Dr Chia Kok Hwee

Dr Chia Kok Hwee majored in language & literacy (reading) education, special education and psychology, and dyslexia and obtained his Doctorate of Education from the University of Western Australia. He has been practising for almost 30 years. He is a double board-certified (educational therapist/diagnostician and special education professional) of the Association of Educational Therapists (AET) and the American Association of Special Needs Professionals (AASEP) respectively. He also obtained his advanced professional credential as a reading therapy specialist from the International Association of Counselors and Therapists (IACT). In addition, he obtained two Fellow diplomas: literacy and dyslexia from The College of Preceptors, Essex, and the other in dyslexia from The College of Teachers@University of London Institute of Education (CollT@ULIE), where he was once a visiting academic.

He was an associate professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University and as a committee member of the Review Board & Discharge Committee of the Ministry of Social & Family. He left the organizations to focus on paediatric diagnostic assessment, therapy/ treatment and training. Dr Chia took up a visiting professorship with the University of St. Joseph (Macau) and was mentoring M.Ed and PhD candidates. He was a Lee Kong Chian Research Fellow (2010) at the National Library Board, Singapore, where his research focus was on the growth of imagination in Singapore Children’s Literature in English. He received the Omega Gamma Chi Honor Society Award from the National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET) in 2012. He also received a letter of appreciation in 2017 from the then Minister of Social and Family for his service with the Child Welfare and Protection Committee. He was also an editorial board member of the European Journal of Special Education Research.

Dr Chia is an honorary fellow of the Reading Specialists’ Association Singapore (HonFRSAS) and 2nd vice president of the Early Years Research Association of Singapore (EYRAS). He is an approved speciality programs instructor with the IACT and was the founding leader of the IACT-Singapore Chapter. Currently, he is a special needs consultant serving the communities in the East Asian and South-East Asian regions.

Dr Chia has also received a letter of good standing and commendation from IACT. He still writes prolifically and contributes research papers to SCI, Scopus, and Citefactor-indexed peer-reviewed journals alongside the authoring of some 30 academic publications. He is also a peer reviewer of many international journals such as the Universal Journal of Education Research, the Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the Asian Journal of Interdisciplinary Research.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3645-2602