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In high accountability cultures, primary phase literacy education tends to focus on improving children's test scores. Driven by each country's performance in international league tables, this results in narrow, predominantly skills-based programmes designed to address attainment gaps. While scores may have been enhanced in recent years, there is little evidence that policy directives have positioned literacy in the lives of learners in ways that have become meaningful for them or been transferred into ways of thinking that promote social equity. Indeed, teaching practices that exacerbate the challenges for those young people who are already disadvantaged by circumstance have become more prevalent. Teachers, therefore, have an ethical responsibility to redress this through their teaching. This paper argues that literature is core to more equitable literacy development. As not all reading practices are equal, developing literacy education for a more socially just society needs to challenge the dominant pedagogic hegemony. Literature has the potential to spark the kind of mindful disruption necessary to shift standardised paradigms of thought, so literacy education should have children's literature at its heart. By examining the value of literature through a set of complementary lenses, this paper seeks to reveal its affordances in young people's lives. Then, through commentary taken from a pair of vignettes drawn from professional learning contexts, we illuminate shifts in teacher perception gained through scaffolded introduction to reading literary texts. The insights teachers gained reveal reconceptualisation of reading and the role of literature in primary education. This has the potential to redirect their future classroom practice. Consequently, we propose that for teachers to be adept at improving literacy outcomes through productive adoption and use of literary texts, they need: an aesthetic appreciation and knowledge of children's literature; personal experience with reading such literature as social practice; and pedagogic insight into how to use literature to teach literacy and develop volitional readers. We call this knowledge set the additive trio, noting that no 'step' or understanding is sufficient on its own, and that together they can enable the development of Reading Teachers who work with literature to advance the social justice agenda.

Drawing on a mixed-methods cross-cultural study undertaken in five locations in Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, England and the United States in 2018, this paper explores how children (aged five and seven) conceive of playfulness. Following a card-sorting task, 387 children selected familiar activities that they felt were most representative of play and not-play and explained their reasons. The children's justifications were fully transcribed, and five corpora were created (one per site). Lexicometry was applied, generating sets of the characteristic responses per age in each site. In-depth qualitative interpretation of these modal responses revealed nine dimensions across play and not-play: pleasure, social context, materials, movement, agency, risk, goal, time and focus. Commonalities revealed that children's ideas around play are not aligned with specific activities but with the sense of agency in a secure physical and social context when carrying out an activity experienced as an end in itself. Implications for playful pedagogies highlight the need to open up play with opportunities for children's choice and initiative, confident exploration and immersion in the activities in which they participate. [Spanish translation by Mercè Rius.]

The importance of teacher subject knowledge as key professional knowledge has been emphasised in successive studies over the past thirty years, yet there are very few empirical studies which address either content or pedagogical knowledge for teaching writing. At the same time, in a number of international jurisdictions, writing attainment lags behind reading attainment. This article addresses these concerns by considering what might constitute subject content knowledge for writing, and thus what might inform pedagogical interventions to improve achievements in writing. The article draws on an Arts Council-funded project in England, "Teachers as Writers," a collaborative research project with the creative writing charity, Arvon. Drawing on qualitative data from nine professional writers, the article analyses how the writers communicated an understanding of writing as 'the craft of what we do' and articulated their craft knowledge during their encounters with teachers. The article proposes that subject content knowledge for writing might more helpfully be considered as craft knowledge, rather than as a body of factual knowledge, and presents a framework of five thematic themes through which to conceptualise this craft knowledge. These themes offer a way of thinking about craft knowledge as both text-oriented and writer-oriented.

This paper, drawing on Margaret Meek Spencer's work, considers the value of reflecting on literacy histories, whether of children, teachers, authors or academics. Margaret argued that teachers need to be open to literacy as lived, and to look, listen and learn about literacies that develop "without" direct instruction and stretch beyond "schooled" expectations. She foregrounded the power of story and narrative play for children's literacy development, the importance of the texts themselves and the particular value of author-artists. We revisit these contributions and link to related national and international research studies which develop her work, registering nonetheless that many of her insights are not yet fully reflected in policy, curricula, or classroom practice. We close by reiterating Margaret's invitation to take a mirror to our literacy histories to enable us to reflect, to connect and to understand in order to support young literacy learners more effectively.

