PRECI 2026 3rd National ConferenceBetter practice. Better outcomes. Better futures.13 - 15 May 2026 | Hilton Hotel, Adelaide, South Australia

SRI Education
US

Kathleen Hebbeler, Ph.D., is a Senior Principal Education Researcher with SRI’s Education Division where she oversees research, evaluation, and technical assistance projects focused on services and supports for young children and their families. Currently, Dr. Hebbeler serves as the principal investigator for a project examining the use of technology to support authentic assessment with young children with disabilities. She also provides technical assistance to state agencies to improve the quality and use of data to improve programs and services for young children with disabilities and recently completed a study of inclusion of children with disabilities in child care. Dr. Hebbeler’s areas of interest include child development, assessment, early intervention, general and special education, home visiting, child care, accountability, and community collaboration.

The University of Alabama
US

Robin McWilliam would rather be a chef than an early interventionist, but the former actually requires skills, and the latter is something he’s worked on for over 45 years. His metaphorical restaurant is the Routines-Based Model, where the menu consists of well-known dishes such as the Routine-Based Interview, the ecomap, participation-based goals, the primary service provider, Routines-Based Home Visits, and collaborative consultation to children’s classrooms (CC2CC). For dessert, he has the Engagement Classroom Model, which is a method for running inclusive classrooms. McWilliam’s dishes are being served in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, and the U.S. When not cooking up new checklists, McWilliam is a professor of special education at The University of Alabama, where he founded and directs the Evidence-based International Early Intervention Office (EIEIO; www.eieio.ua.edu) Previously, McWilliam has worked at Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina.

University of Minho
Portugal

Associate Professor - Institute of Education (IE), integrated researcher at the Center for Research in Child Studies (CIEC), University of Minho, Portugal. Retired from UMinho on October 2025.

Has a degree in Psychology from the University of Coimbra. She holds a master's degree in Early Intervention from the University of Cincinnati, USA, as a Fulbright Scholar, and a PhD in Child Studies, a Special Education specialty from the Institute for Child Studies at the University of Minho.

She was a professor in the field of Special Education, Director of the Masters in Special Education, a member of the National Association for Early Intervention (ANIP). Also developed a Master’s program in ECI in 2000 at the University of Minho, one of the first Master’s program for training ECI professionals in Portugal.

She is President of the European Association for Early Intervention –EURLYAID. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Early Childhood Intervention.

She is part of the National Early Childhood Intervention System (SNIPI) North Subcommittee's Supervision Nucleus.

Royal Children's Hospital

VIC

Associate Professor Anita D’Aprano is a developmental paediatrician at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, and a principal research fellow in the Department of Paediatrics (Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences) at the University of Melbourne where she leads the STRONG kids, STRONG future team. Her PhD led to the development of the ASQ-TRAK, the first and only culturally responsive developmental screening tool for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Anita’s work continues to focus on participatory action research that supports culturally responsive developmental care and ultimately improves developmental outcomes.

Melbourne Law School

VIC

John Tobin is a Professor at Melbourne Law School where he holds the Francine V McNiff Chair in International Human Rights Law.  He commenced his career as a lawyer working in the Youth Justice Legal Service at Victoria Legal Aid where he was a representative for children in the criminal justice and child protection systems.  He also spent time working in legal policy for the Department of Justice before moving into an academic career at Melbourne University where he has taught and undertaken research on children’s rights for the past 25 years.  He completed his PhD on children’s right to health in 2008 and is the author of nearly 100 scholarly works on human and children’s rights.  He is the editor of the award winning, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Commentary which was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press. John has provided consultancies, training and workshops on children’s rights and the idea of a rights based approach to matters concerning children to a vast range of groups including.