Seminar programme 2024-25

Seminar 1: Promoting reading across transition: What do we know and what can we do?

14:00-15:00 (GMT) Tuesday 25 February 25

How can we promote reading engagement in primary and secondary students? We will discuss the crucial role of reading proficiency and how to support this. Beyond this, we need to work closely with teachers and students to develop a better understanding of how to encourage volitional reading.

Watch Seminar 1: Promoting reading across transition: What do we know and what can we do?

Professor Jessie Ricketts is based in the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London and directs the Language and Reading Acquisition (LARA) research group. Jessie researches language and literacy in children, young people and adults. She is particularly interested in how reading benefits children’s learning and language. Jessie works closely with teachers, educational charities and policy makers to conduct research and consider its implications for education.

Dr Laura Shapiro is based at the Institute for Health and Neurodevelopment at Aston University and her core expertise is longitudinal research investigating the causes and consequences of language and literacy development using statistical causal modelling. Laura is interested in how experiences of reading throughout school influence young people’s lifelong reading habits. Laura’s research crosses developmental, health and educational psychology and is shaped both by fundamental scientific questions and by the concerns of practitioners and policy makers.

Seminar 2: Informal book talk: shaping positive reader identities

14:00-15:00 (GMT) Tuesday 20 May 2025

Watch Seminar 2: Informal book talk: shaping positive reader identities

Drawing on the long history of reading for pleasure research led by Professor Teresa Cremin, and with a renewed focus on oracy in primary classrooms, the OU team will discuss findings from their recent studies that offer a clearer picture of the characteristics of informal book talk with young readers, the impact on their reading engagement and reader identities and the ways in which this is facilitated by teachers and other education professionals. The studies offer novel insights about the rich contribution that relaxed, and often spontaneous book talk offers children, both personally and socially, and the role it can play in developing positive dispositions towards reading and being a reader.

Seminar 3: Write to Read: Motivating and Engaging Learners

14:00-15:00 (GMT) Tuesday 25 November 2025

Seminar 3: Write to Read: Motivating and Engaging Learners

This seminar shares insights from the Write to Read research project, a longitudinal collaborative literacy intervention operational in primary schools in Ireland, many of whom are located in marginalised communities and have a substantial number of children who are underachieving in literacy. 

The project seeks to support schools to infuse literacy instruction with purpose and passion to simultaneously engage children as readers, writers, thinkers and creators and to improve outcomes. 

Examples of classroom practice for 4–12-year-olds drawn from the project will be shared including children’s writing, literature discussions and participant voice. The critical factors- influencing success, both classroom and school will be explored.

Prof. Eithne Kennedy works in the School of Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education, DCU Institute of Education, Ireland and leads the DCU Centre for Literacy Research, Policy and Practice. She chairs the Master of Education in Literacy Professional Practice programme. Eithne is a former primary classroom teacher with 14 years’ experience (K-12th Grade) in Ireland and the US. 

As director of the Write to Read research initiative, she collaborates with schools designated as disadvantaged to create powerful literacy environments that motivate and engage children as readers, writers and thinkers. She has authored and co-authored a range of related publications, most recently: Teaching and Assessing Writing in the Primary School: A Whole School Approach (Routledge, 2025)