Education

Our academics produce research in collaboration with teachers and education facilitators—both nationally and internationally—to transform classroom practice, teacher education, government policy, and public perceptions about language, heritage, and community health.

Christiana Gregoriou’s research on military memoirs underpins a project run with George Rodothenous (School of Performance and Cultural Industries) that uses her grandfather’s account of his experiences as a prisoner of war during the Second World War as the basis for a lecture-performance staged in heritage sites across Yorkshire linked to commemorations of the 80th anniversary of VE Day. The project generates impact for local museums and their visitors, including school groups. 

Jane Plastow has worked extensively with community groups and non-governmental organisations on AHRC-funded projects in Uganda and Kenya to develop education programmes that use creative practice to tackle barriers to effective communication in local communities and to transform perceptions of maternal health. 

Julia Snell’s sustained research on language and education has generated impacts in three areas.  First, her work has promoted greater understanding among schoolteachers of the importance of dialogic teaching and learning for all children and knowledge of how to enact this approach in their classrooms. Second, she has challenged the view that working class children’s spoken language falls short of middle-class ‘standards’ and highlighted how inequalities are constructed and maintained through educational accountability measures and inspection regimes and some classroom practices. Third, this work has contributed to increased understanding about spoken language in education for policy makers. Professor Snell contributed evidence to the Speak for Change Inquiry conducted by the Oracy All Party Parliamentary Group, shaping their definition of ‘Oracy’ as ‘not limited to standard English and includes all educationally and socially productive talk regardless of pronunciation or dialect’. She was expert advisor to the 2024 Oracy Commission, contributing to commission outputs (including a podcast and ‘think piece’) and providing research evidence for their final report.