School of Education research seminar by Brooke Scriven

Brooke Scriven is presenting a seminar this Wednesday, 20th September at 3-4pm in the School of Education research seminar series. The seminar can be attended in person in Wagga Wagga, and via video conference in Albury.

Brooke's presentation draws on her doctoral research investigating how a young child accomplishes digital literacy practices through family interactions during technology use at home. She recently delivered a version of her presentation at the International Institute of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis conference in Kolding, Denmark.

Title: "Hello Barbie": The social organisation of a young child's telephone conversation in pretend play with digital technologies

Abstract: Conversation analytic research of telephone conversations has generated significant discoveries of the orderly and sequential nature of talk. Recent findings of video recorded telephone conversations have shown how talk is connected to ongoing activity continuing beyond the call (Mondada, 2008). However, little is known about how young children orient to the orderliness of talk in pretend telephone conversations, or how their talk relates to the ongoing activity of their play. This presentation considers a young child's pretend telephone call as she views the music video Queen of the waves (from the film Barbie in a mermaid's tale) on YouTube. Data are drawn from a video recording made by the child's mother in their home. The perspective of ethnomethodology and the analytic method of conversation analysis were used to sequentially examine the child's pretend telephone conversation with Barbie. The child dials Barbie's telephone number and talks to her using a toy mobile phone. Her talk is touched off by objects onscreen and named in the song lyrics of the music video. Discussion considers how the child orients to and uses the digital technologies (the YouTube video on the laptop and the toy mobile phone), and draws on her understandings of how people interact over the telephone, to socially organise a telephone conversation with Barbie in her pretend play.

Reference:

Mondada, L. (2008). Using video for a sequential and multimodal analysis of social interaction: Videotaping institutional telephone calls. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(3). Retrieved from www.qualitative-research.net 
 

New Research: NAPLAN testing regime failing students with speech and language difficulties

Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) is releasing ground-breaking research (conducted by RIPPLE researchers Professor Sharynne McLeod, Professor Linda Harrison and Dr Cen Wang) based on thousands of Australian children from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children that shows NAPLAN is failing children with speech and language disorders.
The research shows that students with speech and language problems achieve significantly lower scores on every NAPLAN test (reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy) for school years (grades) 3, 5 and 7, than students without these problems.
The research also exposes for the first time that students with speech and language problems are more likely to be excluded from NAPLAN testing than those without these problems. 

Sharynne McLeod has been advocating for changes at the policy level to support children with speech language and literacy needs. Today she presented the above research to a public hearing of the Senate Education and Employment Committee.

Sharynne was interviewed for articles in today’s Sydney Morning Herald http://bit.ly/1MLXyYs

The Age

http://m.theage.com.au/nsw/education-naplan-testing-regime-failing-students-with-speech-language-disorders-20150923-gjsy39.html

The Courier Mail  

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/naplan-bias-schools-exclude-children-with-communication-impairments/story-fnihsrf2-1227542706620

and a number of other media outlets.
Well done on this great  advocacy work for children with speech, language and literacy needs.

Gaenor Dixon (SPA President) and Sharynne McLeod presenting at the Senate Inquiry

New publication - Multilingualism and speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and social-emotional outcomes at school

Congratulations to RIPPLE members Professor Sharynne McLeod and Professor Linda Harrison (and their colleagues at the Queensland University of Technology) on their recent publication in Early Childhood Research Quarterly titled:

Multilingualism and speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and social-emotional outcomes at school

This large-scale longitudinal population study provided a rare opportunity to consider the interface between multilingualism and speech-language competence on children’s academic and social-emotional outcomes and to determine whether differences between groups at 4–5 years persist, deepen, or dis-appear with time and schooling. Four distinct groups were identified from the Kindergarten cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) (1) English-only + typical speech and language(n = 2012); (2) multilingual + typical speech and language (n = 476); (3) English-only + speech and language concern (n = 643); and (4) multilingual + speech and language concern (n = 109). Two analytic approaches were used to compare these groups. First, a matched case-control design was used to randomly match multilingual children with speech and language concern (group 4, n = 109) to children in groups 1–3 on gender, age, and family socio-economic position in a cross-sectional comparison of vocabulary, school readiness, and behavioral adjustment. Next, analyses were applied to the whole sample to determine longitudinal effects of group membership on teachers’ ratings of literacy, numeracy, and behavioral adjustment at ages 6–7 and 8–9 years. At 4–5 years, multilingual children with speech and language concern did equally well or better than English-only children (with or without speech and language concern) on school readiness tests but performed more poorly on measures of English vocabulary and behavior. At ages 6–7 and 8–9, the early gap between English-only and multilingual children had closed. Multilingualism was not found to contribute to differences in literacy and numeracy outcomes at school; instead, outcomes were more related to concerns about children’s speech and language in early childhood. There were no group differences for socio-emotional outcomes. Early evidence for the combined risks of multilingualism plus speech and language concern was not upheld into the school years.

The full text can be access here:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200615000678

Full citation:

McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., Whiteford, C., & Walker, S. (2016). Multilingualism and speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and social-emotional outcomes at school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 34, 53-66. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.08.005