Outreach activities
Publications
-
What can children learn about morphology from reading for fun? (2025) Blog post.
-
What makes GCSE English Literature so hard for students? (2024) Tes, published online on 4 August 2024.
-
What words do children encounter when they read for pleasure? (2024) Nomanis, Issue 17. Also available as a blog post.
Talks
-
The words children and young people encounter when they read for pleasure, and what it means for learning. Talk given at the Working Together: Research and Practice meeting 2025, The South East Research Network for Schools, Egham, UK, 27 June 2025. [slides]
-
Words in books: A challenge, a blessing, or both? Invited talk given at the ResearchED National Conference, London, UK, 7 September 2024. [slides]
-
What does it take to read and understand the GCSE English Literature texts? Talk given at the Working Together: Research and Practice event 2024, The South East Research Network for Schools, Egham, UK, 21 June 2024. [slides]
Collaborations with industry
In a recent collaboration with The World Bank, we show that students in low- and middle-income countries are failing to acquire the most basic skills necessary for reading comprehension. Our findings highlight that evidence-based phonics instruction is needed to support global literacy goals. A short blog post summarising this work is available here and here.
External publications featuring my research
- Deep Dive: Morphology Instruction and Children’s Books (MetaMetrics)
- Research Bites: Research round-up for evidence-based practices (The Educator’s Room)
- Phrase It: a card game to build word recognition and reading fluency skills based on the CYP-LEX database (Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity)
- Let’s read it again: the power of storytime replays (Research Schools Network)
- Child literacy in low- and middle-income countries (Nature Human Behaviour)
- The science of reading can help to turn around the reading crisis in low- and middle-income countries (The World Bank)
- Teaching methods must change to address globally poor reading skills, experts say (Phys.org)
- The rare vocabulary problem in English Literature (Alex Quigley)
- In the battle of books vs videos, there is a clear winner for literacy (Tes)
- Big rocks for reading achievement (Reading Simplified)
- Strategies for small group reading (Great Heights English Hub)
- What Is Morphology? Should Teachers Include It in Reading Instruction? (Education Week)
- Books as rocket fuel (Research Schools Network)