Dr Penny Levickis

Dr Penny Levickis is a postdoctoral research fellow in theREEaCh Hub. She was awarded her PhD by the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD was in the field of child language development, specifically examining contributions of parent behaviours to child language outcomes in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. Her primary areas of research interest are in examining factors that predict variation in language pathways, in particular contributions of adult-child interactions as well as investigating the effectiveness of prevention and intervention for children at risk of developmental language disorder. In her recent work as part of her Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship she explored parents’ experiences of taking part in parent language programmes aimed at enhancing parent-child interaction. Penny’s current research focuses on enhancing the quality of educator-child interactions in early childhood education and care to promote child language development and reduce social inequalities. This is an opportunity to provide enriched language learning opportunities to the most vulnerable children and their families who find engaging directly with early intervention services difficult.