ABSTRACT
Despite the overlaps there is a case to be made for suggesting there is still a lack of engagement between these various areas of research. The major concern thus far of cognitive psychologists has been to identify the processing deficits underlying dyslexia. They have been less concerned with looking at how these deficits/differences might interact with broader everyday influences such as a child’s view of herself as a learner. In contrast much mainstream educational research and writing has ignored or denied the existence of dyslexia as a concept and it has therefore not been directly researched or written about. Many educationalists would argue that they have included many so-called dyslexic children within a different conceptual framework which sees them as part of the continuum of children with specific learning difficulties/disabilities within the broader category of children with special needs. From this perspective there has been a considerable amount of research especially on children who have had difficulties learning to read. The problem is that, because some cognitive and educational researchers have started from different perspectives with different approaches to defining and identifying children with a difficulty, it is hard to compare and draw meaningful conclusions from their relative research.
