Looking back but also forward

Did you know that there was initial resistance to speech-language pathologists being involved in dysphagia? According to oral histories of post WWII Australian and British speech-language pathologists, this work started in the late 1980s (Stansfield, 2022) and the topic caused a stir: “I’d no more teach them about swallowing than teach them about hopscotch. It seemed to be so, ‘It’s not about communication.’” (SamA; Stansfield, 2022, p. 8). In 2022, IJSLP published 10 articles in dysphagia ranging from practice-based research to dysphagia intervention studies. How things have changed but also how things have not. Take for instance, speech-language professional training experience. Consider this quote by Kathy B (Stansfield, 2022, p. 6), “it was very full-on. Never a minute to spare. In fact, I remember going to classes of an evening… and we went to anatomy classes in [name] University, and I had to travel home …. at night in the middle of winter, and in bad weather and so on. That was quite daunting. And not only that, we had classes on a Saturday morning.” Is there something still familiar about this full-on pace? Gender, race, professional training, professional identity, medical models of practice, disability, poverty, injustice – issues all raised in these oral histories and reported in Stansfield, Issue 6, 2022.

Looking forward, IJSLP has also published papers that explore contemporary positions, future directions and post-colonial transformation. Our special issue in Qualitative Research and Innovation in Speech-Language Pathology (Issue 5) is a fantastic contribution to this discussion and we urge you to read and discuss these papers with your colleagues. We thank guest editor Deborah Hersh and associate editors, David Azul, Clare Carroll, Rena Lyons, Ruth Mc Menamin & Jemma Skeat and the other contributing authors for this special issue. And it would be remiss of us not to also applaud the contribution of authors from Issue 3, the special issue from our 2021 online national conference with the theme Local Contexts, Global Practice. It too, represents a stellar contribution relating to diversity, representation, equity, global contexts and cultural responsivity. Thank you, Bea Staley and Karen Wylie, our guest editors for this issue.

Looking back but also forward compels us to consider the ongoing impact of COVID-19 in our personal and professional lives. Looking at our journal metrics, our 2021 impact factor was 1.820 (2021) and our 5 Year Impact Factor was 2.358 (2021). Our 2021 Cite Score was 3.7 and our downloads have continued to increase with 319K annual downloads/views. We are truly grateful to each and every reviewer and to our associate editors for coordinating and seeking these reviews. Our journal and our profession are better for it as is the published paper! After all, that is the true essence and benefit of the peer-review process. At times, some submitting authors have experienced delays in this process, for that we apologise, especially for our early career researchers. Pebdani et al. (2022) examined academic productivity during the pandemic. They found that compared to academic fathers, academic mothers experienced more interrupted work time and were more likely to be multitasking while caring for children. The long-term implications of COVID-19 on career progression and the gendered impact of this pandemic is an important reflection for our journal and all who contribute to it. If you need to discuss your submission or review, please reach out to us directly. We welcome other suggestions to support researchers within our field.

Turning to our final issue for 2022, we present a collection of papers which showcase communication, language, speech, literacy, multidisciplinary practice, communication partners and oral histories of practice. We start with Stansfield’s (2022) talking points: Oral histories of Australian and British speech-language pathologists who qualified in the three decades after 1945. Turning to a relatively new scope of contemporary practice, Makker et al. (2022) explore SLPs perspectives on the effectiveness, relevance and implementation of communication strategies in the New Zealand youth justice system. Their paper offers further suggestions for SLP practice in not only supporting young people but also the role of facilitator for communication among all parties involved in the justice system. Moving to specific language and speech abilities, Rosqvist et al. (2021) determine that bilingualism alone does not explain the word definition performance of bilingual school-aged children and offer important research implications for practice. Chami et al. (2021) examine pre-schooler’s semantic fluency performance and the contributions of existing vocabulary and executive function skills while Gargan et al.’s (2002) study examines the receptive and expressive lexical stress in adolescents with autism. Their findings support early assessment and intervention of prosodic disorders in Autism. Denney et al. (2022) explore the communication partners’ perspectives of their role in supporting individuals with autism and complex communication needs. Our multidisciplinary practice paper by Vaughan et al. (2021) highlights the roles, attitudes and perceptions of allied health practitioners providing physical rehabilitation for people who have central facial palsy. Finally, our last paper explores expository discourse skills of students with reading comprehension difficulties with Westerveld and Armstrong (2022) offering clear implications for intervention.

In closing, we echo, AlexA’s statement that “no learning is ever lost” (Stansfield, 2022, p. 10) and that looking back, our profession consisted of “a group of articulate, curious individuals who recognised that the needs of their patients and students could be met not just by direct face to face good practice, but also by being willing to take risks in order to expand their knowledge and skills” (Stansfield, 2022, p. 10–11). Our question now is, looking forward, what will we look like?

We hope you enjoy our final issue for 2022.