October 28, 2011

Listening to children and young people with speech language and communication needs

Abigail Beverly's artwork that is featured on the cover
This week Prof Sue Roulstone (University of West of England) and I have been finalizing page proofs for our new edited book titled Listening to children and young people with speech language and communication needs.
This book profiles the voice of the children and young people with speech, language and communication needs. Throughout the book, many examples of children’s opinions and thoughts are included, delivered via a range of frontiers, including art, photographs, and quotes.
Fifty people have contributed chapters to this book providing insights from speech and language therapists, social workers, psychologists, teachers, researchers, advocates, parents, and young people with speech, language and communication needs.More details can be found here.
Here are the contents and authors:

Foreword – Rt Hon John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons
PART I. ADVOCATES’ VIEWS
Chapter 1. A duty to listen
Lord David John Ramsbotham
Chapter 2. Listen up!
Abigail Beverly
Chapter 3. The bridge between the world of the disabled and the world of the fully functioning
Andrea Kaye
Chapter 4. Working in partnership: Therapists, children and families
Hazel Roddam
Chapter 5. Tuning into children with speech and language impairment
Linda Lascelles
Chapter 6. Social work and communication with children with speech, language and communication needs
Tillie Curran

PART II. ISSUES
Chapter 7. Listening to children and young people with speech, language and communication needs: Who, why and how?
Sharynne McLeod
Chapter 8. Children’s voice and perspectives: The struggle for recognition, meaning and effectiveness
Barry Percy-Smith
Chapter 9. The importance of silence when hearing the views of children and young people with speech, language and communication needs
Ann Lewis
Chapter 10. Ethics, consent and assent when listening to children with speech, language and communication needs
Rosalind Merrick
Chapter 11. Issues and assumptions of participatory research with children with speech, language and communication needs
Clodagh Miskelly
Chapter 12. Independent advocacy and listening to children with speech, language and communication needs
Jane Dalrymple
Chapter 13. Listening to proxies for children with speech, language and communication needs.
Juliet Goldbart and Julie Marshall
Chapter 14. Listening to adolescents with speech, language and communication needs who are in contact with the youth justice system
Pamela C. Snow, Dixie D. Sanger and Karen Bryan
Chapter 15. Exploring identity of children with speech, language and communication needs by listening to children's narratives
Rena Lyons
Chapter 16. Listening to children with speech, language and communication needs through arts-based methods
Jane Coad and Helen Hambly
Chapter 17. Cognitive and linguistic factors in the interview process
Julie E. Dockrell and Geoff Lindsay

PART III. EXAMPLES
Chapter 18. Listening to individuals with language impairment: What one can learn in 30 years
Bonnie Brinton and Martin Fujiki
Chapter 19. The Stammering Information Programme: Listening to young people who stammer
Ali Berquez, Elaine Kelman and Frances Cook
Chapter 20. “Give me time and I’ll tell you”: Using ethnography to investigate aspects of identity with teenagers who use alternative and augmentative methods of communication (AAC)
Mary Wickenden
Chapter 21. Listening to 4- to 5-year-old children with speech impairment using drawings, interviews and questionnaires
Sharynne McLeod, Jane McCormack, Lindy McAllister, Linda J. Harrison and Erin L. Holliday
Chapter 22. Listening to children with cleft lip and palate in Germany
Sandra Neumann
Chapter 23. “I can’t say words much”: Listening to school-aged children’s experiences of speech impairment
Graham Daniel and Sharynne McLeod
Chapter 24. Listening to adolescents after traumatic brain injury
Lucie Shanahan, Lindy McAlister and Michael Curtin
Chapter 25. Listening to the post-16 transition experiences of young people with specific language impairment
Catherine Carroll and Julie Dockrell
Chapter 26. Listening to children and young people talk about their desired outcomes
Helen Hambly, Jane Coad, Geoff Lindsay and Sue Roulstone
Chapter 27. “Everything is easier ‘cos they get it...”: Listening to young people’s views about people who work with them
Wendy Lee
Chapter 28. Designing a measure to explore the quality of life for children with speech, language and communication needs
Chris Markham
Chapter 29. Listening to infants about what life is like in childcare: A mosaic approach
Frances Press, Ben S. Bradley, Joy Goodfellow, Linda J. Harrison, Sharynne McLeod, Jennifer Sumsion, Sheena Elwick and Tina Stratigos
Chapter 30. Listening to the views of children in longitudinal population-based studies
Linda J. Harrison and Jane McCormack
Chapter 31. Finding ways to listen to young people in youth groups: The Afasic Youth Project 
Abigail Beverly and Clare Davies-Jones
Chapter 32. Making a film as a means of listening to young people
Sue Roulstone, Clodagh Miskelly and Robbie Simons
Chapter 33. Listening to siblings of children with speech, language and communication needs
Jacqueline Barr
Chapter 34. Listening to improve services for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs
Sue Roulstone and Sharynne McLeod

