Research group: Literacy and Language
We produce a significant body of research, publications and impact activity in the field of literacy and language.
Research expertise
About Our research
Literacy and language is a very broad field.
Our work draws on a wide variety of perspectives to understand children’s, young people’s and adults’ everyday literacy and language practices in homes, communities and classrooms.
We come from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, and draw on many theoretical frameworks that include socio-cultural, applied linguistic, literary theory, neuroscientific, psychology, new materialist, and posthuman understandings of literacy and language.
We recognise that language and literacy practices are part of the fabric of everyday life and we are interested in re-thinking how they can be understood in curriculum and pedagogy.
We use diverse methods that enable us to understand literacy and language as visual, sensory, and embedded in everyday understandings of the world.
We often employ participatory research methods so we can see literacy and language through children and young people’s eyes, and learn about their views of how, why and where literacy and language are practised.
- Header image: © Steve Pool
Our expertise
Our research expertise includes:
- literacy in homes, communities and classrooms
- new directions in the teaching and learning of grammar
- affective dimensions of literacy and language learning
- the relationship between literacy and place
- language and literacy development through theory and methodology
- multilingual literacies
- language and literacies in curriculum and pedagogy
- emergent literacies
Selected projects
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Key publications
- Ainsworth, S. and Bell, H. (2020) Affective knowledge versus affective pedagogy: the case of native grammar learning Cambridge Journal of Education 50(5) pp 597-614
- Ainsworth, S., Welbourne, S., Woollams, A. and Hesketh, A. (2019) Contrasting Explicit With Implicit Measures of Children’s Representations: The Case of Segmental Phonology Language Learning 69(2) pp 323-365
- Ainsworth, S., Welbourne, S. and Hesketh, A. (2016) Lexical restructuring in preliterate children: evidence from novel measures of phonological representation Applied Psycholinguistics 37(04) pp 997-1023
- Bell, H. and Ainsworth, S. (2020) Difficulties assessing knowledge of grammatical terminology: implications for teacher education and teaching Language Awareness
- Bell, H. and Ainsworth, S. (2019) Hard to Know or Hard to Say? Developing Explicit Grammar knowledge Among Primary Student Teachers In C. Wright, L. Harvey, J. Simpson (Eds.) Voices and Practices in Applied Linguistics: Diversifying a Discipline (pp. 195-210) White Rose University Press
- Bell, H. and Ainsworth, S. (2017) Grammar’s best kept secrets: what every primary teacher should know NATE Teaching English: Primary Matters. Spring issue 44-47
- Bell, H. (2016) Teacher knowledge and beliefs about grammar: a case study of an English primary school English in Education 50(2) pp 148-163
- Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2014) The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 35(1) pp 90-103
- Cremin, T., Flewitt, R.S., Faulkner, D. and Swann, J. (2018) Storytelling and story-acting: co-construction in action. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 16 (1): 3-17
- Cremin, T., Flewitt, R.S., Mardell, B. and Swann, J. (2017) Storytelling in Early Childhood: enriching language, literacy, and classroom culture. London and New York: Routledge. (Winner UKLA 2018 Book Award)
- de Freitas, E. and Curinga, M.X. (2015) New materialist approaches to the study of language and identity: Assembling the posthuman subject Curriculum Inquiry 45(3) pp 249-265
- Erstad, O., Flewitt, R.S., Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. and Pereira, I. (2020). The Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early Childhood. London: Routledge
- Escott, H. and Pahl, K. (2017) Learning from Ninjas: young people’s films as a lens for an expanded view of literacy and language Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
- Flewitt, R.S. and Clark, A. (2020) Porous Boundaries: Reconceptualising the home literacy environment as a digitally networked space for 0-3-year-olds. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 20(3): 447–471
- Flewitt, R.S., Pahl, K and Smith, A. (2015) Editorial: Methodology Matters. Literacy. 49 (1): 1-2
