Research and Development

RaPAL produce a bulletin three times a year. Well worth the subscription fee and an excellent source of research, critiques and practical ideas. If you believe that literacy is more than a set of narrow skills (and don’t think that the Adult Literacy Curriculum is the ‘be all and end all’ of literacy teaching) then this is the journal for you. I have been a member since around 2004 and always find it an interesting read.

Based at Nottingham University, an excellent online journal with a wide range of papers. 

"The journal ‘Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices’ publishes articles related to theoretical discussions and practices of critical literacy based on a wide range of perspectives and disciplines. We propose a definition of critical literacy as an educational practice that emphasizes the connections between language, knowledge, power and subjectivities."

15 issues are available.

Editor's note (Sep 2018)

NRICH is a team of qualified teachers who are also practitioners in RICH mathematical thinking. A fabulous source of resources, puzzles and problems for all levels from Primary through to Level 3 (A Level). Plus useful general information such as these: an introduction to rich tasks and rich tasks and contexts.

Do you think you are overworked? Changing notions of teacher professionalism in the Further Education sector is a fascinating paper by Farzana Shain (1999) of Keele University. Just one of thousands of papers listed in the British Education Index (hosted by Leeds University) which “supports the professional study of education by facilitating the identification and use of specific reading matter and event-related information”.

EFF (Equipped for the Future) is a ‘national standards-based educational improvement initiative for adult basic education and English language learning’ and provides a fascinating insight into US basic skills teaching. All very familiar but with different terminology.

This Linguistics department participates in research into literacy practices -particularly adult literacy. Working papers are available – for example Moral Panics about Literacy (David Barton, 2000) that I found very useful for my Module 3 Essay on Literacy as a social practice.

Editor's note (Sept 2018)

Now archived but all links and papers remain.

A fabulous DfE funded site aimed at enhancing professional development in Maths teachers across all sectors and levels. There are news items, message boards, regular email magazines, stacks of resources and links to some very interesting blogs from maths teachers, etc.