Tom Nicholson, Professor Emeritus, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

Email - t [dot] nicholsonmassey [dot] ac [dot] nz --Mobile +6421 1085 923

Academic bio

ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3211-5788

Short academic bio - Hello, here is a little bit about me -My career began with five fun years as a high school teacher in Sydney. I spent three years as an educational research officer with a charismatic team of positive people in the Research and Planning Branch of the Education Department of South Australia. After that, three years as a doctoral student and teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota, famous for freezing cold weather, 10,000 lakes, and beautiful people. My amazing supervisors there were Profs David Pearson and Robert Dykstra. After graduating from Minnesota with a PhD, I was an academic in three New Zealand universities: University of Waikato, The University of Auckland, and Massey University. My time at U. Waikato was probably the making of me, I had huge support from my managers, and freedom to teach. At U. Auckland, I had a personal chair - the academic environment was incredibly competitive - but at the same time I did some of my best work. The final stage of my academic career was at Massey University.

My most important academic work was to question the role of context clues in word reading. At the time, many believed that proficient readers used context clues to read words. The study I did showed that this was not true (Nicholson, Journal of Educational Psychology, 1991). The study was reported in Education Week and Science News.

My most important work in the community was a decade-long project, tutoring children who needed extra help, run at a local school, in after school hours, with financial support from local sponsors.

Recent work

Nicholson, T., & Dymock, S. (2023). New Zealand dyslexia handbook (2nd edition). NZCER Press

Nicholson, T., & Dymock, S. J. (2023, July-September). Teachers are our best resource to help students with dyslexia. Literacy Today, pp. 15-16.

Dymock S., & Nicholson T. (2022). Dyslexia seen through the eyes of teachers: An exploratory survey. Reading Research Quarterly, 58(2), 333-344.  doi:10.1002/rrq.490

Personal - Married, we live in Auckland, New Zealand - hobbies are walking, cafes, art galleries, movies.