Fiction, more than expository text, nurtures intimate connections between text and the reader's life experiences. This dimension of reader response is underexplored in relation to children. Adapting methods from Empirical Literary Studies to educational research objectives, the authors employed the concept of 'remindings', i.e. reminiscing prompted by text, in studying children's life-resonant responses to self-selected leisure books. Six workshops were run in primary classrooms during which participants (N = 148; age 8-11) engaged in remindings and mental imagery. Written remindings were then analysed for systematic variation across fiction book genres (Real-world vs. Fantasy; Relationships vs. Adventure). They found that Real-World Adventure books prompted remindings of discrete life events, while Real-World Relationships books prompted remindings of more diffuse experiences. Fantasy Adventure books were the least likely to prompt remindings. Further genre-based differences emerged in the distribution of themes within remindings. The authors consider the consequences of these insights for supporting young readers.

"Creative Little Scientists" was a 30-month (2011-2014) EU/FP7-funded research project focusing on the synergies between early years science and mathematics education and the development of children's creativity, in response to increasing interest in these areas in European educational policy. Using a variety of methods, including desk research, a teacher survey and classroom-based fieldwork, the research provided insights into whether and how children's creativity is fostered and appropriate learning outcomes, including children's interest, emerge. Based on these and ongoing collaboration and dialogue with participants and other stakeholders the project proposed recommendations for policy and teacher education. This paper presents these recommendations and the research on which they were based. Throughout the study, mixed methods were employed, combining quantitative approaches used in surveys of policy and teachers' views based on a list of factors, alongside qualitative approaches employed in case studies of classroom practice. A strong conceptual framework developed at the start of the project guided data collection and analysis, as well as the presentation of findings and the development of policy recommendations, thus ensuring the latter's strong and consistent relationship with the relevant theoretical knowledge, the comparative research, analysis of classroom practices and the production of guidelines for teacher education.

This paper is a critical systematic literature review of empirical work on creative pedagogies from 1990 to 2018. It responds to the increased international attention being afforded creativity and creative pedagogies in research, policy and practice and examines the evidence regarding creative pedagogical practices and the potential impact of these on students' creativity. The methodology encompassed four stages. Firstly, an educational database keyword search was undertaken and 801 papers identified, manual searches added 12 further papers. Secondly, through applying inclusion/exclusion criteria, 89 papers were identified for closer scrutiny; these papers focused on students aged 0-18 years in formal educational settings and were peer-reviewed reports of empirical work. Thirdly, these papers were subjected to in-depth review and rating, this reduced the included selection to 35 papers. Finally, these papers were subject to further analysis and synthesis. The findings reveal that seven interrelated features characterise creative pedagogical practice, namely generating and exploring ideas; encouraging autonomy and agency; playfulness; problem-solving; risk-taking; co-constructing and collaborating; and teacher creativity. The paper also reveals that the evidence for the impact of these pedagogical practices on students' creativity is inconclusive. It highlights the complexities and challenges of documenting creative pedagogies in the years of formal schooling and concludes with key recommendations and implications for research, policy and practice.

Children’s reading for pleasure is associated with significant academic and personal benefits and is widely recognised as an effective way to leverage social change, yet in schools this is not fully capitalised upon. The authors connect extant research in this area to the seminal concepts of Funds of Knowledge and Funds of Identity to advance the notion of Funds of Courage and unify literature on dark Funds of Identity and subjective sense, in order to put forward a volitional reading agenda that resonates with the urgent need to innovate reading curricula. The authors argue that the twin psychological pillars of Funds of Courage – resilience and vulnerability – can enable teachers to progress children’s volitional reading practices more reciprocally and thus play a role in advancing social justice. In drawing on examples from recent work with both emergent and established readers, primarily focused on early years and early primary education in England, they seek to widen conceptual and practical understanding in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial to the special issue on the future of volitional reading, the editors explain the significance of volitional reading, both in school and out-of-school settings, for children and adolescents' reading proficiency, student engagement and learning, and wellbeing. They offer an overview of the seven articles in the collection, highlighting the key themes of content, choice and community involvement when it comes to encouraging engaged reading. New ways of researching reading are also shared. As a collection, the special issue highlights the range and complexity of young people's reading practices and encourages scholars, policymakers and educators to consider new ways of framing research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compelling international evidence illustrates the potential of reading for pleasure for enhancing student reading achievement along with other learning and wellbeing outcomes. Yet profound challenges exist for nations seeking to encompass attention to students' volitional reading. In this paper we critically review the growing research evidence in this area by drawing systematically on cognitive psychological studies of reading attainment and motivation, educational studies of classroom practice, and the work of literary scholars and medical professionals. We consider and critique the methodologies deployed and read between the lines, exposing contradictions and complexities across this interdisciplinary field before considering the demands of operationalising this agenda in education. Through a dual focus on England and Australia, where, exemplifying international trends, young people's voluntary reading continues to decline, we examine difficulties and dilemmas which play out in policy and practice contexts. Our points of commonality and comparison surface key issues for consideration in countries working to reconcile the push and pull of performativity and reading for pleasure agendas in order to nurture children's volitional reading. To conclude, we examine ways forward for research, policy and practice which deserve increased global attention, and offer future-focused recommendations to advance this significant social justice agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of renewed interest in teachers' identities as writers and the writers as artist-educators, this paper reports upon the findings of "Teachers as Writers" (2015-2017). A collaborative partnership between two universities and a creative writing foundation, the study sought to determine the impact of writers' engagement with teachers on changing teachers' classroom practices in the teaching of writing and, as a consequence, in improving outcomes for students. The project afforded opportunities for writers and teachers to work together as learners in order to improve student outcomes. The study involved two complementary datasets: a qualitative dataset of observations, interviews, audio-capture (of workshops, tutorials and co-mentoring reflections) and audio-diaries from 16 teachers; and a randomised controlled trial (RCT) involving 32 primary and secondary classes. The findings reveal that the teachers' identities and assurance as writers shifted significantly. The Arvon experience also led to pedagogic shifts which the students reported impacted positively upon their motivation, confidence and sense of ownership and skills as writers. However, these salient dispositional shifts did not impact upon the young people's attainment. The professional writers gained new understandings which substantially altered their conceptions of writers' potential contribution in schools.

