User:Swannpool/Literacy Research Centre, Lancaster University

Mission

The LRC is a part of Lancaster University, UK. It is closely associated with the Department of Linguistics and English Language and the Department of Educational Research and supports post graduate courses and a team of doctoral researchers from these departments.

The Centre works to understand the role of literacy in all areas of social life and to improve communication and collaboration between researchers and educational practice. It is known for its distinctive contributions to a social practice approach to literacy. As part of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the Centre carries out multidisciplinary explorations of how demands for language, literacy and numeracy are changing in the contemporary world. Its research covers a range of settings including homes, communities, education and workplaces.

History

The Centre was set up in May 2002 with significant funding from the UK government's Department for Education and Science as part of the National Research and Development Centre for Adult literacy and Numeracy. This funding was related to a major national policy Skills for Life and resulted in many publications. Professor David Barton was on the national management team of the NRDC and directed the Lancaster programme. The Literacy Research Centre focused strongly on ethnographic studies of literacy and practitioner research, building on earlier work at Lancaster by David Barton, Mary Hamilton and Roz Ivanic going back to the mid 1980s. When the UK government funding for Skills for Life ended, the Centre’s focus shifted to new themes including digital literacies, children's literacies and international assessment.

The current director is Dr. Julia Gillen. We have a diverse and expanding membership [1] consisting of staff at the University of Lancaster, affiliate members across the world, and a growing number of current and former doctoral students.

Approach

Along with scholars such as Shirley Brice Heath, James Paul Gee and Brian Street, the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre helped establish the field of Literacy Studies. Gee refers to 'the Lancaster School of literacy' (Situated Literacies, p.194). The approach has much in common with parallel research in situated learning and everyday life. Rather than seeing literacy as primarily a set of cognitive skills, research focuses on the uses and meanings of reading and writing across different contexts and cultures. It draws on anthropological, historical and sociological perspectives as well as linguistics and education. It privileges the perspective of those who engage with literacy, the meanings they attach to this activity and the beliefs they hold about it while taking account of the way literacy practices (uses and meanings of literacy) are shaped by the context they are part of and by wider social, cultural, political and economic relationships that impact on people’s lives.

Research Projects

The Centre has a strong history of generating research funds from a range of sources including a series of ESRC grants since 1989 as well as grants from government agencies and funders such as the Leverhulme Trust and the Nuffield Foundation. Its work has led to international collaborations and a number of highly-cited books and articles over the past 35 years.

Research covers the following topics: literacies and everyday life; academic literacies and workplace literacies; literacy and lifelong learning; linguistic ethnography and the anthropology of writing; Multimodal literacies and linguistic landscapes; social aspects of written language and orthography; early childhood literacy; theoretical, methodological and historical issues relating to literacy; comparative policy analysis; international assessments of literacy.

Key Examples

• Fifteen National Research and Development Centre (NRDC) projects were funded by Department of Education 2002-2008, including Adult learners’ Lives; Models of Adult learning; Practitioner Research Initiative; Teacher and Learner Impact Studies.
• Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in one Community
• Changing Faces of Adult Literacy, Numeracy and ESOL which drew on data from the National Child Development Study.
• Literacies for Learning in Further Education: part of the ESRC TLRP
• ESRC Seminar Series, 2010-11. Literacy in the digital university Partner with Open University. (Barton, Hamilton, Satchwell)
• ESRC Paperwork Project (Tusting).
• The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation: Academics Writing in the Contemporary University (Tusting et al )
• ESRC Seminar Series, Children's and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces. Lead partner. (Gillen)

Other activities include:

• Consultancy for ESRC Technology Enhanced Learning programme led to publications on Digital Literacies and advisory seminar for the programme (Gillen, Barton).
• 2 year British Council grants to conferences in Lancaster and Paris and exchanges of staff and research students led to an edited book The Anthropology of Writing and a special issue of Langage et Societe (Papen, Tusting, Hamilton, Gillen, Barton and others)..

