OU partners with London literacy organisations to encourage children to read

An OU team has received funding from the Mercers’ Company to develop a framework to nurture children’s pleasure in reading and writing.

Teresa Cremin, Professor of Literacy at the OU is leading the Reading and Writing for Pleasure team who has received £90,000 from the Mercers’ Company, supported by the Charity of Sir Richard Whittington, to be their research partner in this three-year project, running to October 2023.

Professor Cremin and the team will work with a number of different London-based organisations (World Book Day, Doorstep Library, Literacy Pirates, The Ministry of Stories, Primary Shakespeare Company, The Reading Agency and National Literacy Trust). The organisations and programmes range in size and scope, but all work with children with the aim to foster reading or writing for pleasure.

The OU team will seek to understand the approaches and methodologies used by it’s the partners’ programmes and will examine the nature of the communities and ethos created, the relationships established with schools, parents and children and how these impact on the young people’s desire to read or write, particularly those who are reluctant or who face barriers to learning of various kinds.

In addition, the OU will offer advice on ways to improve the programmes’ internal evaluation processes as they consider expanding their offering. A central part of the OU work will to develop a reading and writing for pleasure framework that can be shared with the teaching profession, with other education charities and literacy/cultural organisations.

Professor Cremin said:

“This is a unique opportunity to understand more about practices that foster young people’s reading and writing for pleasure by combining insights from the research literature with findings from our empirical research across three years. Watch this space!”