In the Research Conversations podcast series, researchers and teachers come together in conversation to collectively explore different aspects of engaging with literacy research. They draw on their diverse priorities, interests and concerns as they reflect on what their encounters with research are and reimagine what they could be.
You can listen to the episode or read the transcript below to consider their different perspectives when it comes to engaging with research.
“Time to really look”: Slowing down and observing with research in the classroom
In this episode, teacher Vikki Varley and researcher Sinéad Harmey talk about the value of teachers conducting their own research in their classrooms.
Such projects can not only have a positive impact on their students but also provide learning opportunities for the teachers themselves. These research projects give teachers time to dwell and reflect on their own thinking and practice. They end up contributing to their professional and personal development. This episode also explores the different ways in which both teachers and researchers can tune into each other.
Listen to the episode here
Vikki Varley (VV): Hello, so my name is Vikki Varley. I’m a year 2 teacher and English leader in a four-form-entry school in Sheffield.
Sinéad Harmey (SH): I’m Sinéad Harmey. I’m an associate professor in literacy education. I’m based in – this is a mouthful – the International Literacy Centre in the Department of Learning and Leadership in the Institute of Education, which is part of UCL.
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SH: I was a primary school teacher for many years and a primary literacy lead after that before I went into research. One of the things that I was really interested in, Vikki, was hearing about your MA research. Want to tell us about it?
VV: I recently did my dissertation at Oxford Brookes University and we’d been doing a lot about Reading for Pleasure in schools with the Open University and using their research to inform a whole-school approach to reading for pleasure, knowing how important it is sort of as a tool for social justice. So I went on from there and I thought I’d look in my own classroom.
I got some children who were able to read but were choosing not to read in the classroom. So each day we have a daily independent reading time. And I really wanted to engage more children into volitional reading. Having read around Reading for Pleasure and different approaches, I decided that I would use a mini library. So I made the children personalised boxes of books. We had conversations about what their interests were and then I chose books for them, laid these books out on the table and they chose ones to put in their basket. And they kept that basket for six weeks. And I sort of observed them before they had the boxes and then after the boxes to see what impact that made and to see whether it did engage them more or not. Which it did! [laughs]
It was really successful. The mean reading time after the introduction of the boxes was more than it was previously. But the whole experience, I learned so much from. And I can’t say definitely whether it was the boxes at all that made the difference. That’s what’s really interesting about the research as well because so many other variables changed. Because of all the reading and reflecting that I’d done, I sort of developed as a reader teacher. The book stock that we had in the classroom changed as well because I listened to what the children wanted. So all of these different factors were involved. I’ve actually used the boxes again this year because they were quite successful just with selected children.
SH: One of the things I was gonna ask you is how has it impacted your practice? So that’s one of the ways is that you’ve kept going with the boxes.
VV: Yeah, I’ve kept going. I did it with six focus children. And then this year, as I’ve observed my class, some of the children, it wasn’t that they weren’t reading, it was that they had such a narrow field; they would just pick up the same book. So we used it as a way of increasing the variety of books. But I think all the reading around it I did, I learned more about how I was teaching and what I was doing and reflecting on sort of the whole way I approached it. So there’s things I didn’t realise before that had changed how I’ve interacted with the children by reading the research. There’s a really good piece of research about how some children do want to read, but they’re poor choosers and you need to support them. Some children just can’t access the whole class offer and say they need a more personalised approach. So all of those things that I read and realised, “Oh! Oh yes, of course!” [laughs], I could then incorporate into the project. So it sort of developed as I went on and I’ve developed it this year.
SH: That’s kinda like how we read as adults, isn’t it? You know, personal recommendations from friends or somebody has a book that they’d liked and then they’ll recommend it. Whereas if you were to go in to a whole library, it can be really overwhelming.
VV: Yeah, absolutely overwhelming. We use the informal book talk to introduce the books to the children. So it familiarised with them, but they still had the autonomy because I wasn’t saying, “you can only read these books, you must read these books.” It was, “you can put those into your box if you like, but you can also still have access to the other things.” And then when they enjoyed one, they’d come and tell me about it and we’d get more in the series. So that reduced the problem of choosing because I tried to put series in for the early chapter books. But they also developed social reading hubs as well, so other children were drawn into it.
SH: Yeah.
VV: And there was these brilliant informal conversations going on about books they were enjoying. I looked into as well about attitudes to reading and confidence, self-efficacy, reader identities and sort of reflected on how those things were important in motivation to read. And there was one child who at the beginning he pretended to read, he didn’t like reading really. He didn’t think he was very good at reading and he was working below the expected standard. And by the end, he was working at the expected standard for reading. He said he loved reading. He’d started reading at home. I got his parents and they made a book box for him at home.
