Intervention for Dyslexia - The British Dyslexia Association

The remit calls for conclusions to be drawn regarding the key questions, and hence
conclusions have been drawn wherever possible, using all the evidence presented.
Undoubtedly there will be other evidence on these issues that might have been included,
but, because of the limitations outlined above, the focus has been on the major strands
of research in the field and with emphasis on studies employing robust methods that
have yielded the most trustworthy scientific evidence.
A key part of the remit was to restrict the review to published evidence. Although the
schools and organisations that provide specialist dyslexia teaching will almost certainly
have data on the progress of their pupils, regrettably very little of this has been
published.
1.1.3 The author
Since this is an evaluative review some comment on the qualifications of the author are
appropriate. The author is Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology at the University of
Hull, PhD in psychology, Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a
Chartered Psychologist. In addition, he was director of the Psychological Assessment
Unit at the University of Hull for over 10 years. He is also Research Director of Lucid
Research Limited, which develops and publishes educational software.
The author has been working in the fields of dyslexia and literacy difficulties as an
academic, published researcher and independent practitioner for more than 25 years
and is very familiar with the published literature. As an editor/associate editor of the
Journal of Research in Reading for 16 years, he is also accustomed to evaluating
research in these fields. In particular, he has been editor of several special issues of the
Journal of Research in Reading, including ‘Dyslexia in Literate Adults’ (1997), ‘Computers
and Literacy’ (2000), ‘Assessment of Literacy’ (2004), ‘Visual Factors in Reading’ (2005,
subsequently published in book form), and ‘New Developments in Literacy and
Technology’ (2009). Other major publications in this context include ‘Computers and
Dyslexia’ (Singleton, 1994) and ‘The Psychological Assessment of Reading’ (Beech and
Singleton, 1997). He has also co-authored over a dozen computerised psychological
tests that have been published by Lucid Research Limited and which are used in UK
schools and elsewhere in the world.
During the late 1990s the author was chair of the National Working Party on Dyslexia in
Higher Education, which was commissioned by Department for Education and Skills
(DfES) and the Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales to
investigate and report on policy and provision for dyslexic students in universities, and to
make recommendations on good practice. The report of that working party (Singleton,
1999) was influential in establishing consistency of good practice in identifying and
supporting dyslexic students across all UK universities.
The author was also a member of the DfES working group that developed new national
guidelines on assessment and identification of dyslexic students in higher education,
which came into force in 2007. He is currently the independent evaluator for the ‘No To
Failure’ project that has been carrying out a major intervention programme with children
in 20 schools who were identified as at risk of dyslexia, and which is due to report in the
spring of 2009. The author is also currently a member of the Expert Advisory Group on
Dyslexia set up by the DCSF to assist Jim Rose in his work connected with the review of
dyslexia provision in schools.
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