The Bevé Hornsby Lecture
Barbara Foorman, Florida State University, USA
Bevé Hornsby (1915-2004) was a distinguished speech and language therapist, psychologist, and educator, who played a pioneering role in the understanding of dyslexia. Through her writing, professional practice and teacher-training she brought the problems of people with dyslexia to recognition, and her work stimulated many developments in the field of dyslexia education. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists elected her to a Fellowship in 1988 and her many contributions to Dyslexia were honoured publicly by the award of the MBE in 1997.
Bevé Hornsby was born in 1915 in Camberley, Surrey. Although she showed academic promise at school, she chose not to further her education at this stage of her life. Rather, Bevé was a student-member of the corps de ballet in the Vic Wells Ballet Company, drove ambulances during the 2nd World War, held a pilot’s licence and was a qualified teacher of ballroom dancing. When Bevé was 50-years-old she began training as a speech therapist at the Kingdom Ward School in London. She qualified in 1969 and took up her first post at the ‘Word Blind Clinic’ at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Only two years later in 1971 she was appointed head of the clinic which soon expanded and became renowned as the Barts Dyslexia Clinic. After retiring from St. Bartholomew’s at the age of 65, Bevé set up the Hornsby International Dyslexia Centre where she and her team continued to offer teacher training courses and professional services to children and adults with dyslexia. Convinced of the need to teach children to read using multi-sensory techniques from the outset, she founded Hornsby House School in 1988 to offer a programme of highly structured multi-sensory education to typically developing children, alongside children at risk of reading difficulties.
Throughout her professional life, Bevé was undoubtedly a mover and shaker; she loved to take on new challenges and was never put off by red-tape, or what others might consider insurmountable obstacles. Together with ‘Overcoming Dyslexia’ (1983) and ‘Reach for the Stars; Dyslexics I have Known’ (2001), she has left the field with innumerable work books and other resources for the teaching of written language skills. Notwithstanding all of this, Bevé’s lasting legacy is without doubt the book she wrote with Frula Shear, ‘Alpha to Omega’ (first published in 1974), that has been used as a handbook by generations of teachers and dyslexia-therapists.
Bevé was instrumental in the 2005 merger between The Hornsby International Dyslexia Centre and The Dyslexia Institute. She was determined that a joint organisation would provide a great depth and breadth of specialist dyslexia training. The merged organisation is now Dyslexia Action, the largest independent provider of educational services for people with specific learning difficulties in the UK and the sponsor of the Bevé Hornsby lecture.
The Nata Goulandris Memorial Lecture
Rebecca Treiman, University of Washington, USA
Nata Goulandris (1940-2005) formerly Senior Lecturer, University College London, was a great supporter of the BDA’s international conferences and is remembered for her many contributions to the field of dyslexia through her research, teaching and professional practice.
Nata graduated from Harvard University with a degree in English in 1962 and then studied in Geneva with the eminent psychologist Jean Piaget. Piaget’s teachings were instrumental in nurturing an interest in child development. Later, after raising her family, Nata was inspired by the teaching of Kathleen Hickey, a pioneer in the systematic, multisensory teaching of spelling and she was trained by Bevé Hornsby whom she greatly admired, most especially for her involvement of parents in the teaching of dyslexic children. Thus, some 20 years after graduating, Nata resumed her career, initially by qualifying as a teacher and then by completing her PhD thesis ‘Emergent spelling: the development of spelling strategies in young children’ , whilst also working as a dyslexia therapist at St. Bartholomew’s Dyslexia Clinic.
Nata’s doctorate was the entré to an academic career at University College London. Further afield, her teaching extended to professionals working with children with specific learning difficulties nationally and internationally, to Greece, her country of origin, and to Cyprus. Nata made contributions to knowledge in fields of spelling and its impairments and developmental dyslexia. An important legacy is her book ‘Dyslexia: Cross-linguistic Comparisons’ published in 2003.
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