Dr Roberta Taylor BA (Hons); PGCE; PG Cert; RSA Diploma TEFL; MA; PhD
Senior Lecturer in English and Education Studies
Summary
I am an active researcher and teacher within the areas of classroom communication, multimodal analysis of face to face communication, constructivist pedagogies and collaborative construction of knowledge. I teach undergraduates and postgraduates within Sheffield Institute of Education in the Department of Education, Childhood and Inclusion. I have worked as a teacher and teacher educator since 1985 in schools, colleges and adult education institutes as well as Higher Education and have worked in Spain and Hungary as well as the UK.
About
I teach at Doctoral, Master's and Undergraduate level including a range of modules across the Education Studies degrees including Level 4, Language and Learning and Level 6 Education in the Digital Age and WBL modules. My main teaching interests are dialogic and collaborative learning, sociolinguistics, language variation and diversity, changing literacy, digital literacies and multimodality, language acquisition and multimodal analysis of discourse as a research approach. I am also the placement coordinator for Education Studies and have an interest in professional development and work based learning. I am a member of the Language and Literacy Research and Scholarship Group and convenor of the Multimodal Discourse Analysis Special Interest group.
Research
I have a range of research interests within the area of Communication and Education and current research projects include:
• SHU Grant funded project Teenagers Talking in Class, a study of peer-to-peer classroom interaction using multimodal discourse analysis to examine engagement, participation and dialogic interaction.(Principle Investigator) (2013 to present)
• Education Endowment Fund Evaluation (CEIR / Sheffield Institute of Education) of Dialogic Teaching Intervention: Improving Talk (Researcher) (2014 to present)
• Education Endowment Fund Evaluation (CEIR / Sheffield Institute of Education) of Investigating English. (Researcher) (2016 to present)
• In 2010 completed my University of Sheffield/ESRC funded PhD research, which investigated children's multimodal interaction in the classroom.
• I am also researching multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA).
• Convenor of the Multimodal Discourse Analysis Special Interest Group at Sheffield Hallam University. This is a new transdisciplinary group interested in expanding the research and impact of multimodal communication analysts working with this approach across the University.
Publications
Journal articles
Daniels, K., & Taylor, R. (2022). Oracy and education: perspective shifts and policy tensions (Editorial). Literacy, 56 (3), 189-90. http://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12295
Taylor, R. (2019). Negotiating voices through embodied semiosis: the co-construction of a science text. Linguistics and education, 53, 100746. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2019.06.005
Taylor, R. (2016). The multimodal texture of engagement: prosodic language, gaze and posture in engaged, creative classroom interaction. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 20, 83-96. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.04.001
Taylor, R. (2014). Meaning between, in, and around words, gestures and postures: multimodal meaning making in children's classroom communication. Language and Education, 28 (5), 401-420. http://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2014.885038
Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Daniels, K., Taylor, R., Bailey, C., & Monkhouse, J. (2013). Zombe Apocalypse: Children's problem-solving in a virtual world. English 4-11, (48), 7-10.
Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Daniels, K., Taylor, R., Bailey, C., & Monkhouse, J. (2013). Zombe Apocalypse: Children's problem-solving in a virtual world. English 4-11, (48), 7-10.
Taylor, R. (2012). Messing about with metaphor: multimodal aspects to children's creative meaning making. Literacy, 46 (3), 156-166. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4369.2012.00658.x
Taylor, R.E. (2006). Actions speak as loud as words; a multimodal analysis of boys' talk in the classroom. English in education, 40 (3), 66-82. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-8845.2006.tb00801.x
Book chapters
Daniels, K., & Taylor, R. (2018). Children as learners: multimodal perspectives on play and learning. In Fitzgerald, D., & Maconochie, H. (Eds.) Early Childhood Studies: A students' guide. (pp. 47-62). London: Sage: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/early-childhood-studies/book253819
Taylor, R. (2014). Multimodal analysis of the textual function in children’s face-to-face classroom interaction. In Multimodal Epistemologies: Towards an Integrated Framework. (pp. 228-244). http://doi.org/10.4324/9780203766538-25
(n.d.). Multimodal Epistemologies. Routledge: http://doi.org/10.4324/9780203766538
Reports
Thomas, P., Jay, T., Willis, B., Taylor, R., Merchant, G., Moore, N., ... Stevens, A. (2019). Dialogic Teaching: Addendum Report. Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/Dialogic_Teaching_addendum_report%C2%AD_final_for_publication.pdf
Thomas, P., Jay, T., Willis, B., Taylor, R., Merchant, G., Moore, N., ... Stevens, A. (2019). Dialogic Teaching: Addendum Report. London, UK: Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/Dialogic_Teaching_addendum_report%C2%AD_final_for_publication.pdf
Jay, T., Willis, B., Thomas, P., Taylor, R., Moore, N., Burnett, C., ... Stevens, A. (2017). Dialogic Teaching : Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. London, UK: Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/Dialogic_Teaching_Evaluation_Report.pdf
Theses / Dissertations
Doxey, C. (2024). What is Reading? Children's Perspectives on Reading in a Primary School. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Burnett, C., & Taylor, R. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00588
Nicholls, K. (2023). Discourses of academic language development in a UK university. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Taylor, R. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00534
Presentations
Taylor, R., & Daniels, K. (2022). Teachers' Perceptions of Post Pandemic Classroom Talk. Presented at: UKLA International Conference, Birmingham Macdonalds Hotel
Daniels, K., & Taylor, R. (2020). Tales of rediscovery, expertise and self-esteem from an oracy project. Presented at: Literacy Research Association 2020 Annual Conference, Virtual, 2020
Other activities
Professional and External Activities
• member of UK Literacy Association
• reviewer for the journals Literacy , Language and Education and Journal of Early Childhood Literacy
• parent governor, community governor and Chair of Governors at a primary school and a secondary school in Sheffield for 10 years.
Postgraduate supervision
Doctoral Students
Lauren Doak : Everyday AAC usage by Preverbal Children with Autism: A multimodal ethnographic perspective (PhD Co-supervised with Prof. Cathy Burnett)
Geir Petter Laingham: Student produced digital artefacts and their potential as learning resources. (PhD Co-supervised with Prof. Guy Merchant)
Cara Doxey: Children's experiences of reading aloud in Key Stage 2 (EdD co-supervised with Prof. Cathy Burnett).