Teachers from Lady Margaret Primary School in Southall have taken part in a year-long university research project exploring ways to make literacy teaching more inclusive.
The school was part of research led by the University of Stirling examining different approaches aimed at ensuring children’s experiences and backgrounds are better reflected in literacy lessons.
Lessons at the school were filmed during the research, with footage contributing to a new documentary, Literacy as Liberation.
The Southall teachers explored what are known as reader response approaches, which seek to make classroom teaching more responsive to children’s home, community and personal experiences.
They were among seven teachers involved in the research, with the other participants based in East Lothian and Glasgow in Scotland.
Dr Jess Anderson, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Stirling and co-director and co-producer of the documentary, told EALING.NEWS that Lady Margaret Primary was selected because of the quality of teaching and learning at the school.
She said the project and subsequent film also sought to reflect the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Britain among the teachers and children involved.
Different teachers explored different aspects of inclusive literacy. The Southall teachers did not take part in another strand of the research examining mixed-attainment reading, where children with different levels of reading fluency learn together rather than being separated into ability-based groups.
Film was used throughout the project, with lessons recorded and clips subsequently shown to participating teachers to encourage discussion and reflection on their classroom practice.
The resulting documentary, Literacy as Liberation, examines approaches to literacy teaching intended to improve inclusion and children’s confidence in reading.
It also draws on research by Dr Anderson into the experiences of children placed in lower reading groups, including children learning English as an additional language and those from working-class backgrounds.
Dr Anderson said: “We hope to show that we can teach literacy in ways that build confidence for all children and that are inclusive, so that fewer children will go through school feeling shame about the ways they communicate and there will be better futures for adults that know their worth.”