And he was modelling my behaviour. So as we talked about the books and swapped books, he was then getting other children to come along and doing the same. It was fascinating to watch. As a teacher, you don’t – maybe unless you’re in the early years – get an opportunity to watch children and watch what they’re doing. So when you stand back and … I think that’s one of the good things about research. It gives you time to really look at what’s going on in your classroom. It makes it really exciting, I think.
SH: It’s a real privilege, isn’t it? To just slow down and watch and see what’s happening. Do you think actually doing that research on independent reading has impacted any other area where you teach?
VV: We’re doing as a whole school the Open University Reading Schools programme. So I’ve been able to sort of share what I’ve learned with other staff. And it’s made me feel more confident about being able to share research from the Open University with other staff because I’ve spent more time looking at and digesting it. I’m really excited about looking at writing now. We’ve looked at reading so much and perhaps that same observation, maybe it will come when I start to look at their writing.
SH: So my research is about writing and observing young writers. And I think it kind of really came from my classroom teaching. Because I did work with young classes in Ireland so that would have been I guess Reception – Year 1. And then I started working one-to-one with children and then I realised – when I slowed down a bit – that actually being able to watch children, my writing teaching became more effective. When you were saying about slowing down to watch it and observe, it resonated with me.
VV: I suppose it’d be really interesting to know if teachers were interested in getting more involved in research, how would teachers go about doing that?
SH: That’s an interesting question because I think from my perspective as a researcher, I’m always looking to engage with teachers and I’m kind of like, “how do I do that?” because I think teachers are usually so busy to start with. And then it’s about kind of finding a match in terms of what’s interesting. I think I’ve often found that organisations like the UKLA, the UK Literacy Association are really good places to meet people at similar interests and continue I guess on research journeys if that makes sense. When did you finish your master’s?
VV: September.
SH: September, yeah. So I often find it interesting like the summer after, for example, you’ve finished your master’s research, going to these conferences and there’s researchers there who are like so eager to find out about these projects that are happening in schools or that have happened as part of master’s research. That’s a really fantastic way to engage with researchers because I think equally we’d be there in those spaces as well trying to engage. Spaces like this. You’re part of that Open University project, you’re probably engaging with other teachers as well and creating networks in a way to keep going on that journey.
VV: I’m a member of the UKLA, so I’ve got a really helpful space like you say. And I found that once you know somebody – [laughs]
SH: Yeah!
VV: They’ll put you in contact with someone else. I’m hoping to do a research project with a researcher at Sheffield University around translanguaging as well. That’s through UKLA and they’re a fantastic organisation.
SH: It’s those like informal spaces where you make connections. I think conference is always a good space. There’s early childhood conferences, UKLA and then those special interest groups. If I was to put the question back to you in a way, what would you think that researchers would need to do to make connections with you? Like what will be helpful for you?
VV: I don’t know if it’s usually the senior leaders of the school but the middle leaders are good people to approach because they’re the ones with sort of subject-specific interests. Yeah it’s tricky, it sounds like you want to get involved with teachers and probably we want to get in with researchers. And it’s just …
SH: Yeah. I don’t have an answer to this. It’s about finding channels where you both tune into each other like platforms where there’s common ground. Because I think very often as a researchers, we publish papers, for example. So that’s like how we produce our research and you publish a paper and then it goes behind a pay wall. And you can only access it if you’re … like you when you were doing your MA, there were certain articles that you could only access when you had the library subscription. And I think more I’m beginning to learn about, like maybe that’s not the best way for me to communicate my research.
VV: Yeah, I think there’s two things there, I suppose. I’ve definitely felt like, “oh my goodness, I’ve lost my library access now.” [laughter] But I suppose as well, like sometimes research papers can be off-putting in that they might be difficult to understand. Sometimes I have looked and I thought, “gosh, I don’t understand the title.” [laughter] I don’t know, so maybe publishing somewhere like perhaps a one-page summary in I suppose more layman’s terms so that it’s like really easy to digest and get the key points across with a link to the full paper if we wanted to. Maybe things like there’s the UKLA, isn’t there – 4-11 that’s written by mostly teachers that’s sort of really easy to read.
SH: Yeah. No, I did a piece of research – it was during COVID, it wasn’t very literacy focused – but we did a review where we looked at what were schools’ reflections on returning to school after learning disruptions. So it was kind of like when SARS or the Christchurch earthquakes or Katrina happened, what were schools’ priorities? Versus what were schools’ priorities during COVID? And it was really interesting because when we looked at all the literature from back then, schools were very concerned with children’s mental health; using literature and writing to express feelings about what had happened. And it wasn’t really about catch-up or anything like that.
