Report - 2007
School of Human Communication Sciences
Introduction
The School of Human Communication Sciences had another successful year, particularly in development of innovative curricula, research, international collaborations and clinical/professional activities. Despite the enormous investment of staff time and resources required to offer both undergraduate and graduate-entry professional education in speech pathology and to source adequate numbers of clinical placements, staff maintained their strong publication rates in high quality international journals, increased their research collaborations and competitive grant income, and took leading roles in national and international professional activities. The staff members are to be congratulated for their achievements over what has been another challenging year.
Professorial Appointments, Significant Retirements, Other Staff Recognitions
Dr Jacinta Douglas was elected to Fellowship of the Australian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment. Jacinta is the first speech pathologist to become a Fellow of this society and the first staff member from La Trobe University to receive this high honour. Dr Jenni Oates was re-elected to the Council of La Trobe University in February, Dr Susan Block was appointed as a University representative to the Golden Key Honour Society, and Dr Miranda Rose was appointed as the Co-Chair of the Victorian branch of the Australian Aphasia Association.
Two senior academic staff resigned from the School in 2007. Professor Sheena Reilly resigned to take up a position as Professor of Paediatric Speech Pathology, Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne and Dr Anne Ozanne retired in July. Professor Reilly and Dr Ozanne both made enormous contributions to the School’s research, teaching and community service activities and will be sorely missed.
Key Developments in Teaching and Clinical Education
A major focus of the School’s activities in 2007 was the re-design of the current speech pathology programs in accord with the Faculty’s innovative curriculum reform strategy. The process of aligning the current graduate entry Master of Speech Pathology program with the new Bachelors/Masters double degree sequence across the entire Faculty began in 2007 and will continue well into 2008 and 2009.
2007 also provided a number of challenges with regard to student placements for the School. Although the 1st year M Sp Path students were placed relatively easily, placements for 2nd year students again proved extremely difficult to source. The final year B Sp Path cohort of 2007 was smaller than it was in 2006, which meant that all students were placed by the end of the year. However, loss of placements occurred during the year so that several students were forced to complete placements in 2008. Placements in the area of communication and swallowing disorders in adults were again very difficult to source but the School’s Agreement with Northern Health to place teams of four students in long block placements went some way to ease this pressure. This group supervision model continues to be a success.
In 2007 the School rolled out the use of a new national assessment tool, COMPASS™.
COMPASS™ has now been implemented across the B Sp Path and M Sp Path programs. The clinical education team carried out seven introductory COMPASS™ workshops for clinicians across Melbourne and regional Victoria throughout the year. In July the School’s Clinical Education Coordinator, Rachel Davenport, participated in a COMPASS™ Benchmarking Consortium meeting in Sydney, with other clinical education coordinators and Heads of Schools from programs across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The group worked on the development of a protocol for benchmarking and the development of a new online COMPASS™ tool.
Key Developments in Research
Funding Success
Grants totalling $739,157 were awarded to HCS staff in 2007 for their research work:
A randomised controlled trial of a new treatment to improve functional communication outcome for adults with traumatic brain injury. Victorian Neurotrauma Initiative Project Grant: $343,802. Douglas, J.
Can volitional and reflexive saccadic eye movements predict persistent problems after mild head injury in children? Victorian Neurotrauma Initiative Project Grant: $332,828. Abel, L., Douglas, J.
Take Two- ‘Small Talk’: A project to develop a pre assessment tool of hearing speech and language difficulties experienced by children aged four to seven years who have been abused. Baker Foundation Project Grant: $140,000. Frederico, M., Douglas, J., Doell, E., Joffe, B., Harrison, J., Hamley, M., Hosie, K., Jackson, A., Black, C., Bamblett, M., Salamone, C.
Pilot Study to determine the effectiveness of the Blank Questions component of the Albany District Oral Language Focus programme for children with and without diagnosed language disorders. Department of Education and Early Childhood Development: $30,000. O'Brien, M., Joffe, B., Mathison, A., Brodzik, A.
