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| Dr Kay Distel |
My Doctorate of Philosophy was conferred on 14 September 2013
The title:
The Elusive Other: a Self Study Action Research project with Diverse Learners in Higher Education
The project was inspired by my private work with children with learning difficulties using sound to retrain the voice/ear/brain. (www.soundeducation.com.au) I was initially interested in Dyslexia knowing that it is invisible in education in Australia in comparison to the UK where there is a strong promotion in schools for 'dyslexic friendly schools'.
I had a raft of questions but the the main one was a curiosity to find out what happened to those children when they reached Higher Education? Would their diverse learning styles be catered for? And what if they encountered stress in this environment?
I initially knew I wanted to do action research and wanted to meet up with dyslexic students. This turned out to be hard as in Australia as the notion and label of dyslexia is hardly acknowledged in primary and secondary Education policies. There are no records of numbers and a best guess is 10% of any population. In Higher Education testing for dyslexia is offered and if successfully labelled,more resources are available to help with studies. But associated with the labelling can be traumatic and stigmatising as this places them in disability services generally in the University.It can be particularly hard when the student may have no idea that there was anything 'wrong' with them.
To be continued....
