Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning

11. Creating Young Readers: The Joy of Reading with Literacy Expert Teresa Cremin

• Bedrock Learning • Season 2 • Episode 5

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In this episode of Literacy Works with Bedrock Learning, Teresa Cremin, a leading figure in literacy research and education, shares insights from her career - from classroom teaching to research. The conversation focuses on how meaningful discussions can shape literary identities and extend literacy's influence beyond traditional subjects into daily life. Teresa emphasizes the importance of developing a genuine love for reading and writing beyond formal education settings, advising educators, parents, and mentors on creating environments that foster a joy for reading.

The episode explores the role of reading for pleasure in broadening students' perspectives and enhancing their academic and emotional development. Teresa provides practical tips for sparking a lifelong reading interest, highlighting choice and autonomy in making reading engaging for young people. The discussion addresses the challenges that disadvantaged youths face, discussing how access to a wide range of reading materials can promote social justice and equality.

Further, the conversation delves into the impact of the digital era on literacy, considering the challenges and opportunities presented by social media and digital devices. Teresa discusses strategies for balancing technology use with the benefits of reading for pleasure. The episode concludes with a reflection on the relationship between imparting knowledge and fostering immersive learning experiences, underscoring literacy's transformative power in shaping learner identity and education's evolving narrative.

For more insights from Teresa:

Andy:

Hi everyone and thank you for downloading and listening to the Bedrock Learning Literacy Work's podcast. We've got a fantastic guest today. I sort of threw a bit of a Hail Mary out there to see if I could get this one, so and we're thrilled that Theresa's coming. So we've got Theresa Cremin today, who's an expert in reading and all things, literacy and things like that, and you know, as I say, we're delighted to have her on. So thank you so much for spending the time for us today, theresa.

Teresa:

It's fantastic to have you on.

Andy:

Just to start you off, could we get a sense of your background and your research and your work to date? I think it'd be really useful for listeners to hear that.

Teresa:

Yes, I mean I started and he is a teacher. I spent many years in the classroom, primary classroom, working with kids, really enjoyed that. And then moved on to work in local authority work and working with teachers, learning a lot from teachers and experts who were coming in to present. For one point, I was organizing for the local authority in Medway the in-service session, so I wasn't actually teaching them, I was just like Mrs Admin really but and I did that for a few years with a part time teaching job, so it's kind of facilitating with a great and I don't know what the word is breaking your teeth ground as it were yeah sure.

Teresa:

You can die at four o'clock and watching people live at four o'clock and people's teachers staying whereas teachers exiting. And then I moved into higher education and got a job at Christchurch, Canterbury and did 18 long years there Sounds negative. It wasn't great enough.

Teresa:

But it was a long time Basically teaching teachers, both in master's courses and doctoral students, and student teachers, pgc's and BAEA's and so on. And then gradually I got into more research, found it fascinating. And next, teachers, you don't want to kind of research on the profession, you want to research with them and learn from them.

Andy:

Yeah, I agree.

Teresa:

They take a long time. So I did that and gradually began to find that the research piece and the consultancy piece, you know I was most interested in really making more of a difference, perhaps by finding out some new insights that might help us as teachers, you know, do this thing called electricity better, enable the kids to find it more interesting.

Andy:

I think it's really difficult nowadays as well. I mean, I suppose that the whole technology argument as we've always been scared of technology and screens and things, and the disruption to young people's minds and the rest of it and now we've got a new layer, haven't we? And social media, and potentially even AI on top of that. So I suppose what you're doing is even more important now helping us to find those answers around, how we can do that thing that we call literacy. I mean, what is your opinion on that, on the word literacy, how would you define it and what do you think that means?

Teresa:

I would certainly say that fluke seeing comes as far more than reading and writing.

Andy:

Yeah.

Teresa:

It is in many countries of the world viewing reading and viewing film and television and other forms of text with an online context. As it is recognized and studied in England, Reading and writing tend to be kind of rarefied, but the role of talk in all of this is hugely significant. I was very involved in Stilam in the UK Literacy Association and many years ago, just as an example, it was called the United Kingdom Reading Association.

Teresa:

And we had a big debate and said well, we're doing more than reading. We can't call ourselves reading and writing, and if we call ourselves literacy, will that be recognized by the profession as encompassing RSE. But I would argue that all of these elements to rich, complex space and children develop their literate identities as readers, writers, thinkers, meaning makers, all language you know, participants, as it were, in multiple different modes and forms. It's interesting, but bigger.