Emotional facial recognition in adults with traumatic brain injury: an analysis of the visual scan path. La Trobe University Faculty Grant: $9,130. Vassallo, S., Douglas, J.
Cohort investigation of children’s voices: prevalence, predictors and co-morbidities of voice disorders in children at 4 years of age. La Trobe University Faculty Grant $9,527. Oates, J. & Reilly, S. This project is part of a larger NHMRC and MCRI funded project, Early Language in Victoria Study.
Production and Evaluation of the Voice Care for Teachers DVD. Following an unfunded preliminary evaluation of the new DVD conducted by the authors (Alison Russell, Jenni Oates, and Cecilia Pemberton), the Catholic Church Insurances Ltd commissioned the authors to undertake a formal evaluation of the prevention package in Catholic Education Office Schools in NSW during the first half of 2008. Catholic Church Insurances Ltd purchased 300 copies of the DVD ($58,000) for the project and provided an additional $3,000 for the research. These amounts are not included in the total funding figure above because they did not arise from competitive grants.
Research outcomes
Ongoing grants and grants that concluded in 2007 have produced interesting results across a range of areas in speech pathology practice. Some highlights follow:
Tongue Oral Pressure (TOP) tool; a method of measuring oral pressure during swallowing. Perry, A., Cotton, S and Grant, C. In this work funded by the ANZ Foundation, researchers have designed and built a portable device to measure oro-lingual pressure during swallowing, thereby making possible measurement without having to use videofluoroscopy (ie X-rays).
Swallowing outcomes after total laryngectomy. Maclean, J. and Perry, A. This project is funded by the Laryngectomy Association of New South Wales. Researchers have ascertained that the incidence of dysphagia (swallowing problems) in the study cohort is 60%; higher than anticipated by clinicians working in the area. Further analysis is underway to document, for the first time, associated limitations to patients' activity and participation.
Development and evaluation of an on-line inter-professional preparation programme for clinical educators. Dr Rose is one of eight researchers from five Australian universities that form the Australian Consortium for Clinical Educator Preparation. In 2007, the consortium carried out a large scale trial of the recently completed Australian Clinical Education Preparation Programme (http://www.clinicaleducation.info/index.aspx). Results suggest that this on-line programme meets the learning needs of a wide variety of allied health clinicians in offering flexible and time efficient learning opportunities.
Communication ability and return to work following traumatic brain injury. Douglas, J. and Bracy, C. In this faculty funded research project, researchers have established a significant association between communication outcome and participation in employment for adults who survive severe traumatic brain injury. Further, results enabled the ide3ntification of those communication behaviours that act as a barrier to social integration.
Publications resulting from funded projects
In 2007, funded research resulted in several papers being published or accepted in refereed journals of high international standing.
Abel, L. & Douglas, J. (2007). Effects of age on latency and error generation in internally mediated saccades. Neurobiology of Aging, 28(4): 627-37.
Douglas, J., Bracy, C. & Snow, P. (2007). Exploring the factor structure of the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire: Insights into the nature of communication deficits following traumatic brain injury. Aphasiology, 21, 1181-1194.
Frowen, J., Cotton, S. & Perry, A (in press) The stability, reliability and validity of videofluoroscopy measures for patients with head and neck cancer. Dysphagia.
Maclean, J., Cotton, S. & Perry, A. (in press). The variation in surgical method used for total laryngectomy in Australia. Journal of Laryngology & Otology.
Reid, K., Davis, P., Oates, J., Carbrera, D., Ternström, S, Black, M, Chapman, J. (2007). The acoustic characteristics of professional opera singers performing in chorus versus solo mode. Jouranl of Voice, 21, 35-45.
Key Developments in Community Service
The Latrobe Communication Clinic (LCC) continued to provide models of best practice in delivery of speech pathology services to children with speech and language disorders, to adults and adolescents who stutter and to people with voice disorders. The LCC stuttering clinic, under the leadership of Dr Susan Block, is a major partner, with the Stuttering Research Centre at the University of Sydney, in 5 ongoing collaborative research projects funded by the NH&MRC.