October 15, 2011

Learning about the research process

Over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to reflect on the research process. There is so much background knowledge and information that is not published about how to undertake high quality research that  results in successful publication and grant outcomes; but more importantly results in changing people's lives.

I had the opportunity to learn about grant writing and increasing grant success from Prof Alan Johnson (Former Australian Research Council Executive Director) during his week-long visit to CSU. Hints included how to profile your top ten publications by not only including the number of citations for each item, but also the ISI Journal Citation Report rankings to demonstrate the quality of the journals you have published in.

Also during the past weeks I have worked with guest editors on special issues of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology  - showing them background information about the review and publication process. I think one aspect that was new to them was the number of potential reviewers who decline invitations to review manuscripts (thank you to all of you who say yes!), and the number of life events that happen to reviewers so that their reviews are late.

The CSU Faculty of Education PhD Students' Forum was held recently as well. I enjoyed listening to The Thesis Whisperer, Dr Inger Mewburn (http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/) who presented an entertaining keynote address titled "What I learned about doing a PhD from reading trash fiction". She likened a PhD to an avatar. 

During the Forum, I was invited to co-present a session  titled "Undertaking a PhD by publication"  - and the Thesis Whisperer tweeted about the session, drawing a number of comments from around the ether. I see a thesis by publication as a very sensible strategy, that enables you to get immediate international feedback on your work, enables you to establish yourself as a scholar, and enables you to move onto new things after your PhD (rather than rewriting your big book into a format for publication).

At the same forum, I was also invited onto a panel with three other professors to discuss PhD supervision. We came from very different disciplinary backgrounds. Some of us had young students who were studying full time on-campus, whereas others had mature-aged students studying part time at a distance. These aspects influenced our answers to the following questions (although comments about ensuring high quality outcomes, and providing students with high quality input were similar).
  • Could you share two of your top tips for supervising?
  • How do you typically use your allocated time for supervising?
  • What do you give priority to during the first month of a new higher degree student supervision relationship?
  • How do you sort out a 'personality clash' within a supervision relationship? 
  • What factors do you take into account when selecting thesis examiners? 
 Some of my thinking and ideas about the research process will be published soon. I can't wait to read the other chapters in the book.
McLeod, S. (2011, in press). Disseminating research: Reading, writing, and publishing. In N. Müller & M. J. Ball (Eds). The Blackwell guide to research methods in clinical linguistics and phonetics. Oxford: Blackwells.

Finally, over the past few weeks two of my research students (Kate Crowe and Bek Lockart) have spent productive time in Bathurst writing papers from their research. I really enjoy this face-to-face time with my students - since most of them are doing their studies by distance.
Prof David McKinnon, Kate Crowe, and Prof Sharynne McLeod


October 11, 2011

Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children

Recently Brian Goldstein and I have finalised the page proofs of our book: Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children to be published by Multilingual Matters.
Here are the links to the hard cover and paperback versions of the book.
The book includes 30 chapters written by 44 authors from 16 countries and includes 112 languages!
Here is the table of contents:

