Professor Cathy Burnett BA, PGCE, MEd, EdD

Cathy Burnett is Professor of Literacy and Education at Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University. Her most research focuses on the relationship between new technologies and literacies within and beyond educational contexts. She was previously an editor of the journal Literacy and has led and contributed to a series of research and evaluation projects funded by organisations such as Booktrust, UKLA, JISC and The Education Endowment Fund.  Cathy is Vice President and joint Research Convener for the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) and also co-convenes the UKLA Digital Literacies special interest group. Her books include New Literacies around the Globe (published by Routledge and co-edited with Julia Davies, Guy Merchant and Jennifer Rowsell), The Case of the iPad: Mobile Literacies in Education (with Guy Merchant, Alyson Simpson and Maureen Walsh for Springer) and Literacy, Media, Technology: past, present and future (with Becky Parry and Guy Merchant for Bloomsbury).

Prior to arriving at Sheffield Hallam University, she worked as a primary teacher, for various theatre-in-education companies and for Derby City Education Service. She has published widely for professional and academic audiences, including several books and many journal articles and book chapters focused on literacy education, enquiry and professional education and the connections between literacy and technology. Her research review The digital age and its implications for learning and teaching in the primary school was commissioned by the Cambridge Primary Review Trust. Cathy has a longstanding commitment to creative approaches to literacy education and to using enquiry as a mode of professional development.

I currently teach on the Educational Doctorate and supervise a range of postgraduate students. I am interested in the relationship between enquiry and professional education and have led a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate modules designed to explore this relationship and work with teachers using enquiry in their professional practice.

Virtually Drama. Sheffield Hallam University, University of Nottingham & Chol Theatre.
Making 21st Century Maker Circles. Sheffield Hallam University.
Reimagining literacy education: Being literate in the twenty-first century (SSHRC). University of Alberta.

I am Vice President and joint Research Convener for the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA). I also co-convene the UKLA Digital Literacies special interest group

I am currently supervising a range of PhD and EdD students including

Karen Daniels. Movement, meaning and affect:  The stuff childhood literacies are made of.
Lauran Doak. Communication and agency in the autism classroom.
Pat Moore. Biology Autobiographies: personal subject experiences and biology teachers' pedagogical thinking.
Giovanna Battiston. The work-place literacies of a marketing department.
Christine Hibbert. Registered nurses’ perceptions of reflection as a process for exploring new knowledge.

Completed Doctoral Researchers

Alison Tyldesley. Sheffield Hallam University. A sociocultural approach to Higher Education students' experiences with academic literacies.
Richard Pountney. Sheffield Hallam University. Making the Curriculum: a case study of course planning in higher education.
Sam McMahon. Sheffield Hallam University. Becoming a professional in early childhood education and care.
Helen Childerhouse. Sheffield Hallam University. Teaching children with ‘SEBD’: teachers’ perceptions. 
Chris Bailey. Sheffield Hallam University. Investigating the lived experience of children engaged in collaborative virtual world play.