I did publish a review on that, but one of the things I also did was I met with teachers and educational professionals and I shared my results with them and I asked them to tell me what they thought of it. And I put it in a two-page booklet and I had a resource for schools to kind of talk about it. So that was a good learning experience for me to actually sit down and say what’s valuable about this? What should I communicate about it? Which I think kind of matches what you’re saying in some ways.
VV: I think it can be overwhelming when you try to read a piece of research that you don’t understand. You don’t understand all the terms for it and you miss the important messages. That’s how I feel anyway that I’m not super experienced at research and I end up coming away feeling like, “you know what? I just didn’t understand.”
SH: Yeah.
VV: It’s making it accessible, isn’t it.
SH: Has your teaching around literacy in general changed as a result of doing research yourself? Do you think you’re approaching writing differently or?
VV: I think not yet. It’s sort of early stages. We’ve taken this year to say, let’s look what’s out there for writing. It’s quite overwhelming in that there isn’t a, “this is the way you must teach writing.” So I’m looking at the different options, like the different schemes – not that I necessarily want a scheme – but I’m approaching it … “what is your evidence to say that what you are doing is having an impact? And where is your approach coming from?” I’m looking at things quite critically, I think. But it is really difficult and I would love there to be somebody impartial who could come and say, “this is the real research evidence to say what works with writing and this is an approach you could use.” But it’s difficult to find.
SH: It is. Well, I think from my own perspective, that reflects the field of writing research really well because we don’t know as much about writing as we do about reading; it’s under-researched compared to writing . And then I guess from my own perspective and the research I do is that like so much of it is, you know, conducted in other contexts perhaps or with other age groups and it doesn’t quite apply in other settings. I’m starting a project now with 2- to 4-year-olds. And I have worked with older 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds but I’ve never worked with them younger – 3 or 2. [laughs] It’s like you say, it’s kind of like I read these things and they seem impactful. But I don’t know what it’s going to be like when I’m going to actually begin engaging with them – with 2-year-olds. We shall see.
VV: How do you find when you go into sort of educational settings, what do you think a good relationship would look like? How could we help researchers if they do want to come into school?
SH: I think every context is so unique and one of the things that is really helpful for me is to know about the school and the setting and how it works and who the children are and who the families and parents are, ’cause it really helps kind of contextualise and it helps you set your mind up for what you want to do.
I was actually at a school this morning and what was really helpful for me was beginning to know about the fact that many of the families are intergenerational and it’ll be mums and grannies and dads and cousins and brothers and sisters bringing children to school. And how many children speak English as an additional language. And it kind of really helps me to finetune my lens because every school’s so different, isn’t it?
That’s really helpful to me because I might come in with an idea of something I want to do but every time I hear something about the school, I begin to kind of adjust my lens a bit and kind of think I’ll need to think about this and think about that. So I really, really appreciate teachers’ knowledge of schools and families and who the children are. I think that’s really, really helpful. That just really helps kinda make a connection, if that makes sense. And also what’s going on in the school, ’cause I think schools are also really unique – like you were saying, what schemes they use, what books they use, how they teach literacy. So knowing that is really helpful as well.
VV: So if teachers were interested in further study, if they’d done their master’s, what opportunities do you think there might be beyond a master’s?
SH: I think there’s loads of options. Like I said to you, I was a primary school teacher and then I went into working as a literacy lead, like a primary literacy advisor. But I kept one of the connections that I had established from my MA. So that was a researcher that I had met, I kind of engaged with her on a project that she was doing. And one thing led to another and I ended up doing my PhD with her. So when we were talking about making connections, I think keeping those connections is really important.
I think the path to doing further study, there are so many different paths, but the keeping connections is one thing. Keeping engaging in organisations like the International Literacy Association, UKLA, are really good ways to keep connections with universities. I mean obviously there’s PhD or an EdD as well where you’d be looking more at teacher education. There’s all those possibilities and so many really good courses that are available to you so. I think maintaining connection is probably my takeaway and that’s what worked for me.
I guess as researchers, we always welcome an email from somebody who says “I’ve done my MA in this, I was really excited about it. Could I talk to you? Or can I have an informal conversation with you about possibly doing some research?” Because for me, there’s nothing more exciting than somebody who is a teacher and who wants to do more research. It is a big commitment to do further study but I think we always really relish the opportunity to work with a teacher who just wants to go further. So there’s nothing wrong either with just sending an email to somebody or having a conversation over coffee at a conference as well. I think informal conversations are really helpful. You never know! [laughter]
VV: Thank you, Sinéad. It was really lovely to speak to you.
SH: Yeah, it was really nice to speak to you and it’s so interesting to hear about your project. And I’m really excited to hear that you’re thinking about going into writing and yeah, keep in touch.
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