Log in
This case study details the impact of pioneering research into reading groups, undertaken by Professor Jenny Hartley and Sarah Turvey. The huge expansion of reading groups and reader development in the UK over the last decade is largely due to their work. Underpinned by that research, their highly successful Prison Reading Groups project (PRG) now supports over 40 groups in more than 30 prisons. The key impacts of their work are:
This ICS exemplifies wide-reaching impact emanating from Morrison's creative outputs and his subsequent exploration of public reactions to it. Thus he has used different genres of writing to articulate the complexity of human relationships and emotions — for example via two critically acclaimed memoirs, an account of the Bulger trial, and, since being at Goldsmiths, a novel, South of the River (2007). Numerous readers described these books as resonating with them, highlighting the potential therapeutic benefits of reading serious literature (`bibliotherapy'). Morrison explored this idea systematically in a detailed review published as an essay in The Guardian (2008). The ensuing surge of public interest in bibliotherapy manifested in a transformative expansion of The Reader Organisation [TRO], which promotes and supports the establishment of community-based reading groups. In the UK these multiplied more than 5-fold over the following 3 years, and there was similar interest in Australia, the US, Denmark and Germany. Morrison subsequently became chair of TRO's Board of Trustees, and has promoted its activities to the public and policymakers internationally through public presentations, the media, and participation in policy fora.
The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (RED), housed and developed at The Open University (OU) is the world's largest database about reading habits. An online, open-access project with more than 30,000 entries, it has transformed public understanding of the history of reading. RED is democratising scholarship about the history of reading by encouraging members of the public from any location to contribute and use information about readers through history. More than 120 volunteers from outside academia have already contributed some 6,000 entries. RED attracts more than 1500 users each month from more than 135 countries and has inspired and provided expertise for partner projects in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
This study outlines the nationwide impacts of a community reading programme, `Get into Reading', pioneered by The Reader Organisation, which has grown out of research and praxis carried out in the Department of English at Liverpool and Continuing Education (Professor Phil Davis, Dr Josie Billington, Dr Jane Davis).
The Reader Organisation became a spin-out organisation in 2008, continuing its close working collaboration with English staff (Davis, Billington) whose research has continued to underpin its trajectory. It has grown significantly since then, developing a high profile geographic and social reach, employing 78 staff and 125 volunteers, and delivering over 360 groups nationally for shared reading aloud for health and well-being in hospitals, prisons, care homes, GP surgeries, libraries, community and mental health centres, with 30% of its employees being graduates of the Department of English. The Reader Organisation's activities benefit large numbers of care and therapeutic service providers and their client groups: training has been provided to 900 health and social care staff and `Get into Reading' has been delivered to thousands of individual participants in a wide range of settings in the UK, and is also now influencing practice in other countries.
Our research has transformed teachers' understanding of reading, leading to more effective practices. Teachers reconceptualised reading from a solitary to a social and multimedia practice, resulting in improved attitudes to reading amongst pupils. Championed by five English Local Authorities (LAs), one project was implemented in 800 schools (36,000 pupils per year group) with 61% of reading scores rising at twice the average rate. It was later developed in several other LAs. Embedded in the training of national literacy consultants (550) and initial teacher education lecturers (290), this research shaped policy and practice in England. Using new media, the Our Story app has influenced teachers' perceptions and children's reading enjoyment in diverse international settings.
University of Reading research on precocious (young early) readers identified phonemic awareness (the ability to hear, identify and manipulate small units of sound) as being important for success in learning to read words. These findings have impacted on national recommendations about the teaching of phonics in the early years; influenced the development of a series of television programmes for pre-school children; influenced the teaching of reading in English in Malaysia; and led to involvement in the development of a phonics screener for Year 1 children. The work has also had an impact on classroom assessments and the training of teachers.
Between September 2006 and January 2009, the Department of English's Gladstone Project was centred on William Ewart Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, North Wales (formerly St Deiniol's Library). It created an online electronic catalogue of the Library's holdings and a separate online catalogue detailing Gladstone's own books, with contextualised details of his annotations in them.
As a direct result, a significant body of work has been preserved and Gladstone's Library has today established itself as a major heritage centre and visitor institution, developing wider public and media interest in Gladstone, his political career and his relationship to nineteenth century literature. Impact has also extended into teaching practice at other HE institutions, through the work of the Gladstone Centre for postgraduates.
Consideration of the connections between diasporic literature and the migrant experience have been largely confined to professional critics and have focused on metropolitan centres. This project took this literature, and these debates, outside the academy, and away from London. Working with lay readers from across the UK, and over four continents, the project fostered a `devolved' debate on diaspora literature, moving it well beyond the conventional centres of migrant writing and reading. Involving school-children and adults, public libraries and book groups, migrant and `local' readers, literary festivals and agencies such as the British Council, the project staged an encounter between migrant literary production and the public sphere on an unprecedented scale.
The research had several specific impacts:
(i) It enriched and expanded the cultural lives, imaginations and sensibilities of the 250 individuals, gathered in reading groups across four continents.
(ii)It expanded public discourse on migration and identity, encouraging a wide range of people outside academia to engage with questions of multiculturalism and diasporic identity. In particular it reached young people and schools, running a poetry competition for children, establishing a youth theatre company, and developing resources for schools.
(iii) It produced print and online outputs to transmit, expand and entrench public discussion of migration and identity, including a database and a major anthology of diasporic poetry.
(iv) It helped to establish best practice for mass reading events and literary festivals, particularly those concerned with reflecting the multiculturalism of modern British literature.
Sussex research has led to changes in how children are taught reading comprehension across the UK and increasingly in South America. The 2013 Primary National Curriculum for English emphasises the acquisition of skills for reading comprehension. The Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading, which cites many of Oakhill's research papers, fed directly into the revised National Curriculum, English. The increasing emphasis on skills for reading comprehension led Whatmuff to develop `inference training', a published training programme inspired by Oakhill's studies now used across the UK. Independently, a group of Educational Psychologists in Argentina developed a programme for primary age children, comprising a theoretical manual and work book that draws directly from Oakhill's research findings and is being implemented across South America.
Research findings inform lectures delivered to educators in English in the local region: both serving teachers and their pupils (Further Education) and PGCE Secondary English students undertaking their school placements locally, and often gaining employment within the Midlands. The impact is in how the teachers use literary texts to engage more effectively with their pupils regarding notions of race and `Otherness'; to develop a tolerant attitude towards those perceived as different; and to be cognisant of the pitfalls in teaching `texts from different cultures and traditions', as stipulated by the English National Curriculum, which might reinforce wider social discourses of `Otherness' around race.