Wrapping up for Christmas and preparing for the new year

Christmas is coming close, and the EST team has been busy as usual up to the last minute. All the activities in the last two weeks mirror the work of the whole semester – both in terms of sizzling discussions, variety of tasks, meetings across continents and effective team work.

Do you ever wonder how the EST team keeps up with weekly meetings despite being spread between different parts of Norway, Australia and visiting stays in London, the US or any other place with an internet connection? Well, it usually looks like this:

Skype has been incredible reliable, whereas the greatest challenge has been the time differences. In good EST team spirit, everybody takes turns in getting up very early or staying up late at night in order to keep in touch when needed. Email, Slack and Dropbox are some of our other digital tools we rely on every day to make our international research possible. 

Here are some of the highlights from the last weeks work:

•  Åse has submitted the revised protocol for the Cochrane review which is now going to the next step of internal review.
•  Linn has recently submitted an article for the Norwegian Journal of speech-language pathology about the SLPs practice with stuttering in Norway.
• Hilde and Elaina are screening the papers for the Prospero article, and Hilde is in lead for the preparation of the manuscript.
• Kari-Anne, Linn and Melanie are working on the ethics applications.
• Elisabeth and Linn are planning the survey for the health care nurses.
• The whole team has continuous discussions on the design and recruitment for the intervention study, which will be the most important decisions for the start of next year and the next working package of the project.

Despite the work load, the Oslo-located part of the team met and enjoyed a lovely pre-Christmas lunch at Linns home where also Ane and Karoline from Statped were invited. We cheered for all the members of the team as well as co-operators, celebrating everything the team has achieved this year with delicious food from around the world and typical Norwegian Christmas beers and sweets.

The EST team is looking forward to 2019 and has great expectations based on the project plan. We would also like to thank you all; you are our readers and followers at the projects home page, blog and Facebook group  - sharing  interest in stuttering, experience, knowledge and valuable feedback.

We wish you all a peaceful Christmas time, holiday season and a happy New Year!

For the EST team, Melanie Kirmess

New minds, new thoughts – Feedback for the EST presentation at the ComPros seminar with Cathrine Snow

During the spring of 2018, the Faculty of Educational sciences at the University of Oslo invited new and existing research groups into a new application process. One of those newly established groups  is the research group Communicative processes (ComPros) at the Department for Special Needs Education (ISP). The main focus addresses the communicative developmental and learning processes in typical and atypical populations across the lifespan.  Hence, all EST-team members at ISP are members of ComPros. If you want to know more about all the different members and projects, check out the ComPros webside: https://www.uv.uio.no/english/research/groups/compros/index.html.

One of the first events organized by ComPros was a research seminar on Thursday, 6^th of December 2018 with Professor Catherine Snow from Harvard (to learn more about Professor Snow, please follow this link: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/faculty/catherine-snow ). The EST group took the opportunity to present preliminary ideas and challenges for the intervention study (RCT) we are planning. 

From left: Professor Catherine Snow, Åse Sjøstrand & Linn S. Guttormsen

Åse Sjøstrand and Linn S. Guttormsen did a fabulous job to familiarize the audience with the field of stuttering and the specific challenges considering early treatment, such as high percentage of spontaneous recovery, awareness and social-emotional long term consequences and lacks in the research area, as well as summarizing the EST project so far. 

Linn and Åse presented different scenarios for an RCT and acknowledged especially the ethical challenges with a clean control group. Interestingly, and as hoped with such a seminar with experts from overlapping, but different research fields, the feedback addressed other questions and factors than the EST-team usually discusses with our stuttering experts. 

For example, are we very much concerned about possible negative consequences for the children in an untreated control group, where as Professor Snow and others also pointed to possible impact of the much focus on treatment if not needs. That means  – are we possibly inventing a problem that might just be solved by itself based on a high number of natural recovery? Do we induce or increase speech motor difficulties by focusing too much too early on it?  How could this influence our results? Following this, a good suggestion is to discuss the inclusion of awareness assessments for all groups, the number of control groups (if relocation is needed), and not the less – possible contents of a control group receiving something else than stuttering intervention. 

Professor Snows and other participating researchers extensive experience from studies with children with language disorders gave us many new ideas to consider I the further planning of the RCT.  The role of the kindergarten teachers and their possible previous experience with children who stutter should also be taken into consideration when trying to control external factors that may influence the outcome of our intervention study.

The EST team highly appreciated all comments and questions, and really enjoyed having brilliant new minds contributing with new suggestions to our continuous discussions.

For the EST team - Melanie Kirmess

Research stay in London at UCL 2018

This autumn I have been so lucky that I have been a part of Professor Courtenay Norbury’s Literacy, Language and Communication lab, Psychology and Language Sciences, at University College London. Professor Norbury has published many very interesting articles about children with developmental language disorders (see for example here) and the lab has a blog about their research project. They are running the first population based research in UK on language and communication disorders at school entry.



UCL Chandler House where I have had my office

My family came with me to London. After spending June packing and cleaning our house in Sogndal, we moved in to a typical English house in Wimbledon in July; built of bricks with a narrow stairway and a small back yard. It was a big difference from living in a small village with 8000 people to living in a big city with 8 million people. Our two kids have attended the Norwegian School in London, which is an excellent school who uses the many possibilities that are in London to teach their pupils. For example, when Black history month was up in October, the pupils went on a guided tour in St. Paul Cathedral, and when Holocaust was the theme, they visited Imperial War Museum.

Our lovely brick house

Wimbledon centre where we lived

At work, my main focus has been the EST project and our two reviews. My daily work consist of screening papers for the review about implementation quality that we have preregistered in Prospero (here).  Along with the EST team, we have worked hard with preparing the protocol for the Cochrane review and planning the RCT. In addition to this, I have worked on three book chapters about literacy and literacy difficulties in addition to one paper about bilingual children and one paper about early literacy. I have also given a talk about invented writing at UCL, and been a part of celebrating DLD-day. DLD stands for ‘developmental language disorders’, and the goal for DLD-day is to raise awareness of this disorders. Along with the Lilac-lab, I was on a stand at UCL with quiz, poster and cake sale for charity. In our spare-time, we had a wonderful time; London has so much to offer in terms of sightseeing, new food experience, firework at Bonfire night, shopping and pubs. Memories for life!

Afternoon tea with the Lilac lab

DLD-day with Courtenay and Sarah from the lab

Being on a research stay in another university is very educative. You get to see your own practice in a contrastive light of the University you visit. It has been rewarding to have time to write; the office facilities and library access have been very good. I have learned a lot about research methods from attending seminars and lab meetings. I have also learned about how to manage a lab from being a part of the Lilac lab. On the other hand, it is also a bit challenging to join a new work place, a new neighborhood, and for the kids – a new school. In addition to all the positive aspects, it has of course been downs; for example trying to keep up with lunch conversation in English but processing to slow to be an actual good communicator, sickness in the family when there is an ocean between, and we all have missed friends, family and our dog Tilla. However, the up’s are many more! I am bringing back to Sogndal and the EST-team new insights, new friends, and a new network that we will work together with in 2019.

Thank you so much for your warm hospitality Courtenay Norbury and the whole Lilac lab gang! Also, thanks to Western Norway University of Applied Sciences for funding the stay and good colleagues for helping with my teaching Commitments. All the best from Hilde

Me and my family visiting Stonehenge