Kathryn is a postdoctoral researcher at Charles Sturt University and a project officer on an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant addressing children’s speech and literacy development. Previously Kathryn has worked as part of the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) study, and as a speech pathologist at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children. Kathryn is a university medalist and holds a Bachelor of Speech Pathology (Hons) and Bachelor of Arts, majoring in linguistics, and a Master of Special Education (Sensory Disability) from the University of Newcastle. In her PhD studies at Charles Sturt University she examined cultural and linguistic diversity in children with hearing loss in Australia and their families, and how caregivers made decisions about which language/s and communication modalities their children with hearing loss would use. Kathryn also holds a Diploma in Interpreting Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and English. As a speech pathologist, educator, and researcher Kathryn is working towards a world in which Deaf and Hard of Hearing learners will have equitable access to education, and show language and academic outcomes on par with those of their hearing peers.
Outside of her work Kathryn is a passionate figure skater having skated in national and international competitions in the discipline of synchronized skating. She is an accredited coach teaching beginner skaters at her home rink and with her home team Fire On Ice. Kathryn also enjoys travelling and is always on the lookout for something tall to conquer. Her latest adventures were hiking to Upper Yosemite Falls in California and trekking over the icy Fimmvörðuháls pass in Iceland, including over the new craters and lava from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities calls for inclusive education for learners with disabilities. Inclusion cannot mean merely placing Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) learners in hearing classrooms, but understanding differences in the learning needs of DHH and hearing students. For her Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, Kathryn aspires to develop pedagogies that take these differences into account so that DHH learners can achieve greater levels of language and literacy skills. Kathryn will work with Professor Marc Marschark to examine how DHH university students process, store, and retrieve words/signs in memory. Kathryn will conduct projects which will investigate the relationships between words/signs in memory (semantic networks) and how networks vary between DHH and hearing students, and students who use English and/or American Sign Language.