Medverkan om dyslexistyrkor i dyslexikonferens i Singapore

I slutet av juni 2021 var jag inbjuden att tala och vara paneldeltagare i UNITE SPLD Conference som DAS, Dyslexia Association in Singapore. Temat var dyslexistyrkor:

DYSLEXIA STRENGTHS FORUM – LIVE

Vi som var med i det 1,5 h långa Live-forumet var Thomas G West, USA, Mahnaz Akhavan Tafti, Iran, Helen Taylor, England och Kristiantini Dewi, Indonesien och jag, Sverige.

Mer om oss från deras presentation:

Ladies and gentlemen, you are now attending the Dyslexia Strengths Forum and I am Geetha Shantha Ram, Director of the SpLD Assessment Services, English language, and Literacy division, and Staff Professional Development at DAS. It’s my pleasure to be the moderator. But to the real reason why we are all here, to listen to the views of our esteemed panelists from all around the world. In no particular order, joining us today are:

Susanna Cederquist is a lecturer, speaker, and educator, using the concept En Bild av Dyslexi (A picture of dyslexia) from Sweden. She lectures in schools about how teachers can approach dyslexia and create a sustainable and equivalent education for students with dyslexia, as well as in authorities, companies, and workplaces. Susanna is an adviser for the Foundation of Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia of Sweden and leads courses for students and adults with dyslexia to help them better understand their competencies and find their ways of success. She is the author of the books “Dyslexia + Strengths = True” and “Dyslexia at school – see the whole picture”. 

Joining us also is Dr. Kristiantini Dewi who is a paediatrician currently working in Indigrow Child Development Center (CDC), and the Melinda2 Child Development Center of Melinda2 Hospital.  In addition to being Chairman of the Dyslexia Association of Indonesia, she is also a coordinator of Special Services Program development. Kristiantini has published several educational books for parents and conducted many workshops and training for professionals, teachers, and parents.  She supports a large parent community across the islands of Indonesia so that they can learn and share the knowledge.

Also with us today is Mahnaz Akhavan Tafti who is a professor and chair of the graduate department of Educational psychology at Alzahra University in Iran and is the co-founder of the Iranian Specific Learning Disorders and Differences Association. For the past two decades, her focus of research, as well as academics, has been on the specific ways of cognitive processing of learners with dyslexia and their strengths. Mahnaz has published several articles in accredited national and international journals, has written a book and translated one, and has conducted many workshops for professionals, teachers, and parents. She is also serving as a reviewer and editorial board member of different scientific journals like Annals of Dyslexia.

We also have with us Dr. Helen Taylor who is currently Research Associate and Project Lead on the Complementary Cognition, Entrepreneurship & Societal Adaptation at the University of Strathclyde. For her post-doctoral work, she researched dyslexia to understand what this form of cognition was and why it existed from an evolutionary perspective. Her research led her to the discovery that this form of cognition is a critical part of a higher-level system of collective cognition. As such her work shows that we have profoundly misunderstood dyslexia as a disorder. Helen will be presenting this research to the World Economic Forum this Summer and is part of the movement to reframe dyslexia so that we respect, value, and nurture this way of thinking.

And finally, we have Thomas West – author of In the Mind’s Eye: Creative Visual Thinkers, Gifted Dyslexics and the Rise of Visual Technologies. Selected as one of the “best of the best” for the year by the American Library Association, this book has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. West has provided presentations for scientific, medical, art, design, computer, and business groups in the U.S. and 19 other countries. Tom’s second book, Thinking like Einstein, deals with visual thinking and computer graphic technologies. With his third book, Seeing What Others Cannot See, Tom investigates how dyslexics and other thinkers can help make discoveries and solve problems in innovative and unexpected ways. 

Mer info finns på https://sites.google.com/das.org.sg/unite-spld-2021/unite-spld