Dr. Michael Hart, child psychologist with 25 years of experience addressed a webinar hosted by UNESCO MGIEP on 22 February. This talk was the latest addition to the webinar series that aims to provide a platform for experts, scholars and practitioners to share ideas and engage with wider audiences on plethora of issues.

Dr. Hart’s talk focused on the topic of “Dyslexia and Rapid Automatic Naming: Beyond Sound Awareness”. The talk helped the participants learn about what Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) is and how to understand the evaluation and plan for remediation for it. He also helped the participants understand and recognize RAN and how it helps in understanding the complex cognitive processes that are involved in fluency in reading and comprehension.

The floor opened to participants for a half-hour Q&A session that resulted in a diverse conversation. Questions ranging from “Role of technology in increasing the motivation and engagement in reading” to “lifestyle factors impacting the incidence of learning difference” were discussed.

He summarized his talk with a quote from William James:

 So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: they begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky