President’s Report to LDA AGM, October 2010
From the President
The LDA AGM on 16 October marked the end of my term as President, and so this report represents a good opportunity to reflect on the events of 2009/2010. 2009 was a busy and eventful year for LDA, with the biennial Joint Conference in Brisbane and the visit by Sir Jim Rose (with the DVD of the Melbourne seminar distributed to members early in 2010). However, 2010 has been far from quiet:
• LDA has been active in contributing to and aiming to influence policy and practice at National and State level. A submission was made to the NSW Inquiry into the Provision of Education to Students with a Disability or Special Needs, and a commentary was made on the Draft Australian Curriculum, with specific reference to the sections of the English curriculum relating to the teaching of beginning reading (see July 2010 issue of the LDA Bulletin). LDA has also had representatives on the Dyslexia Working Party, and on the Advisory Committee for the NSW Department of Health project on assessment of learning difficulties in primary school aged children.
• Plans are well underway for the next Joint LDA/LSTAQ/SPELD Qld Conference which will be held in Brisbane on the 16th and 17th September 2011, on the theme “Include and Impact: Challenging Learning in a National Environment”.
• Members should also have noticed significant changes to the LDA website over the last year. These include an ‘in the news’ section with regular updates of news stories on issues relating to students with learning difficulties as well as issues relating to education more generally, an ever increasing glossary of terms, a discussion forum and back issues of the Bulletin now available for download.
• Some changes have been made to the criteria for acceptance of consultant membership, with current teacher registration now a requirement for consultant membership. We have also tightened up procedures for renewal of consultant membership.
• LDA continues to run Professional Development workshops and seminars. In addition to the regular Victorian program of workshops for Consultants, we have had a workshop on Understanding and Treating Dyslexia in Melbourne and in November, in a new initiative, we will be having a joint Symposium with SPELD-NSW in Sydney on Successful Research Based Classroom Practice.
• We continue to publish both the Bulletin and the Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties. A Special Issue on Numeracy is planned for 2011. In addition we have successfully negotiated for LDA members to have on-line access to AJLD in addition to the hard copies, so that pdfs of journal articles can be downloaded as required. The Bulletin is now also available on-line on the LDA website.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the hard work of all members of LDA Council and support staff, without whom none of this would have been achieved. In particular, I would like to acknowledge those members who will not be on Council in 2011: Joan Cooper, who served as Convenor of the Consultants Committee in 2009 and has been actively involved in Consultant activities, including the organisation of the program of workshops for Consultants, and Max Coltheart, past President of LDA, who has raised the profile of LDA and lobbied for effective provision for people with learning difficulties through his activities on major national committees (such as the dyslexia working party). At the same time, I welcome our two new members of Council: Dr Lorraine Hammond, from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, who is well known for her work in the learning difficulties area, and Olivia Connelly, who has been active on the Victorian LDA Consultants Policy Sub-committee, which advises LDA Council on Consultant issues. Dr Louise Mercer now takes over as LDA President, and I look forward to working with her in my role as Immediate Past President.
Lyndsey Nickels
President
16 October 2010
For a listing of members of the 2010/2011 LDA Council, click
here.