Dr. Saleh Al-Busaidi

Bio

Dr Saleh Al-Busaidi is an Associate Professor of English as a foreign language at the College of Education, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Sultanate of Oman. He served as the Director of the Language Centre at SQU from 2010 to 2016. He currently teaches BA and MA courses and supervises and examines MA and PhD students at SQU and abroad. He received his BA in TEFL at Sultan Qaboos University in 1995, his MA in TEFL at the University of Exeter, UK in 1997, and his PhD in Curriculum Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA in 2003. Dr Al-Busaidi has participated in many national and international conferences and symposia.

He has also published several journal articles and books on areas related to English language teaching and learning. His main research interests are learner autonomy, problem-based learning, curriculum and material development, study/academic skills, academic readiness, language acquisition and program evaluation.

Dr. Joy Smiley Zabala

Dr. Joy Smiley Zabala, the Principal Consultant at Zabala and Associates, has been a leader in the use of assistive technology (AT) to improve education and life for people with disabilities for more than three decades. As a technologist, special educator, teacher trainer, and conference speaker, she has earned international recognition for her work on Assistive and Accessible Technologies, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Accessible Educational Materials (AEM). Dr. Zabala is the developer of the SETT Framework (http://www.joyzabala.com/), a model that is widely-used by families and educators for collaborative decision-making in all phases of assistive technology service design and delivery and more. She is a co-founder of QIAT (Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology) and the facilitator of the QIAT List (http://www.qiat.org). For the past decade, Dr. Zabala has been the Director of Technical Assistance for CAST where she co-directed the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (AEM Center) and currently serves as the Principal Investigator for the Center on Inclusive Technology in Education Systems (CITES).

Dr. Chris Boyle

Dr. Chris Boyle is an Associate Professor in Inclusive Education and Psychology at the University of Exeter. He has recently been the Director of Doctoral Studies at Exeter and currently supervises doctoral students in various areas of study including special education, psychology, and labeling in special education. He is currently on various editorial boards including School Psychology International; Journal of Special Educational Needs (JORSEN) and he was the Editor in Chief of The Educational and Developmental Psychologist (2012 – 2017). He has published widely in psychology and education with over 100 publications( including six books) in various outlets. Professor Boyle is the lead editor of a forthcoming publication entitled Inclusive Education: Global Issues and Controversies which is expected to be released by Brill publishers in July 2020. He is a registered educational psychologist both in the UK and in Australia and was also a secondary school teacher in Scotland.

Mr. Jonathan Hadley

Mr. Jonathan has worked in English Language Teaching for 25 years as an English teacher, teacher trainer and curriculum/materials writer. He is a consultant for Macmillan Education. With MAs in Applied Linguistics/TESOL and Arabic and Islamic Studies, he specialises in educational reform programmes in the Middle East, working with teachers, educational institutions and Ministries of Education. Jonathan is particularly interested in the challenges of  teaching reading and writing to Arab learners who often struggle to acquire these skills in their English studies.