PART I. FOUNDATIONS
Chapter1. Prologue: Cross-linguistic and multilingual aspects of speech sound disorders in children
David Ingram
Chapter 2. Sociolinguistic and cultural considerations when working with multilingual children
Madalena Cruz-Ferreira
Chapter 3. Translation to practice: Sociolinguistic and cultural considerations when working with the Pakistani heritage community in England, UK
Carol Stow, Sean Pert, and Ghada Khattab
Chapter 4. Translation to practice: Sociolinguistic and cultural considerations when working with Indigenous children in Australia
Cori J. Williams
Chapter 5. Vowels and consonants of the world’s languages
Martin J. Ball
Chapter 6. Prosody in the world’s languages
Sue Peppé
Chapter 7. Translation to practice: Prosody in five European languages
Sue Peppé, Martine Coene, Isabelle Hesling, Pastora Martínez-Castilla, and Inger Moen
Chapter 8. Perceptual considerations in multilingual adult and child speech acquisition
Susan Rvachew, Karen Mattock, Meghan Clayards, Pi-Yu Chiang, and Françoise Brosseau-Lapré

PART II. MULTILINGUAL SPEECH ACQUISITION
Chapter 9. A complexity theory account of canonical babbling in young children
Barbara L. Davis and Sophie Kern
Chapter 10. Typical and atypical multilingual speech acquisition
Brian A. Goldstein and Sharynne McLeod
Chapter 11. Translation to practice: Typical bidialectal speech acquisition in Jamaica
Karla N. Washington
Chapter 12. Translation to practice: Typical and atypical multilingual speech acquisition in Iceland
Thóra Másdóttir (Þóra Másdóttir)

PART III. SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY PRACTICE
Chapter 13. Multilingual speech assessment
Sharynne McLeod
Chapter 14. Translation to practice: Creating sampling tools to assess multilingual children’s speech
Sharynne McLeod
Chapter 15. Translation to practice: Assessment of the speech of multilingual children in Turkey
Seyhun Topbaş
Chapter 16. Translation to practice: Assessment of the speech of Spanish-English bilingual children in the United States of America
Raúl F. Prezas and Raúl Rojas
Chapter 17. Translation to practice: Assessment of children’s speech sound production in Hong Kong
Carol Kit Sum To and Pamela Sau Ping Cheung
Chapter 18. Transcription of the speech of multilingual children with speech sound disorders
Jan Edwards and Benjamin Munson
Chapter 19. Translation to practice: Transcription of the speech of multilingual children
B. May Bernhardt and Joseph P. Stemberger
Chapter 20. Translation to practice: Transcription of the speech and sign of bimodal children with hearing loss
Kathryn Crowe
Chapter 21. Analysis of the speech of multilingual children with speech sound disorders
Shelley E. Scarpino and Brian A. Goldstein
Chapter 22. Translation to practice: Acoustic analysis of the speech of multilingual children in Korea
Minjung Kim and Carol Stoel-Gammon
Chapter 23. Translation to practice: Phonological analysis of the speech of multilingual children in Malta
Helen Grech
Chapter 24. Intervention for multilingual children with speech sound disordersChristina Gildersleeve-Neumann and Brian A. Goldstein
Chapter 25. Translation to practice: Intervention for multilingual children with speech sound disorders in Germany
Annette V. Fox-Boyer
Chapter 26. Translation to practice: Intervention for multilingual Hebrew-Speaking children with speech sound disorders in Israel
Avivit Ben David
Chapter 27. Translation to practice: Intervention for multilingual children with speech sound disorders in Montréal, Québec, Canada
Isabelle Simard
Chapter 28. Literacy and metalinguistic considerations of multilingual children with speech sound disorders
Yvette Hus
Chapter 29. Translation to practice: Metalinguistic considerations for Cuban Spanish-English bilingual children
Ruth Huntley Bahr and Felix Matias
Chapter 30. Multilingual children with speech sound disorders: An epilogue
Brian A. Goldstein and Sharynne McLeod

October 2, 2011

SCOPUS Young Researcher of the Year Australia

Congratulations to Dr Jane McCormack who has been announced as the “SCOPUS Young Researcher of the Year Australia” in the category of Humanities and Social Sciences. The prestigious award was sponsored by Elsevier and the formal presentation was made at the Australian Research Management Society Conference 2011 on Friday 16 September 2011 in Sydney.
The criteria for the awards are here 
The CSU media release is here 
Dr Jane McCormack - SCOPUS Young Researcher of the Year Australia - Humanities and Social Sciences

Kate Organ (CSU Research Office), Dr Jane McCormack, and Sharynne