Approaching Difficulties in Literacy Development

This Reader considers the complexity of literacy difficulties, showing how research into literacy difficulties has to be multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary and involve a range of research approaches and methods. The chapters show that this is necessary to accommodate the wide range of issues that can, potentially, explain literacy difficulties and suggest strategies and interventions to ease those difficulties.

Starting from the point that literacy is a contested concept and that acquiring literacy is a complex process, this Reader goes on to consider literacy development in relation to:

- Theoretical understandings, implications for practice

- Assessing literacy difficulties

- Pedagogy and planning

- Interventions in different contexts

This Reader is relevant to all postgraduate students of Literacy, as well as educators, professionals and policy makers.

Dr. Gavin Reid is an international consultant and psychologist with consultancies in Canada, UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australasia. He was Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, in the Department of Education and Counseling Psychology and Special Education in 2007 and 2010. ? He is chair of the British Dyslexia Association Accreditation Board and an ambassador for the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre in the UK and is a Consultant/Psychologist for the Centre for Child Evaluation and Teaching (CCET) in Kuwait and the Lighthouse Learning Centre in Cairo. He is also a director of the Red Rose School for children with specific learning difficulties in St Annes on Sea, Lancashire, UK.  He was formerly senior lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies (formally Department of Special Education), Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, from 1991 to 2007. He has written 34 books on learning, motivation and dyslexia and lectured to thousands of professionals and parents in 75 countries. Some of his books have been published in Polish, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, French, Latvian and Slovak. He is an experienced teacher with over ten years’ experience in the classroom and has held external examiner appointments at 20 universities worldwide for PhD and masters’ courses. He resides in Vancouver and Edinburgh. His email is gavinreid66@gmail.com and his website is: www.drgavinreid.com