Tom Nicholson, Prof. 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

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

Short academic bio - Hello, here is a little bit about me -I was born in Sydney, Australia but have lived many years in New Zealand. I have spent time as a student at U. Minnesota, a visiting scholar at U. Texas at Austin, Stanford U., Australian Council for Educational Research, University of Thessaloniki, and University of Tasmania, and spent time as a short-term visitor at Oxford University and Australian Catholic University. In high school and University, I worked part time as a kitchen hand. I graduated BA and MA from Sydney U. and PhD from U. Minnesota.  My first real job was as a high school teacher in Sydney. After that, I worked three years as an educational research officer for a charismatic team at the Research and Planning Branch of the Education Department of South Australia. After that, three years as a doctoral student and teaching assistant at U. Minnesota, supervised by Profs Robert Dykstra and David Pearson. After that, I worked in three New Zealand universities: U. Waikato, U. Auckland, and Massey U. My time at Waikato was probably the making of me, with huge support from managers, and freedom to teach. At Auckland, I gained a personal chair which was a career highlight for me. The academic environment at Auckland was incredibly competitive but also highly motivating. After that I worked at Massey U., retiring in 2018.

My most controversial work was the discovery in the late 80s and early 90s that context in reading words was not as powerful as originally thought.  At that time, many believed that proficient readers were good readers because they used context clues to help identify words. A series of studies carried out by myself, and my graduate students showed that this was not true (Nicholson, 1991; Nicholson et al., 1998, 1991; Nicholson & Hill, 1985). Good readers did not need help from context clues because they already had good decoding skills, but poor readers and beginner readers relied on context to help them read. Context was not what made good readers good. They were good because they had "cracked the code". Poor readers needed to crack the code, not rely on context clues. The 1991 study was reported in Education Week and Science News.

My most important community service was a decade-long after-school reading project, tutoring children who needed extra literacy help, and run as a summer school, as well as during the school year. 

Studies since 2020 -

Nicholson, T. (2025). Teaching literacy effectively in the modern classroom for ages 9-12. Routledge.

Dymock, S., & Nicholson, T. (2024).  Teaching literacy effectively in the modern classroom for ages 5-8. Routledge.

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