Refreshments: 04.00 PM
Seminar: 04.30 PM to 6.00 PM
Venue: Charles St Floor 4 Room 417, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University

Dr Clare Dowdall of Plymouth University will give a talk based on her research topic of Children's ‘writing’ in the 21st century.

Dr Dowdall currently leads and teaches English on the PGCE programmes in the Plymouth Institute of Education. Her research focuses on 21st century children's writing and text production in and beyond the school context. She is Associate Editor for the Wiley Blackwell journal 'Literacy', sits on the Executive Council of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) and convenes UKLA’s Publications Sub-Committee.

Research abstract

As a teacher-educator and researcher in the area of children’s digital and print-based literacies, I have a keen interest in the impact that policy and accountability issues might have on teachers’ practice in relation to children’s writing. In particular, I am interested to understand how the statutory requirements for writing in the English National Curriculum, and the overarching accountability context, might be impacting on the potential for creativity afforded by the 21st century ‘new literacies’ textual landscape. Drawing from earlier research findings and a more recent small-scale research project funded by the UKLA, this research report paper will discuss these issues and present findings from recent group interviews with teachers in a range of settings. These interviews seek to explore how teachers conceptualise children’s ‘writing’ and the processes involved in it; and how curriculum and accountability measures are impacting on their practice as they aim to develop children as ‘writers’. A further aim of this project is to identify examples of playful, exploratory, creative classroom practice that support notions of writing as crafting and design in a 21st century digital textual landscape.