In the light of international interest in teachers' literate identities and practices, this paper addresses the under-researched area of teachers' writing identities. It examines the multimodal interactive discursive practices at play in the writing classroom of a teacher in the UK who, in order to support the pupils, consciously positions herself as a writer in this context, seeking to model engagement through demonstrating writing in whole-class sessions and composing alongside pupils in groups. Drawing on previous empirical work which explored the fluid identities performed and enacted by this teacher (Cremin & Baker, 2010), the paper, examining video material, affords detailed analysis of the multimodal interactive discourses indexed in demonstration writing and writing alongside. It maps specific instances of discursive practice onto a model for conceptualising teachers' writing identities: a teacher-writer, writer-teacher identity continuum. It reveals on-going conflict between the teacher's intended discourse positions/identities and the recognition (Gee, 2005) and acceptance of these attempts by the pupils. The paper, in contributing new understandings about the microscopic, fluid and conflictual dimensions of identity positioning in these particular practice contexts, highlights the importance of the embodied discoursal voice of the pedagogue. Additionally, it offers a new analytic tool for understanding how teacher behaviour opens and constrains identity positions and argues that multimodal interaction in teaching writing deserves increased methodological attention.

In contrast to the field's predominant focus on teacher-led talk in reading contexts, this study considers child-led relaxed conversations about texts. It examines what is afforded by the occurrence of such relaxed book talk and how this is enabled with young children in school. Data are drawn from a co-participative study with four teachers in England that captured naturalistic video observations. The paper offers novel insights about the social and personal affordances of informal book talk, the role it can play in developing positive dispositions towards reading and the salience of familiar texts and the classroom reading culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shares the role of professional development in the implementation and development of cultures of reading for pleasure. Topics mentioned include the benefits of evidence-informed approach, the importance of creating connected communities of practice, and the impact of learning through professional noticing cycle on children.

In the light of increased interest in teachers' professional identities, this paper addresses the under-researched area of teachers' writing identities and examines the factors which influence how primary phase teachers are positioned and position themselves as teacher-writers in the literacy classroom. It draws on case studies of two practitioners in England who seek to model their engagement as writers in order to support young writers; they undertake this through demonstrating writing in whole-class contexts and composing individually alongside children. Data collection methods included classroom observation, interviews, video-stimulated review and examination of written texts. The data show that the writing classroom, in which the practitioners performed and enacted their identities as teacher-writers and as writer-teachers, appeared to be a site of struggle and tension. The research reveals that, whilst institutional and interpersonal factors influence their identity positioning, intrapersonal factors are significant with regard to teachers of writing. Their situated sense of themselves as writers, relationship with their unfolding compositions and emotional engagement, personal authenticity and authorial agency all have saliency in this context. The paper presents a model for conceptualising teachers' writing identities and considers the pedagogical consequences of their participation as writers. (Contains 4 figures.)

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.

In the light of sustained interest in the potential value of young children's narrative play, this article examines Vivian Gussin Paley's approach to storytelling and story-acting, in this case with 3- to 5-year-olds. It scrutinises how children's narratives are co-constructed during adult-child and peer interactions through spoken and embodied modes, as their stories are scribed by an adult and later dramatised by their peers. Data are drawn from an evaluation of an 8-week training programme, based on Paley's approach, designed for early years professionals and undertaken in different geographic and demographic locations in England. Naturalistic data collection techniques including video and field notes were used to record the storytelling and story-acting of 18 case study children. The resultant data were subject to close discursive and multimodal analysis of storytelling and story-acting interactions. Findings reveal discursive co-construction 'in action' and illustrate how the child storytellers, story actors and practitioners co-construct narratives through complex combinations of gaze, body posture and speech in responsive and finely tuned interactional patterns. The study contributes significantly to knowledge about how young children's narratives are co-constructed through multiple modes in the classroom.

