CPHS Seminars - Hillary Ganek

"A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Conversational Turn-Taking in Families of Children with Hearing Loss"

Speaker: Hillary Ganek
Discussant: Penny Parnes

Register online at:

http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/event/18488/

Parent-focused language interventions have helped children with hearing loss in the west learn to listen and talk.  However, professionals in the developing world rarely have the expertise to provide these services.  As a result, many western organizations have begun international training programs.  Unfortunately, the strategies being taught may conflict with local language socialization practices, disrupting a child’s learning process. In this project, a new technology, the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) System, will collect information about parent-child talk in Canada and Vietnam along with qualitative interviews. Findings will highlight cultural considerations when importing language intervention practices to the developing world.

Hillary Ganek is doctoral candidate in the Childhood Hearing Loss Lab at the University of Toronto and a 2015-2016 Lupina Senior Doctoral Fellow. She worked clinically as a speech-language pathologist at the Cora Barclay Centre, an auditory-verbal clinic in Australia, and served on the cochlear implant team at Johns Hopkins. Hillary volunteers with the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss, training professionals working in Vietnam. She has a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from McGill University and a master’s degree in speech-language pathology from Northwestern University.

Penny Parnes has a long history focused on issues related to disability. She has been a clinician, an educator, a researcher, a policy advisor and an administrator. For the past 25 years Ms. Parnes has been active in global disability issues in many parts of Asia and Africa. In 2004, Ms. Parnes was the founding executive director of the International Centre for Disability and Rehabilitation (ICDR) at the University of Toronto. She conducted numerous research projects and authored several studies for agencies such as CIDA and served as one of the authors of the 2011 WHO/ World Bank publication “World Report on Disability”. Although retired as Executive Director of ICDR, she continues her involvement with the Centre as the Leader of consulting projects, which have included studies in West Africa, Zambia, Malawi, and Vietnam.