• Conference on Sites of Learning led to Special Issue of Language and Education 2012 (Tusting, Barton, Hamilton, Papen, Gillen).
• Consultants on research carried out by the Institut National de Recherche Agronomique, Dijon, which has involved exchange of staff and North Lancashire used as a research site for this French project (Tusting)
• The Edwardian Postcard Project(funded by the AHRC and Lancaster University Friends' Programme) has led to publications and presentations, including national Museum exhibits, public speaking, national and internationals media coverage and a Twitter stream [www.twitter.com/EVIIpc] (Gillen).

Partners/ External links

The Centre has a long history of engagement with policy makers and practitioners, producing publications for a range of audiences and user communities regionally, nationally and internationally. It was a founding member of the Research and Practice In Adult Literacy Group.

Members have close links with a variety of professional and academic organisations concerned with literacy. For example Karin Tusting is the longstanding convenor of the Linguistic Ethnography Forum, a SIG of the British Association of Applied Linguistics. Julia Gillen and Uta Papen are longstanding members of the UK Literacy Association. Julia Gillen is a member of the Writing and Literacies SIG of the American Educational Research Association and co-edits the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Diane Potts has long term involvement with AAAL and other north American associations. David Barton was Visiting Professor II at University of Stavanger 2008-2010. Mary Hamilton is a director of the Laboratory for International Assessment Studies in collaboration with the University of East Anglia Centre for Literacy in Development

Publications/References

Appleby, Y., & Bathmaker, A. M. (2006). The new skills agenda: increased lifelong learning or new sites of inequality? British Educational Research Journal, 32(5), 703-717.

Barton, D. (2007). 2nd edition. Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language. John Wiley & Sons.

Barton, D., & Lee, C. (2013). Language online: Investigating digital texts and practices. Routledge.

Barton, D., & Papen, U. (Eds.). (2010). The Anthropology of writing: Understanding textually mediated worlds. A&C Black.

Barton, D., & Tusting, K. (Eds.). (2005). Beyond communities of practice: Language power and social context. Cambridge University Press.

Barton, D., Hamilton, M., & Ivanič, R. (Eds.). (2000). Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context. Psychology Press.

Barton, D., Ivanic, R., Appleby, Y., Hodge, R., & Tusting, K. (2012). Literacy, lives and learning. Routledge.

Barton,D. & Hamilton, M. (2017) Local literacies: reading and writing in one community Routledge Classics of Linguistics edition

Gillen, J. (2014) Digital literacies. Routledge.

Gillen, J. (2015) Virtual spaces in literacy studies in Rowsell, J., & Pahl, K. (Eds.). The Routledge handbook of literacy studies. Routledge. pp 369-378

Hamilton, M., & Hillier, Y. (2006). Changing faces of adult literacy, language and numeracy: A critical history. Trentham Books.

Hamilton, M., Maddox, B., & Addey, C. (Eds.). (2015) Literacy as Numbers: researching the politics and practices of international literacy assessment Cambridge University Press

Hamilton, M., & Wilson, A. (Eds.). (2005) New ways of engaging new learners: lessons from round one of the practitioner-led research initiative. London: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy.

Hamilton, M., Barton, D., & Ivanič, R. (Eds.). (1994) Worlds of literacy. Multilingual Matters.

Jaffe, A., Androutsopoulos, J., Sebba, M., & Johnson, S. (Eds.). (2012). Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power (Vol. 3). Walter de Gruyter.

Martin-Jones, M., Barton, D., Edwards, R., Ivanic, R., Fowler, Z., Hughes, B., ... & Smith, J. (2009). Improving learning in college: Rethinking literacies across the curriculum. Routledge. (LfLFE)

Papen, U. (2005). Adult literacy as social practice: More than skills. Routledge.

Sebba, M., Mahootian, S., & Jonsson, C. (Eds.). (2012). Language mixing and code-switching in writing: Approaches to mixed-language written discourse. Routledge. Hamilton, M. (2012). Literacy and the Politics of Representation. Routledge.

Tett, L., Hamilton, M., & Crowther, J. (Eds.). (2012) More powerful literacies. Leicester: NIACE.

Tusting, K. (2012). Learning accountability literacies in educational workplaces: situated learning and processes of commodification. Language and Education, 26(2), 121-138.

Unger, J. W. (2013). The discursive construction of the Scots language: Education, politics and everyday life (Vol. 51). John Benjamins Publishing.