This paper discusses the pedagogical practice of developing reading for pleasure in pre- schools and primary phase settings through the lens of one key dimension of twenty-first-century reading: personalisation. It draws on a series of studies and examples to identify, address and problematise human- and digitally mediated personalised reading for pleasure. Through a content analysis of the key features of current digital library systems, it shows how these increasingly popular systems position teachers as librarians, curators and monitors, and undermine their potential roles as listeners, mentors and co-readers in order to foster children's personal response to texts. Through a theory-driven approach it identifies ways in which current design limitations of library management systems can be addressed and from which their effective application and use can develop. This conceptual elaboration, which combines contemporary reading theories with the affordances of digital personalisation, provides new insights concerning personalisation in digital library systems.

This paper offers a new characterisation of young children's (2-8 years) reading for pleasure (RfP) with digital books. This characterisation is rooted in a re-contextualisation of Anna Craft's conceptualisation of twenty-first century childhoods in "Creativity and education futures" (Stoke on Trent, Trentham, 2011) and a review of the literature concerning young children's RfP with digital books. The paper develops Craft's (2011) work by considering the ways in which digital books can resource the "4Ps of digital childhood" in reading for pleasure. Six facets of reader engagement, nested within Craft's (2011) 4Ps, are presented: affective, creative, interactive, shared, sustained and personalised reading engagements. It is argued that this characterisation of young children's reading engagements can enrich our understanding of the affordances of digital books in relation to RfP in the twenty-first century. The paper thus offers an important new contribution, going beyond established work in the field, which typically explores digital books in relation to children's learning, product design or developmental outcomes.

This paper is a critical literature review of empirical work from 1990 to 2015 on teachers as writers. It interrogates the evidence on teachers' attitudes to writing, their sense of themselves as writers and the potential impact of teacher writing on pedagogy or student outcomes in writing. The methodology was carried out in four stages. Firstly, educational databases keyword searches located 438 papers. Secondly, initial screening identified 159 for further scrutiny, 43 of which were found to specifically address teachers' writing identities and practices. Thirdly, these sources were screened further using inclusion/exclusion criteria. Fourthly, the 22 papers judged to satisfy the criteria were subject to in-depth analysis and synthesis. The findings reveal that the evidence base in relation to teachers as writers is not strong, particularly with regard to the impact of teachers' writing on student outcomes. The review indicates that teachers have narrow conceptions of what counts as writing and being a writer and that multiple tensions exist, relating to low self-confidence, negative writing histories, and the challenge of composing and enacting teacher and writer positions in school. However, initial training and professional development programmes do appear to afford opportunities for reformulation of attitudes and sense of self as writer.

In the light of the European Union's interest in creativity and innovation, this paper, drawing on data from the EU project Creative Little Scientists (2011-2014), explores the teaching and learning of science and creativity in Early Years education. The project's conceptual framework, developed from detailed analysis of relevant literatures, highlighted the potential existence of a number of pedagogical synergies between inquiry-based science and creativity-based approaches in Early Years education. The science and creativity literature reviews were thus re-examined to identify synergistic features of teaching and learning in the Early Years. These were seen to include: play and exploration, motivation and affect, dialogue and collaboration, problem-solving and agency, questioning and curiosity, reflection and reasoning, and teacher scaffolding and involvement. Field work undertaken over a 4-month-period in 48 sites across the 9 partner countries provided the opportunity to examine the existence of these synergies in Early Years settings and primary classrooms with learners aged 3-8 years. Qualitative in nature, the fieldwork was framed by a case study strategy encompassing multiple methods of data collection: sequential digital images capturing interactions; observations supplemented by audio recording; timelines; and interviews with teachers and groups of children. The data set comprised 71 cases in early science (and mathematics), with 3 episodes of activity per case encapsulating creativity in these domains, resulting in 218 episodes for analysis. A deductive-inductive analytical approach was undertaken in two phases with cross-case analysis both within and between countries. The paper exemplifies the pedagogical synergies innovatively identified in the conceptual framework and documented in the fieldwork, and highlights the potential for creativity in exploratory science contexts. Additionally, it highlights differences between practice observed in preschool and primary settings and advances a new conceptual definition of creativity within Early Years science education.