This article explores the use of Bourdieusian analysis for examining how policy and practice interact in the teaching of English and therefore in the development of children's language and literacy, in particular how. Bourdieusian analysis uncovers the ways in which teachers' practice has been influenced unconsciously by centralised…

Participatory research can be seen as providing affordances for "listening" to student voices. This study contributes to the debate around its affordances in ameliorating democratic processes in schools. Students in a northern city secondary school in England used multimodal methods to research questions based on "where do students…

This article engages with recent policy on reading comprehension. It argues that the construct of inference has been treated as a single entity despite research and literature to the contrary, and this is perpetuated in the National Curriculum for 2014. It explores the limitations of conceptualising inference as a unitary construct and…

This article explores and compares the impact of studying a challenging literary text at GCSE on pupils with and without learning difficulties. It is based on the findings of a qualitative classroom-based research project that analysed taped pupil conversations to measure the resilience of the response of secondary school students to reading…

Reading for pleasure is essential in the development of literacy. This paper reports on findings from a paired reading strategy introduced into primary schools in Antigua and Barbuda in order to foster children's pleasure in reading. This programme of cross-age peer tutoring intervention began with the training of teachers in a small group of…

Researchers have documented bilingual family literacy programmes in terms of their structure and programming as well as their effect on children's language and literacy development and parents' ability to support such development within the home. What is missing from the discussion is a description of how facilitators mediate…

This article presents data from a British Academy-funded study of the everyday literacy practices of three families living on a predominantly white working-class council housing estate on the edge of a Midlands city. The study explored, as one participant succinctly put it, "how people read and write and they don't even notice".…

This paper discusses the ways in which young children collaboratively use narrative play and the available space and materials around them in order to exert cultural agency. The collaborative creation of texts is asserted as central to this expression of agency. By presenting an illustrative vignette of a group of 5-year-old boys as they engage in…

Guided reading is widely perceived to be tricky in English primary schools; prior research has found difficulties with teacher interpretation and implementation. The study reported here suggests that to understand the problems associated with it we should also take into account pupils' perspectives on their guided reading lessons. In this…

This article presents the outcomes of research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in England and informed by work in the fields of new literacy research, gaming studies and the socio-cultural framing of education, for which the videogame "L. A. Noire" was studied within the orthodox framing of the English literature…

This paper reports a study that examines the integration of tablet technologies such as iPads into literacy lessons to investigate how reading and meaning-making occur within this digital medium. Specifically in this paper, we discuss the concept of reading paths as applied to physical and cognitive planes of meaning-making. The paper reports on…

The place of grammar within the teaching of writing has long been contested and successive research studies have indicated no correlation between grammar teaching and writing attainment. However, a recent study has shown a significant positive impact on writing outcomes when the grammar input is intrinsically linked to the demands of the writing…

Thousands of UK school children spend considerable time during a lengthy period of their youth learning to read, or decode, a 'religious classical', the liturgical language connected to their faith. Drawing on recent theories of reading, identity and literacy practices, this paper briefly describes and seeks to share tentative thoughts…

After briefly reviewing how reading is conceptualised in the "Progress in International Reading Literacy Study" and the English National Curriculum, this article examines two unofficial reading activities in a class of 10-11-year-olds' to see how far these activities match up with the official definitions of reading, or whether they…

This paper examines the use of student planners (agendas) with elementary school students. It asks how teachers, students and parents in two classrooms engage in the literacy practice of using student planners. A literacy object originally introduced to manage schoolwork in and out of school for students with learning difficulties, planners are…