intervention Taxonomy

The following book chapter has been accepted for publication:
Baker, E., McCauley, R. J., Williams, A. L., & McLeod, S. (2019, in press). Elements in phonological intervention: A comparison of three approaches using the Phonological Intervention Taxonomy. In E. Babatsouli & M. J. Ball (Eds.) On under-reported monolingual child phonology. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Here is the final summary paragraph of our chapter

In summary, in this chapter, we have outlined the value of a carefully developed system for describing interventions, such as the Phonological Intervention Taxonomy, which builds on the rich history of Ingram’s work in child phonology. We did this primarily by illustrating how explicit, detailed descriptions of intervention structure can facilitate comparisons that can help the clinician make clearer decisions about what intervention may meet a child’s needs. In addition, we have presented thoughts about how such a taxonomy might be applied with the goals of increasing accuracy in the use of interventions, the clinician’s understanding of their own readiness to learn and use an intervention, and the field’s development of more rationally based curricula for beginning clinicians. Finally, we suggest research efforts that may lead to a better understanding of how interventions work and for whom they might work best.

The Phonological Intervention Taxonomy was originally described here:
Baker, E., Williams, A. L., McLeod, S., & McCauley, R. (2018). Elements of phonological interventions for children with speech sound disorders: The development of a taxonomy. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(3), 906-935. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0127. 

Media release in the US about our research on parent-child book reading

Dr Michelle Brown has been contacted by the Public Relations Manager at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

"Each year, ASHA’s PR group selects roughly ten presentations to highlight to media in a press release about its annual Convention. I thought your research 4629: Parent-Child Book Reading Impacts Academic Achievement in Grade 3 sounded very interesting and I’d like to potentially include it in our press release."

The paper is written by Michelle Brown, Cen (Audrey) Wang, and myself as part of Michelle's postdoc on my CSU Senior Research Fellowship. There are over 3,000 presentations at the ASHA convention, so this is a huge honour! Here is the media release: https://www.asha.org/News/2019/ASHA-Annual-Convention-Will-Showcase-Latest-Research-Clinical-Advances-in-Communication-Sciences-and-Disorders/

Charles Sturt University's 30th birthday celebrations

On Saturday night Charles Sturt University had a cocktail party to celebrate 30 years as a university (other CSU celebrations are here). It was an enjoyable evening talking with colleagues from across the university, including Emeritus Professor JoAnne Reid (photo above). I have been at CSU for 20 years - so have had lots of great opportunities to work with many great people.

Planning for the 2021 composium on multilingualism and children's speech

Tonight two IALP committees (Multilingualism and Multiculturalism; and Child Speech) had a meeting to plan a combined composium to be held in South Africa in August 2021. It is going to be an exciting event.

Yvonne Wren (UK), Sharon Moonsamy and Michelle Pascoe (South Africa)
and Sharynne McLeod (Australia)

Congratulations Helen on your PhD

Congratulations to Helen Blake on being approved to graduate with her PhD. Helen's thesis "English proficiency, intelligibility, and participation of multilingual speakers in Australia" included 7 articles + 1 encyclopaedia entry. Dr Sarah Verdon and I are proud supervisors.

Here is the blog post at the time she submitted her thesis: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2019/03/congratulations-helen-phd-submission.html

Her PhD thesis is available here: https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/english-proficiency-intelligibility-and-participation-of-multilin​

Helen met her PhD examiners at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention in Orlando, Florida who congratulated her on her success.

Prof Travis Threats with Helen

Helen with Prof Amber Franklin

Helen with Prof Lilly Cheng and Emeritus Prof Dolores Battle

Thank you for the celebratory morning tea

This morning we had a celebratory morning tea. Thank you so much to my colleagues and students (past and present) for this wonderful acknowledgment of our collaborative work over the years.

Colleagues from the School of Teacher Education (SOTE)

A/Prof Alan Bain, Carol Burgess (HOS), Prof Sharynne McLeod

From Carol Burgess (Head of School): The School of Teacher Education has had a lot to celebrate over the past few weeks so we would like to come together to take time out to recognise some wonderful achievements for the staff within our school.

• Sharynne McLeod was recently recognised in The Australian newspaper for being Australia’s Top Researcher in the World for the field of Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology.
• Alan Bain was also recently recognised for his work, being named on The Educator’s inaugural ‘Hot List’ of innovators in Australian Higher Education.

These are some amazing achievements and SOTE are very proud of Sharynne and Alan. If staff in Bathurst are able to join us for a morning tea on Wednesday 6 November at 10 am, the school will provide some lovely treats to indulge in during our celebration.

