Rosemary Carter Award

LDA will confer an annual award known as the Rosemary Carter Award in recognition of Rosemary Carter’s enormous contribution to the association we now know as LDA, to the education of young, struggling students, and to the wise and valuable support she provided to parents and to colleagues over many decades.

The award will be for an outstanding Consultant Member who has contributed to the field of learning difficulties through work with students, their advocacy for students and their families, and through education of the wider community. An important criterion will be demonstrable efforts to address equity issues by making their services more accessible to disadvantaged families.

The award is open to all current Consultant Members of LDA.

A committee of three Consultant Members will consider all nominations and make recommendations to Council, who will make the final decision. If in any year there are no suitable nominations, no award will be given.

Criteria for nomination

Nominees will demonstrate:

Excellent understanding of a range of learning difficulties and their impact on learning.
Exceptional knowledge of literacy (and its linguistic base), numeracy(preferable) and executive function constructs.
Advanced knowledge of diagnostic assessments and the ability to design effective individual programs for students with learning difficulties in response to assessment results.
Exceptional knowledge of research-based pedagogies and methodologies to address the learning needs of students with learning difficulties.
Evidence of the impact of their instruction on the learning outcomes of students with learning difficulties.
A history of engaging the wider community to promote LDA and its goals.
A significant history of supporting students with learning difficulties in in private practice or in school settings.
The provision and/or promotion of equitable access to appropriate educational support for low income and disadvantaged families.
Demonstrated commitment to the LDA Association and significant involvement in activities which contribute to the mission of LDA.

Nomination Procedure for the Rosemary Carter Award

Members of LDA are invited to submit nominations

Nominations should be submitted electronically (by email) to enquiries@ldaustralia.org, with the relevant Award in the subject line.

The nomination should include the following information:

•   name and position of nominee, with details of mailing address, email address, and phone number/s
•   name and position of nominator/s, with details of mailing address, email address, and phone number/s
•   a brief comment on the reason for the nomination, outlining the nominee’s contribution to the field of learning difficulties as a Consultant member of LDA and the particular reason(s) why the nominee is considered to be a worthy recipient of the Award.
•   a CV describing the nominee’s work and current and past achievements, to provide supporting evidence of the reason for the nomination as given above.
•   any relevant supporting documentation

2020 Recipient: Kristin Anthian

With more than 30 years working in education, Kristin holds two undergraduate teaching degrees, a Post Graduate diploma in Early Intervention and a Master’s Degree in Special Education and Inclusion from the University of Melbourne.

Her working life in education has been eclectic and varied. This has comprised of classroom teaching, learning intervention and consultancy roles across a range of organisations. Some of these have included teaching indigenous students for Save the Children Fund; working as a pre-school field officer and assessment officer for local government identifying students at risk and supporting teacher inclusive practice; and working as an Educational Advisor for Gateways Support Services in a multidisciplinary Autism team in Early Intervention. In 2014 she was involved in the VCAA VCE special provisions review focus groups and in 2017 on the VCAA VCE SEA (Special Exam Arrangements) Advisory Board for Specific Learning Disorders.

Kristin is a past council member of Learning Difficulties Australia (and a current accredited consultant member); is certified with the Centre for Effective Reading Instruction (CERI) and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) in the US as a Structure Literacy Dyslexia Interventionist; and is a certified member of the Australian Institute of Special Educators (InSpEd).

Speaking regularly at schools and conferences, Kristin has presented for LDA, Speld Victoria, AUSPELD, The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), The Australian Education Union Teacher Learning Network and the Victorian Department of Education, to name but a few.

Trained in a variety of evidence based approaches to support students experiencing learning difficulties, Kristin became the lead Author of ‘Snappy Sounds’ in 2019. Snappy Sounds is a tier 1 whole class Systematic Synthetic Phonics program, assessment tool and decodable books informed by the science of reading and published by Macmillan International. She has subsequently trained teaching staff and speech pathologists on using Snappy Sounds in Melbourne, NSW and South Australia.

Currently, Kristin works as a private practitioner in seven schools west of Melbourne, providing learning support to students who are experiencing difficulties with the acquisition of reading, spelling, writing and mathematics.

She is passionate about employing explicit direct instruction and an evidence based practice approach for students with language based learning difficulties. She is equally fervent in supporting educators to ensure high quality teaching and early intervention for students with complex learning needs. As a tenacious lifelong learner herself, Kristin observes the Reading Leagues creed ‘when we know better as teachers we do better!’

Go Back