About the Authors
Margarete Wolfram received her training in developmental psychology under Jean Piaget at the Institute Jean Jacques Rousseau in Geneva, Switzerland. She holds special diplomas in educational psychology and clinical child psychology as well as a liçence in sciences of education from the University of Geneva. She studied learning theory, motivation, and perception at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and received a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Before her migration to Canada, she worked as a school psychologist in the Ministry of Education in the City State Hamburg, Germany. In 1979/80, Wolfram collaborated with Reuben Feuerstein in Israel, training teachers to increase the cognitive skills of their students. It was during this time that she started to apply the principles of cognitive skill training to overcome her son's dyslexia. She has taught at York University for more than 40 years, specializing in the area of methodology, educational psychology, perception, learning, cognition, motivation, and behaviour modification. She is fluent in German, French, and English, and holds certificates of proficiency in Spanish and Italian.
​
​
​
Antonio and Rafael Pascual-Leone started out by being the beneficiaries of the method, which was specifically initiated and designed to overcome Antonio’s dyslexia. The feedback provided by the obstacles and successes Antonio encountered profoundly shaped the characteristic features of the method.
​
At the age of seven, Rafael was described by his teacher as an average grade two student with some difficulties in reading. After a mere two months of homeschooling, a Board appointed psychologist found his reading skills to be several years ahead of his age and recommended that he skip grade three. Rafael’s rapid progress suggested that the material and procedure, although designed to overcome the difficulties of challenged readers, could also translate into greatly accelerated acquisition for children without such problems. This finding was later replicated in some small-scale studies carried out by York University students.
​
While Antonio was the reason to initiate the method, Rafael was the motor behind its continuation. He had not only made rapid progress, but he had also thoroughly enjoyed the experience. As a young teenager, a year ahead of his age in a French immersion gifted program, Rafael proposed that we expand the teaching material, writing more stories and illustrating them. He solicited the collaboration of his older brother Antonio who, after finally learning to read, had made great strides and was heavily involved in theatre. Turning collections of words into appealing stories and adding illustrations that conveyed the gist of the stories was something that appealed to the creativity of both teenagers and became a family enterprise. Some stories, especially those that had been plagued by writers’ block when worked on by a single author, became the result of collaboration, gaining shape and undergoing sudden transformation by being tossed from one to the other. Being schooled for several of their formative years in programs for the gifted meant that both boys had been in prolonged interaction with bright and achievement-oriented girls. The consequence of this experience can be seen in the enterprising and resourceful female characters of the stories, some of whom are modeled after the junior authors’ classmates. As a university student, Antonio later became highly successful as a reading tutor for learning disabled individuals and small groups of normal preschoolers. He provided many new insights to fine-tune the method for use with challenged students and the very young.
​
Antonio and Rafael have since gone on to follow their independent careers. Antonio is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Windsor. He is highly successful as a researcher and teacher and is the recipient of international awards for innovative methodology. He conducts workshops and research in Canada as well as Switzerland, Ireland and Spain. He was recently awarded the title of honorary research professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Rafael holds a BSc in Computer Science from McGill University and a Masters degree of Architecture and Media Design from the University of Toronto. He is presently involved in the design of a community hub in Valetta on the island of Malta, as part of that city’s preparation as the 2018 cultural capital of Europe.
About the Authors
Margarete Wolfram received her training in developmental psychology under Jean Piaget at the Institute Jean Jacques Rousseau in Geneva, Switzerland. She holds special diplomas in educational psychology and clinical child psychology as well as a liçence in sciences of education from the University of Geneva. She studied learning theory, motivation, and perception at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and received a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Before her migration to Canada, she worked as a school psychologist in the Ministry of Education in the City State Hamburg, Germany. In 1979/80, Wolfram collaborated with Reuben Feuerstein in Israel, training teachers to increase the cognitive skills of their students. It was during this time that she started to apply the principles of cognitive skill training to overcome her son's dyslexia. She has taught at York University for more than 40 years, specializing in the area of methodology, educational psychology, perception, learning, cognition, motivation, and behaviour modification. She is fluent in German, French, and English, and holds certificates of proficiency in Spanish and Italian.
​
​
​
Antonio and Rafael Pascual-Leone started out by being the beneficiaries of the method, which was specifically initiated and designed to overcome Antonio’s dyslexia. The feedback provided by the obstacles and successes Antonio encountered profoundly shaped the characteristic features of the method.
​
At the age of seven, Rafael was described by his teacher as an average grade two student with some difficulties in reading. After a mere two months of homeschooling, a Board appointed psychologist found his reading skills to be several years ahead of his age and recommended that he skip grade three. Rafael’s rapid progress suggested that the material and procedure, although designed to overcome the difficulties of challenged readers, could also translate into greatly accelerated acquisition for children without such problems. This finding was later replicated in some small-scale studies carried out by York University students.
​
While Antonio was the reason to initiate the method, Rafael was the motor behind its continuation. He had not only made rapid progress, but he had also thoroughly enjoyed the experience. As a young teenager, a year ahead of his age in a French immersion gifted program, Rafael proposed that we expand the teaching material, writing more stories and illustrating them. He solicited the collaboration of his older brother Antonio who, after finally learning to read, had made great strides and was heavily involved in theatre. Turning collections of words into appealing stories and adding illustrations that conveyed the gist of the stories was something that appealed to the creativity of both teenagers and became a family enterprise. Some stories, especially those that had been plagued by writers’ block when worked on by a single author, became the result of collaboration, gaining shape and undergoing sudden transformation by being tossed from one to the other. Being schooled for several of their formative years in programs for the gifted meant that both boys had been in prolonged interaction with bright and achievement-oriented girls. The consequence of this experience can be seen in the enterprising and resourceful female characters of the stories, some of whom are modeled after the junior authors’ classmates. As a university student, Antonio later became highly successful as a reading tutor for learning disabled individuals and small groups of normal preschoolers. He provided many new insights to fine-tune the method for use with challenged students and the very young.
​
Antonio and Rafael have since gone on to follow their independent careers. Antonio is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Windsor. He is highly successful as a researcher and teacher and is the recipient of international awards for innovative methodology. He conducts workshops and research in Canada as well as Switzerland, Ireland and Spain. He was recently awarded the title of honorary research professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Rafael holds a BSc in Computer Science from McGill University and a Masters degree of Architecture and Media Design from the University of Toronto. He is presently involved in the design of a community hub in Valetta on the island of Malta, as part of that city’s preparation as the 2018 cultural capital of Europe.
Phonics in Context Units