Thank you to Donna Bateup and Carol Burgess for organising the event

VietSpeech team meeting in Sydney

Today, the VietSpeech team met in Sydney for a whole day of discussion of our progress to date and planning for 2020. We have almost finished the second year of our Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. We have completed study 1, made good progress on Study 2 and 3 and will undertake Study 4 next year. We have presented papers at a number of conferences, and have published a number of papers as well. It was such a pleasure to meet with our wonderful, enthusiastic, and hard-working team:
• Professor Sharynne McLeod (Chief Investigator)
• Dr Sarah Verdon (Chief Investigator)
• Dr Cen (Audrey) Wang (Project officer)
• Dr Van H. Tran (PhD student, 2018-2020)
• Kate Margetson (Project officer)
• Lily To (Research Assistant)
• Kylie Huynh (Research Assistant)
• Jake Sheader (Research Assistant)

Kate, Kylie, Lily, Sarah (video), Van, Audrey

Dr Van Tran, Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod, Kylie Huynh, Lily To, Dr Audrey Wang

 McLeod, S. & Verdon, S. (2018-2020). Vietnamese-Australian children’s speech and language competence. Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP180102848).

Mandarin Articulation and Phonology Test

While in China I met Prof Pao-chuan Torng who is the Chair of the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at the National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences. She has published a test titled the Mandarin Articulation and Phonology Test (and I was able to purchase a copy to add to my collection), and written two books.

Additionally, she has translated a number of texts into Chinese, including
McLeod, S. (2014). Speech sound acquisition. In J. E. Bernthal, N. W. Bankson, & P. Flipsen Jnr (Eds.), Articulation and phonological disorders: Speech sound disorders in children (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Visiting Beijing Language and Culture University

On Friday Dr Ao Chen invited me to visit the speech-language pathology clinic at Beijing Language and Culture University.  Dr Chen obtained her PhD from Utrecht University (where Anniek van Doornik studies), and undertook a postdoc in infants' tone perception at Western Sydney University.

Walking with Dr Chen along the avenue of autumn trees

Beijing Language and Culture University has a Masters in Speech-Language Pathology and a Bachelors of Speech and Hearing. Prof Liqun Gao organised the Belt and Road summit, the lecturers presented and attended, and the students were volunteers (including Megan Li and Xiao Yao). I enjoyed visiting the university, seeing the clinic and having a long discussion about speech acquisition,  assessment, and intervention. We followed the visit with traditional Beijing hotpot.

Sharynne and Dr Ao Chen

Dr Chen and I met with the speech-language pathologist and students in the university speech clinic

Enjoying traditional Beijing hotpot

Ancient and modern

While in China, we had the opportunity to visit some significant sites, including the Great Wall, Forbidden City (Imperial Palace), and the 2008 Olympic site.

David, Sharynne and Ben on the Great Wall of China

The Great Wall extends for 8,000kms!

Sharynne and Ben at the Hall of Literary Elegance in the Forbidden City (Imperial Palace)

David, Sharynne and Ben near the Olympic Park

Ben and Sharynne at the Olympic Park

“One Belt, One Road” Speech and Language Rehabilitation Summit, Beijing, China

This week I was invited to represent Australia to speak at the “One Belt, One Road” Speech and Language Rehabilitation Summit Forum at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. My invited presentations were titled:

• Speech Sound Disorders in Children 
• Speech Pathology Education in Australia 

Prof GAO Liqun (China - Organizer), Prof Sumalai Maroonroge (Thailand/US), Philippa Friary (NZ), Prof Lilly Cheng (US), Prof Sharynne McLeod (Australia), Prof Kartini Ahmad (Malaysia), Dr Ben Pham (Vietnam)

Prof Pao-Chuan Torng (Taiwan) and Prof Sharynne McLeod

 Dr Ben Pham represented Vietnam and presented an invited paper on the development of the speech and language therapy (SALT) profession in Vietnam.

Dr Ben Pham presenting her invited paper

Congratulating Ben after her presentation: Prof Sumalai Maroonroge (Thailand/US), Dr Lemmietta McNeilly (ASHA, US), Prof Kartini Ahmad (Malaysia), Dr Ben Pham (Vietnam), Christine Medina-Chin (Philippines), Prof Lilly Cheng (US), Mae Catherine Sadicon and Elinor Cunanan-Bautista (Philippines)

Prof Sharynne McLeod presenting the McLeod and Crowe (2018) research about children's speech acquisition

Chatting with Dr Ao Chen from Beijing Language and Culture University

Radio interview about new website for waiting for speech pathology

Recently ABC radio talked with Emily Davis and Katrina Rohr about our Waiting for Speech Pathology website. Here is the interview:
Part 1
Part 2
Emily described the website and the importance of book sharing.

