Professor Snow has undertaken extensive research into how people end up in the youth justice, out-of-home care systems and factors leading to non-participation in mainstream education.
Currently, 30-40% of students aren’t meeting minimum literacy benchmarks, the task is to ensure every teacher in every classroom in the country teaching K-2 has access to the best knowledge and practice on how to teach literacy. Disadvantaged young people who don’t get good early literacy opportunities fall out early from mainstream education because they are not coping. Her research uncovered alarmingly high levels of unidentified oral language difficulties and high rates of very low literacy in these prisons and out-of-home.
Professor Pamela Snow is a registered psychologist. She is a former member of the National Year 1 Literacy and Numeracy Panel and In 2020, she established, the Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab in the School of Education at La Trobe University.