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Abstract: New research findings are presented in this paper, responding to a significant knowledge gap about the role of pedagogy in tackling persistent educational inequalities. The paper examines the potential of reading for pleasure (RfP) pedagogy to disrupt ‘pedagogy of poverty’ in low socio‐economic (SES) schools and to enable children to reap the cognitive, well‐being and social benefits of RfP. Children's volition and social interaction as readers are central to RfP and have been found to be particularly constrained by pedagogy common in low SES schools in the United States, Australia and England. The research examined how pedagogy for RfP was instantiated in four low SES English primary schools to understand how this potential might be realised and its effects on children's engagement with RfP. The schools were selected because they had invested in RfP, yet the study found their RfP pedagogies did not in practice support children's volition and engagement because teachers' understandings of reading focused upon proficiency. Such teachers need to reconceptualise reading as social and volitional to underpin RfP pedagogies. The paper provides new insight into the challenges of developing genuine RfP pedagogy and other pedagogies that profile volition and active engagement with learning in low SES schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate the relationship between reading and writing for pleasure. Children read a wide range of media as well as books for pleasure and develop strong affective bonds with the artefacts of literacy they encounter. What remains less well understood is the relationship between the array of texts children engage with and the texts they subsequently create. A focus on “Reading for Pleasure” has enabled us to think anew about the relationships between the texts children read, play and engage with and those they make, play and tell. Data from two doctoral research projects illuminate the ways children draw on cultural resources, moving skilfully across mode, medium and form. In doing so, they learn language conventions which enable them to engage in schooled literacies and learn to use conventional language techniques for their own purposes to transform and re‐imagine texts. Children's identities as readers, writers and storytellers are constructed holistically, and we explore the role of pleasure in reading and meaning making. In conclusion, we consider the potential for positioning reading for pleasure not in isolation, but as a strand in the complex fabric of literacy that needs to be nurtured in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: “This paper aims to present a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC), with special focus on the relationship between the UK Department for Education's policy‐making and the evidence considered in the process of developing and evaluating the PSC. The reports from the in‐house Standards and Testing Agency and from commissioned external organisations with limited remits have been analysed, with emphasis on how the screening check findings have been used in DfE decision‐making. My conclusion is that the department has overestimated both the validity and the reliability of the check: partly because important sources of measurement error have not been explored, and partly because the available evidence has not been analysed in sufficient depth — or perhaps simply been ignored by the department. The whole phonics screening check seems to be the product of policy‐based evidence, rather than evidence‐based policy‐making. This has, in my view, seriously undermined the value of the PSC as a screening instrument, and one must wonder whether it is ‘fit for purpose’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Increasing numbers of children are caught up in global flows of moving peoples. This movement may be voluntary or forced and is experienced within a range of settings. Coming from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and moving around the world due to their parents' employment, the children found in traditional International Schools are a case in point. This paper focuses on the experiences of two sisters in the first year of their family's global relocation. In the midst of change, the digital world Club Penguin™ offered these two globally mobile children a familiar and welcome site of continuity and belonging. This exploration of the role of digital worlds and digital literacies in these girls' experience contributes to an understanding of connections between global movement and digital literacy practices. Greater awareness of the significance of digital literacies in globally mobile children's lives provides fresh insights into how children participate in digital spaces and has implications for literacy educators supporting young people in contemporary times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on some data on the effects of screen-based interactivity on children's engagement with storybook apps during family shared book reading that were gathered in a 2-year, small-scale ethnographic case study in Spain. Data analysis focuses on the complex interplay between the storybook app's interactive features and the children's responses to them. Our findings show that interactive elements increase the child's autonomy, as they tend to promote the importance of the reader, positioning him or her as a collaborator, storyteller, an author or an internal character in the fiction; something that can materialise in exciting narrative strategies that can trigger powerful responses to digital literary texts in emergent readers, including playing, creating new fictions or engaging emotionally with the story. Finally, we argue that the Reader Response models that have been used over recent decades to understand children's reading experiences with storybooks need to be revised to better understand their current experiences with interactive texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses aspects of ‘third space’ theory to support the use of site-based classroom role play as a means of ensuring continuity of text construction between home and school. A hypothetical continuum of text construction between home and school is described, and it is suggested that schools wishing to support this continuum might consider incorporating some home-type contexts and pedagogies into classroom practice. A model of site-based role play is described that aims to do this by setting up an actual third space in primary classrooms, together with some of the educational outcomes of the model's implementation. Implications for schools and family learning programmes are briefly discussed. In conclusion, the paper argues that if we want curriculum continuity between home and school, we need to create ‘third spaces’ in schools that bring together the experiences and pedagogies of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon several decades of literacy research in schools in high-poverty environments to explore what matters in young people's education. In dialogue with themes from Kevin Marjoribanks' work, such as student aspirations, family environments and teacher expectations, key insights are summarised. Referring to longitudinal case studies and a current ethnographic project, the interplay between literacy, poverty and schooling, and young people's aspirations and education outcomes is explored. Although the work of educators in high-poverty communities continues to be highly demanding, there are some schools and teachers making a durable positive difference to learner dispositions and literate repertoires. Teacher expectations and discursive practices are crucial in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key tenet of the Home–School Knowledge Exchange Project is that children's learning will be enhanced if the knowledge and experience that are to be found both at home and in school can be brought together. In this paper we explore ways of connecting home and school to support literacy learning at Key Stage 1, focusing on the home-to-school direction. We discuss how shoeboxes, filled with children's artefacts, can support a range of literacy-related activities in school. It is suggested that the extensive diversity of knowledge and interests reflected in the chosen objects presents teachers with an invaluable opportunity to personalise children's literacy learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]