Council Profiles 07/08
Professor Max Coltheart
DSc FASSA FAA FBA
Professor Max Coltheart is the Director of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science. He is a cognitive scientist with interests in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuropsychiatry, and is a researcher of international renown in the field of reading and reading difficulties. In addition to his role as Professor of Psychology and Director of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, he also holds the James Packer Chair of Educational Research and is Academic Director of the Children’s Hospital Education Research Institute (CHERI) at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney. He has served as President of both SPELD in NSW and of the national organization, and is one of only two Australians to have been elected a Fellow of both the Academy of Sciences in Australia and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He was awarded the CSIRO Eureka Prize for leadership in Australian science in 2007. He is the author of 13 books and of over 240 journal articles and book chapters, and was the co-author, with Margot Prior, of the paper Learning to Read in Australia, commissioned and published by the Academy of Social Sciences as the sixth in a series of policy papers designed to encourage public debate on issues of national concern. He has been active in promoting the interests of students with dyslexia and related reading difficulties and has been a long time critic of ineffective teaching methods that fail to take account of the research evidence relating to how children learn to read. He was one of the 26 academics whose open letter to the then Minister of Education, Dr Brendon Nelson, led to the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. Max Coltheart is the recipient of the LDA Mona Tobias Award for 2007.
Margaret Cameron
BA (NZ), Dip. Teach (Deaf), Dip. Ed. (Excep Children) (Qld).
cam3ron@bigpond.net.au
Margaret is currently Senior Lecturer in Education at Tabor Adelaide, with responsibility for courses in Literacy and Special Needs. She is also a SPELD tutor and Instructor in LEM Phonics, and is currently completing an M.Ed at the University of South Australia. Margaret’s initial teaching experience was as a teacher of hearing impaired children and then as a support teacher for students with learning difficulties in Queensland, before moving into teacher education at Tabor Adelaide. Her current interests are in teacher education, and particularly in providing in-service to a large number of teachers who felt the need to be equipped to teach phonics. This has led her into a greater interest in literacy in the broad sense, and a recognition of the value of whole language approaches once skill in decoding and encoding is established. Margaret has a continuing interest in the learning needs of children with a range of ‘diverse abilities’, and has developed a broad knowledge of systems and approaches to educating children with such needs.
Dr. Gary Woolley
Teach Cert., Dip.Teach., Grad Dip Teach., M.Sp Ed., PhD.
g.woolley@griffith.edu.au
Gary Woolley is a Lecturer in Education in the Faculty of Education at Griffith University, at their Mt Gravatt Campus in Brisbane. He took up this position in June this year, having previously been Lecturer in Inclusive Eduction at the University of Canberra. Qualifying as a teacher in 1975, Gary has been teaching for over 30 years in public and private schools in NSW and Queensland. He has taught in mainstream classrooms at various grade levels from lower primary to high school, and during the fifteen years before becoming a University lecturer he worked as a learning support co-ordinator for students from Prep to Year 12. Over the last four yeas Gary has lectured in literacy and learning difficulties in the inclusive education program at the University of Canberra, and in his present position at Griffith University he is continuing to lecture in this area. His particular professional interests include reading comprehension difficulties, memory, cognition and learning engagement. Gary recently completed his PhD thesis, which focused on the design of training programs for volunteer tutors to assist students with reading comprehension difficulties. Gary has written a number of articles and taken part in several research projects in literacy and inclusive education. He was part of a team of five lecturers that recently won a Carrick Institute Citation for Teaching and Learning.
Dr. Craig Wright
B Psych (Hons), PhD, MAPS
craig@understandingminds.com.au
Craig Wright is a Psychologist and Clinic Director at Understanding Minds, a multi-disciplinary clinic specialising in the developmental disorders of childhood. He currently serves as Consultant Special Education Adviser to the Catholic Education Office (Lismore Diocese). Prior to this he held positions with Disability Services and Queensland Health. Craig’s clinical interests lie in early identification, assessment and intervention for children with learning difficulties; particularly reading. Craig’s current research interests include neurological factors in reading difficulties, reading intervention and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He has published papers on dyslexia and ADHD and he is involved in developing a reading intervention program. He has presented a number of papers at conferences, workshops, and seminars on topics relating to dyslexia, reading intervention, and assessment of reading difficulties.