Profile of Gillian Gale

Gillian Gale is widely recognised by professionals in the field of blindness and vision impairment as one of Australia’s most influential and well respected educators. Her personal and professional contribution to the field is enormous.

Gillian’s teaching career commenced in 1958 when she completed her Primary Teacher’s Certificate at the University of London’s Froebel Education Institute. Apart from a brief period of two years (1973 to 1975), her vocation over a period of 40 years has focussed upon the educational needs of children with disabilities.

Between 1958 and 1973 she served as a Kindergarten and Primary Emergency teacher with the London County Council and in 1975 she joined the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind (RVIB) as a classroom teacher and later infant school coordinator.

From 1981 to 1982, she completed the Graduate Diploma in Special Education (Vision Impairment) at Victoria College in Melbourne and this strengthened her particular interest in the educational needs of students who are blind or whose vision is significantly impaired. Her widely acknowledged expertise in the education of students with significant vision problems led during this period to sessional lectureships with the Victorian and Tasmanian Education Departments, Deakin University, as well as at several State and TAFE Colleges. During the period she was also invited as Visiting Specialist Teacher to the Republic of Nauru.

In November 1988, Gillian was recruited by the Northern Territory Department of Education as its Education Officer for Vision. The new position, based in Darwin, involved the administration of Territory-wide education services for all students, ranging in age from birth to tertiary level. Her responsibilities from 1988 to 1996 included supervision of a specialist staff of visiting teachers and production staff who oversaw all alternative format provision for the Territory. During this time she also taught Braille to prisoners and oversaw the Braille production programs in the Darwin and Alice Springs prisons, in addition to providing professional development for Education Department teachers, The Aboriginal Eye Health Committee and other community groups. During this period she was also sessional lecturer to Nursing and Education students at the Northern Territory University.

In 1996, Gillian joined the staff of Renwick College, Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children as Ratcliffe Fellow, and commenced work with Dr Pat Kelley, at that time Lecturer in Vision Impairment, on the production of “Towards Excellence”, Australia’s first textbook on the education of students with vision impairments. The textbook has proved to be a major contribution to the field and has been widely adopted throughout Australia, with sales in the USA, Canada, Britain, parts of Europe and New Zealand. In 1997, Gillian graduated with a Master of Special Education (Sensory Disability) degree from the University of Newcastle, specialising in Vision Impairment.

From 1998 to the present, she has been employed part-time with the Victorian Education Department as a Resource Officer at its Statewide Vision Resource Centre and as the Educational Consultant with RVIB in Melbourne. She is also an Executive Committee Member of Australian and New Zealand Heads of Education Services (Vision Impairment), the international standards-setting body for the field, as well as Executive Member of South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment, the major professional association for educators in vision impairment in the Australasian region.

In 2007, Gillian plans to retire and spend a part of her spare time in the promotion of Braille literacy.