• Here is the Waiting for Speech Pathology website: https://wnswlhd.health.nsw.gov.au/our-services/speech-pathology
• Here is a blogpost about our NSW Health Grant: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2019/10/finishing-our-waiting-for-speech.html

Well done Emily and Katrina.

Vice Chancellor's Blog - October 2019

Thanks to the members of our Speech-Language-Multilingualism team at CSU for their impactful research contributing to this mention on the Vice-Chancellor's blog for October.

A couple of pieces of good news that have made headlines in these past weeks include topping the Good Universities guide for graduate employment ranking, receiving $460,000 for Indigenous and rural student scholarships and research from the Central West Medical Association, two of our researchers Dr Hamid Jamali and Professor Christine Edwards-Groves acknowledged as national leaders in the Australian's 2019 Research magazine and our Public Relations students taking out first place in the national industry competition 'Pitch This'... Charles Sturt is at world standard in seven Fields of Research, which map to five of the 10 Fields of Education in which we teach. Based on this, we believe the University is already compliant with the proposed 2030 thresholds. As an example of our success on the world stage, is Professor of Speech and Language Acquisition, Professor Sharynne McLeod, was recently hailed as the world’s most cited expert in her field.

Research assistants are wonderful!

I have a grant from the Faculty of Arts and Education to employ research assistants to support the research of our Speech-Language-Multilingualism team. My current research assistants are:

• Dr Kate Crowe - Multilingual Children's Speech
• Jake Sheader - Professorial support and VietSpeech
• Lily To - VietSpeech
• Kylie Huynh - VietSpeech
• Olivia Richards - StoryBabies

Their support makes a HUGE difference to the rigour and productivity of our research. It is great to have them on our team.

Jake Sheader

Lily and Kylie's role on the VietSpeech project is described here

Dr Michelle Brown and Olivia Richards (StoryBabies)

Congratulations Helen!

Helen Blake has just received a letter from Chair of the Faculty PhD Examinations' Committee to say "Congratulations to you and your supervisory team for a successful PhD completion." What wonderful news. Congratulations Helen.

Meetings

Being involved in a university includes attendance at and contributions to many meetings. Today I attended the Faculty of Arts and Education Board Meeting - that had a 293 page agenda, and lasted for almost 3 hours. Although this time there was limited discussion of research, higher degree students, and other issues that are directly related to my day-to-day work, it was useful to both learn about and be part of the meeting addressing the wide-ranging issues facing the Faculty and University.

Planning to finish Nicole's PhD

This week Nicole McGill is in Bathurst to discuss the final phase of her PhD. She has written and submitted five journal articles already. We are having fun considering her introduction and conclusion chapters as well as other parts of the exegesis. How exciting.

Nicole visiting Sharynne in springtime Bathurst

Finishing our Waiting for Speech Pathology grant

In mid 2017 we were awarded a grant from the NSW Health Translational Research Grant Scheme. Our journey is documented through this blog here: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/search/label/NSWHealthTRGS

Two years later we are happy to report that the grant has been completed as planned on time and on budget. This week we had a meeting to go through the initial grant application and finalise our reports, media, and dissemination.

Here is the Waiting for Speech Pathology website: https://wnswlhd.health.nsw.gov.au/our-services/speech-pathology

Here are a few of the outputs from our study (so far):

Journal articles

• McGill, N. & McLeod, S. (2019). Aspirations for a website to support families’ active waiting for speech-language pathology. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 21, 263-274. doi:10.1080/17549507.2019.1604802 
• McLeod, S., Davis, E., Rohr, K., McGill, N., Miller, K., Roberts, A., Thornton, S., Ahio, N., & Ivory, N. (2019, submitted July). Waiting for speech-language pathology services: A randomised controlled trial comparing device, advice, and therapy. Manuscript in submission (under review). 
• McGill, N., McLeod, S., Ivory, N., Davis, E., & Rohr, K. (2019, October). Randomised controlled trial evaluating active versus passive waiting for speech-language pathology. Manuscript in submission (under review). 

Conference presentations

• Davis, E., McLeod, S., Rohr, K., Roberts, K., McGill, N., Miller, K., Thornton, S., Ahio, N. (June, 2019). Randomised controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of advice versus device for children on speech pathology waiting lists. Poster presented at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference, Brisbane, Australia. 
• McGill, N., McLeod, S., Davis, E., Rohr, K., & Miller, K. (June, 2019). ‘Wait’ lifting: Randomised controlled trial evaluating active versus passive waiting for speech pathology by children with speech and language difficulties. Poster presented at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference, Brisbane, Australia.

Discussing the finalisation of our grant: Sharynne McLeod, Audrey Wang, Emily Davis, Katrina Rohr, Nicole McGill

Celebrating the outcome of our hard work on the grant