- Flewitt, R.S., Messer, D. and Kucirkova, N. (2015) New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. 15(3): 289–310
- Flewitt, R.S., Kucirkova, N. and Messer, D. (2014) Touching the virtual, touching the real: iPads and enabling literacy for students experiencing disability. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. 37(2):107-116
- Flewitt, R.S., (2011) Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a digital age. Qualitative Research, 11(3): 293–310
- Gallagher, M., Prior, J., Needham, M. and Holmes R. (2017) Listening differently: A pedagogy for expanded listening British Educational Research Journal 43(6) pp 1246-1265
- Hackett, A., MacLure, M. and M, McMahon, S. (2020) Reconceptualising early language development: matter, sensation and the more-than-human. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. pp.1-17
- Hackett, A. and Somerville, M. (2017) Posthuman literacies: young children moving in time, place and more-than-human worlds Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 17(3) pp 374-391
- Hackett, A., Pahl, K. and Pool, S. (2017) In amongst the glitter and the squashed blueberries: Crafting a collaborative lens for children’s literacy pedagogy in a community setting. Pedagogies: An International Journal 12(1) pp58-73
- Hanley, C. (2018) Thinking with Deleuze and Guattari: An exploration of writing as assemblage Educational Philosophy and Theory 51(4) pp 413-423
- Harrison, M. J. (2017) Implicated reading: a method for reflecting on practice. Reflective Practice 18(3) pp 312-325
- Kucirkova, N. and Flewitt, R.S. (2020). Understanding parents’ conflicting beliefs about children’s digital book reading. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy OnlineFirst. DOI: 10.1177/1468798420930361
- Kucirkova, N., and Flewitt, R.S. (2018). The future-gazing potential of digital personalisation in young children’s reading: views from education professionals and app designers. Early Child Development and Care, 190 (2) pp135-149
- Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K. and Flewitt, R.S., (2013) Sharing personalized stories on iPads: a close look at one parent-child interaction. Literacy, 47(3): 115-122
- MacLure, M. (2016) The Refrain of the A-grammatical Child: Finding Another Language in/for Qualitative Research Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 16(2) pp 173-182
- MacLure M. (2013) Researching without representation? Language and materiality in post-qualitative methodology International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 26(6) pp 658-667
- MacLure, M., Holmes, R., Jones, L. and MacRae, C. (2010) Silence as resistance to analysis: Or, on not opening one’s mouth properly Qualitative Inquiry 16(6) pp 492-500
- MacRae, C. (2020) Tactful hands and vibrant mattering in the sand tray. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 20(1), 90–110
- Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. with D. Collier, S. Pool, Z. Rasool and T. Trzecak (2020) Living Literacies: Literacy for Social Change. Massachusetts: MIT Press
- Pahl, K. (2014) Materializing Literacies in Communities The Uses of Literacy Revisited Bloomsbury Publishing
- Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2010) Artifactual Literacies Every Object Tells a Story Teachers College Press
- Pahl, K. (2014) The Aesthetics of Everyday Literacies: Home Writing Practices in a British Asian Household Anthropology and Education Quarterly 45(3) pp 293-311
- Pahl, K. (2012) “A reason to write”: exploring writing epistemologies in two contexts Pedagogies: An International Journal 7(3) pp 209-228
- Rowsell, J. and Pahl, K. (2015) The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies Routledge
- Rowsell, J., Burke, A., Flewitt, R.S., Liao, H-T, Lin, A., Marsh, J., Mills, K., Prinsloo, M., Rowe, D. and Wohlwend, K. (2016) Humanizing Digital Literacies: A Road Trip in Search of Wisdom and Insight. The Reading Teacher. 70 (1): 121-129
- Wolfe, S. and Flewitt, R.S. (2010) New technologies, new multimodal literacy practices and young children’s metacognitive development, Cambridge Journal of Education, 40 (4): 387–399
- Zhao, S. and Flewitt, R.S. (2020) Young Chinese immigrant children’s language and literacy practices on social media: a translanguaging perspective. Language and Education. 34:3, 267-285
Contact
Contact us
You can contact individual members of the team through their staff profiles.
For general enquiries, you can email us or call research group lead Professor Kate Pahl.
Professor Kate Pahl:
44 (0)161 247 2351