Category: About project

Different ways of looking: Exploring interdisciplinary collaborations and multiple approaches to literacy research

This post is a transcript of the second episode of our podcast Research Mobilities. It looks at how researchers can collaborate with designers to visually represent their research to new audiences. Professor Cathy Burnett chats with designer/researcher Layla Gharib about how the process of developing the images together resulted in new ways of thinking and working. They also explore how these images provide space to invite different interpretations, questions and conversations.

You can listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts by looking for Research Mobilities. 

Continue reading Different ways of looking: Exploring interdisciplinary collaborations and multiple approaches to literacy research

What can corpus linguistics tell us about primary literacy research in England?

April 2023

This post is a transcript of the first episode of our new podcast Research Mobilities. It introduces what corpus linguistics actually is and how we’re using the method in our project. Dr Anna Lindroos Cermakova explains what analysing newspapers and Twitter conversations can tell us about how people understand and talk about literacy in primary schools in England.

You can listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts by looking for Research Mobilities. 

Continue reading What can corpus linguistics tell us about primary literacy research in England?

Exploring the movements of research in the wild

January 2023

Cathy Burnett 

When we try to explain the focus for the Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education project, we often say that we are interested in ‘how research moves to, from and among teachers’.  At this point in the project it is worth expanding on what we mean by this as we have found that this statement can be interpreted slightly differently from how we’ve intended it.

First of all, when we refer to ‘research’ we adopt an inclusive definition. In other posts I have made the point that we are interested in literacy research associated with a wide range of methodologies and topics. Here I want to emphasise that we are not just interested in research that originates in universities or other institutions but also in teacher-led research and enquiry and in research that is coproduced by academics and teachers[1] .

Continue reading Exploring the movements of research in the wild

Glimpsing bridges between primary literacy research and practice on distant shores

June 29, 2022

Julia Gillen

, , , , ,

I’ve been fortunate in the last couple of months to gain insights into endeavours that share with our project an interest in bridging primary literacy research and practice.

 

On 3rd May I attended a virtual event coordinated by Dr Shelley Stagg Peterson of the University of Toronto and hosted  by Dr Rachel Heydon, Western University, Canada, entitled, “Building Bridges between Literacy Research and Practice: diverse perspectives.”  I thought this an extremely worthwhile, inspirational and rich event and so quote its description:

“We are teachers and teacher educators with many decades of experience teaching young children to read and write. We bring diverse perspectives on the roles of oral language, phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, critical literacy, multimodal texts, comprehension, motivation, writing and spelling to literacy learning. We wish to support teachers in continuing to provide equitable literacy learning environments to ensure that all students receive the instruction they deserve. The goal of our presentation is to provide evidence from our classrooms on ways to bridge the science of reading-based recommendations of the Right to Read Inquiry’s report with research on literacy teaching and learning.”

Continue reading Glimpsing bridges between primary literacy research and practice on distant shores

How do teachers encounter research?

May 05 2022

Cathy Burnett

, , , ,

In the recent Schools White Paper Nadhim Zahawi includes a commitment to ‘placing the generation and mobilisation of evidence at the heart of our education system.’  The mobilisation of research evidence is a key concern of our current ESRC funded project, Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education (ES/W000571/1), which is exploring how research moves to and between teachers. The project is a partnership between Sheffield Hallam University, Lancaster University and University of Stirling.  Our starting point is that the mobilisation of research is an increasingly complex business.

, , , , , , ,

We are interested particularly in research that has potential to speak in useful ways to literacy education in primary schools. Literacy is a huge area and there is a wide variety of research available internationally that could be of value and interest to primary teachers. Some of this focuses on pedagogical approaches (such as the use of drama or group discussion) but there is also work that provides useful insights into children’s experiences of literacy at home and at school, as well as that which generates searching questions about the purposes and priorities of literacy education.

Continue reading How do teachers encounter research?