Key Developments in International Activities
The major international activities of the School centred on research and teaching collaborations as well as recruitment of international students for the B Sp Path and the M Sp Path programs. Under the auspices of two Agreements for Academic Exchange and Cooperation between the School and the Speech Therapy Department at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and the Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Unit at Kandang
Kerbau Hospital (KKH), staff members presented professional development seminars in Singapore and students undertook clinical placements at SGH and KKH. The School continued its collaboration with the National University of Singapore to further develop the first speech pathology training program in Singapore. Many academic staff members (75%) were invited to present keynote addresses and plenary papers at international conferences, as well as professional development and research seminars in New Zealand, Singapore, USA, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and the UK. Four academic staff also held adjunct appointments to overseas universities and research centres (30%).
During 2007 the School again devoted considerable time and resources to attract international students to the entry-level speech pathology courses and to the postgraduate research programs. This strategy was successful. Seven percent of commencing B Sp Path students and 13% of commencing M Sp Path students were international students.
Dr Jenni Oates was successful in her nomination of Professor Eva Holmberg from the Karolinska Institute for a Michael J Osborne Institute for Advanced Study Visiting Fellowship. Professor Holmberg, Senior Research Scientist at the Karolinska Institute’s Department of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, worked in the School’s Voice and Speech Laboratory with Jenni Oates, Georgia Dacakis and Cameron Grant throughout March, April and May 2007. During Professor Holmberg’s visit, data were collected for a project entitled Relationships among subjective evaluations and objective measurements of voice in male-to-female transsexuals. Data analysis was completed during the remainder of the year, two papers arising from the study were presented at international conferences and a manuscript to be submitted to the Journal of voice is in progress.
Dr Miranda Rose also attracted two high profile international researchers in clinical education, Dr Della Fish and Dr Linda de Cossart, to present a seminar for the Division of Allied Health clinical education staff and external clinical educators.
PhDs and Professional Doctorates completed in 2007
Lisa Byrne: My life as a woman: Placing communication within the social context of life for transsexual women
This research contributes to an understanding of the place of communication in the life of the transsexual woman. The perceptions and stories of transsexual women were explored and three major themes emerged; getting on with life, societal attitudes, and passing. The framework generated from this research indicated a number of clinical and social implications to facilitate improved outcomes for transsexual women.
The transsexual woman (or ‘male-to-female transsexual’) is born biologically male but develops a female gender identity. Transsexual women strongly desire to live their lives as women and most seek assistance to transform their sexual organs and social gender status. Although speech pathology service provision for the transsexual client has come a long way, the perspective of the transsexual woman herself with respect to social presentation and interaction has been largely overlooked. This research inquiry aimed to develop an understanding of the place of communication in the lived experience of the transsexual woman by exploring the perceptions and stories of transsexual women themselves.
A modified version of Glaser’s (1992) classic grounded theory was adopted within a constructivist paradigm. This qualitative methodology enabled exploration of issues important to transsexual women themselves and the development of a theoretical model. In-depth interviews were carried out with fourteen post-surgical transsexual women. The four criteria of rigour for scientific research (Guba & Lincoln, 1981) and the associated criteria of trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) also formed the researcher’s guiding principles during analysis of the interviews.
Three major constructs emerged from the participants’ stories; getting on with life, societal attitudes, and passing. Getting on with life was a fundamental social process which became increasingly more important to the participants with time. Societal attitude was revealed to be a significant barrier that impaired the participants’ ability to participate in the community and get on with their lives. The participants perceived two alternative ways to achieve acceptance as women and the ability to get on with life; societal change and passing. The participants found that due to the protracted nature of societal change, their ability to present convincingly to society as biological women was pivotal. Passing success was perceived to relate to what people see (i.e., physical appearance and behaviour) and what people hear (i.e., voice).
The theoretical model suggested numerous implications for promoting the long term outcome for transsexual women. These implications fell into two major areas; changing societal attitudes towards transsexual individuals and clinical service provision.