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Blogs
My STSM Experience: Anna-Kaisa Tolonen
STSM: Working on the Systematic Review for Dosage of Intervention at the University of Newcastle
My name is Anna-Kaisa Tolonen, and I come from Oulu in Northern Finland. I am an SLT and currently work as a PhD student at the Child Language Research Center in the University of Oulu. Thanks to my PhD supervisor, professor Sari Kunnari, I am also one of the Finnish MC Substitute Members for this COST Action focusing on interventions for children with language impairment (LI). Sari could actually be called ‘a COST Action veteran’ since she has taken part in several previous Actions before this one.
My STSM journey began after the meeting in Reykjavik in the spring of 2016. Doctor Cristina McKean contacted me after I returned home and asked me if I would be interested in coming to Newcastle on an STSM to work toward the goals of Working Group 2. First I was a bit unsure whether I would be the right fit for this, since my own research is on children with hearing impairments, not on children with language impairment. However, since I am very interested in the work done in this COST Action, I finally decided to take this excellent learning opportunity and applied for an STSM. Cristina and I decided that during my visit to Newcastle I would concentrate on working on the systematic review on the ‘dosage’ of intervention for children with LI. My supervisor Sari Kunnari was also able to accompany me on this visit in order to work with Cristina and Professor James Law on the practitioner survey which is a collaborative work between all the three Working Groups in the Action.
So, at the end of October, Sari and I headed out to Newcastle, though our visit did not start as smoothly as planned. Due to severe fog surrounding London, our flight was delayed, and we were not able to arrive in Newcastle as planned. When we finally made it there a day late, we sat down with Cristina to go over the work plan for the remaining week. I began to familiarize myself with previous literature on ‘dosage’ reviews and intervention papers on children with language impairment. Most of my time during the week was spent on going through the literature in order to write a PRISM-P protocol rationale for the systematic review. During my time there, we were also able to decide on the aims and research questions for the dosage review, which is really helpful now that our little ‘dosage group’ continues this work in different countries.
Besides getting lost in dozens of papers, I was able to present some preliminary findings from my own PhD study to SLTs working with deaf and hard-of-hearing children in UK. This was a great learning opportunity for me and a great chance to get some feedback on my data. All the comments I received will certainly help me in completing my PhD thesis as well as possible.
I am very grateful for being given the opportunity to visit the University of Newcastle and to be part of the ongoing work done on the systematic review in WG2. This is an excellent opportunity for a young researcher to learn from more established colleagues. I am very much looking forward to continuing to work on the review with Cristina, James and Sari.
I want to thank Doctor Cristina McKean for being the perfect host during my STSM week, and giving me a lot of encouragement in moving forward with this work. I also want to thank Professor James Law for devoting a lot of his precious time to me and Sari to discuss matters concerning the COST Action. Last but definitely not least, I owe a special thank you to research secretary Frances Hardcastle who helped me all the way through the STSM process and was a fountain of knowledge in all things concerning this COST Action.
Last modified: Wed, 22 Mar 2017 14:55:32 GMT