This study uses an interpretive approach to present the prior secondary school experiences of four students with dyslexia now studying at university. Students with dyslexia in Aotearoa/New Zealand have had to contend with a compulsory education system that has not recognised their learning struggles nor supported their particular ways of learning. Students have had to develop their own support strategies to complete educational qualifications. Students' experienced teacher and system ignorance of their learning difficulties and needs. Inappropriate support offered in an ad hoc manner impacted on their success. Despite this all students developed their own strengths and support networks, which helped them to progress in their education. The success of these networks influenced their decision to continue onto university. Students perceived their learning with dyslexia as different from their peers and creating difficulties within the existing educational system, but not disabling.

Collaborative individualized education process: RSVP to IDEA, by Evie K. Gleckel and Ellen S. Koretz, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Pearson Education, 2008, 292 pp., $US51 (???), ISBN 10 01311259...

In this article, I consider social class and reading performance, outline a non-categorical approach to reading disability, describe the reading intervention program we have developed for older low-progress readers and seek to demonstrate how students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds can, and do, make substantial progress when offered effective reading instruction based on the available scientific research evidence.

We present administration details and normative data for a new version of the word and nonword reading test originally developed by Castles and Coltheart. The new test contains an expanded set of items, with 40 each of regular words, irregular words and nonwords, rather than the original 30 items of each type. The new items extend the upper-end of the difficulty range of the test, making it less susceptible to ceiling effects than the original version. The test also incorporates a stopping-rule, which makes administration of the test less time-consuming and removes the stress on children who can only read a few items. The test is free of charge and is available to teachers, professionals and researchers in both pencil-and-paper and computer-based formats from the Macquarie On-line Test Interface (MOTIF: http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/research/resources).

Without a carefully designed plan for the provision of students with English as an additional language (EAL), educators may feel overwhelmed by the complexities of teaching such students. Educators may attribute poorer academic outcomes of some students with EAL to learning difficulties without first considering how they might adapt their teaching to better support these students' needs. This paper provides insight into the challenges teachers confront in differentiating between the educational needs of students who have EAL and potentially those students who have EAL and also a learning difficulty. A range of strategies are proposed that may assist educators in establishing an environment in which students who have EAL are given opportunities for achieving successful academic outcomes.

This study examined 120 Victorian preservice and inservice teachers' ability to implement evidence-based, early literacy instruction by examining whether teachers possessed positive perceptions of explicit instruction in sound-letter relationships, and a proficient knowledge of language structure. Teachers' confidence in teaching students of known risk for learning difficulties was also investigated. Findings indicated that while teachers report positive perceptions of explicit phonics-based instruction, they generally did not nominate this approach as their predominant early literacy instruction method. School sector also influenced early literacy instruction practices and linguistic knowledge: independent school teachers reported higher linguistic knowledge scores than their Catholic counterparts and were more likely than Catholic or state school teachers to report using phonics-based instruction to teach reading. Inservice and pre-service teachers did not demonstrate adequate knowledge of metalinguistics. Also, the majority of teachers did not report high levels of confidence in their ability to teach reading to diverse student populations.