Andy:

In schools. We often find in literacy coordinators we'll be nodding along when I say this, but they often find that they struggle to get the term literacy out into different subjects, you know, away from capital letters and false stocks, and I think we move slightly beyond that. But actually it's not even about different subjects. It's about a broader sort of understanding of communication and literacy meaning, those things there, and I think it's about being able to pin different communication elements down for different subjects, different disciplines, but also different walks of life, without it being, you know, reductionist. I think that's a really tough thing for teachers to navigate nowadays as well.

Andy:

And so what have you been involved with recently, then? Because I, for the benefit of the listeners, I came across Theresa from, as I say, from a BBC podcast and I just found myself, I was listening. I never forget I was at a train station listening to it and I was there listening to it, nodding along, thinking, oh my God, yeah, that's right. That really chimed with what I believe and what I've found as a teacher. So what recent research have you done? What recent learnings or interesting insights have you gathered in this sort of sphere?

Teresa:

I mean in the most recent piece of work I've been engaged in, this kind of fully published. Now we're moving into a book on. It was focused on reading and writing for pleasure.

Teresa:

It was a three year study funded by the Mercer's company, a philanthropic company in centre of London, and we looked at six charities and their literacy programmes called literacy programmes rather than necessarily reading or writing programmes and we also looked at the research literature and explore what are the approaches that are most effective to encourage young people to want to read to want to write in their own time, not just in school when you're required to a very different thing.

Teresa:

So choice led volitional engagement in that communicative form whether that's writing poetry, whether that's writing play scripts, whether that's writing text messages, it's communicating with others in written form in some way, and indeed in visual forms too, and that's just was a really, which genuinely was a really fascinating project. It was right through the pandemic. It was pretty tough in the beginning because we couldn't go out to see the programmes in action. We had to do a lot of reading in the research literature and kind of park the data collection. But when we got there we found that these many different fabulous organisations and I won't name them all now. You can read about it on the Open University's Reading for Pleasure website we found that there was what really developed.

Teresa:

Reading and Writing for Pleasure was a rich combination of both individual and socially-oriented approaches that were kind of mediated by the adults' responsive involvement to those kids in those contexts. So some of these were out of school contexts, as it were, extracurricular. Some of them were within the context of the classroom. All the research really is undertaken in classrooms. There isn't enough resource money to study charities' work well, to analyse it fully in peer-reviewed papers and so on.

Teresa:

So we were looking at the six charities alongside the research literature and you could think, well, is there going to be any synergy if I'm going to say these are six London charities and here's an international research literature of around 30 years? Will there be any connections?

Andy:

Yeah.

Teresa:

We were quite worried about that actually yeah, of course. But in the end there was plenty of connection and it was around these kind of child-led, autonomy-focused approaches that really prompted relaxed interactions in classrooms around texts so that the young people were socially and individually engaged. So social relational connections were being made between kids and kids in what we saw and in what we read, and in teachers and kids, young people. And those kinds of relational connections were both focused at the individual but also at the collective, the communal.

Teresa:

And of course importantly, there was always text and there was always time set aside for this practice, for supporting this practice. Just time to just write rather than write what you want me to write. But I'll write what I want to write because agency is key. So I'm going to read the book. I want to read not only the book you've set, but I'm reading my reading, my literacy life, my literacy identity, not yours. You can't own mine. I'm in my space and folk in the programs and in research literature who honour that and invest time in the young people's own identities showed us that they were making a difference.

Andy:

It's interesting. I'm thinking about my hat on as a secondary teacher and director of English, I'm thinking as a parent. And it's so interesting that my little seven year old, when I say to him, do you fancy doing some writing tonight, or do you fancy doing some maths or something, he'll never say yes, ever. It's love. I don't probably need to, because he often enough. Yesterday he just ran upstairs and he started writing his play script. He's been writing with his friends. He's got, he's got. He's called it cause it a band and and he, and there is some mixed up with the Mode and he's writing a play script, but it's a book and it's a band.

Andy:

We're not sure what, how it all links together, but he's enthusiastic and he spends his pocket money on these little books now that he can go and make his notes. And he loves and and and I just, even if I'm deep in work and I'm busy and I'm frustrated if he brings me anything, I go berserk. I say wow, that's amazing, and I think it's so important to have that and and, but what? What made the other side of it? Because at home you can be a bit more free with that type of thing, I think. But the question I suppose would that Teachers might ask. That is, when you say make space for the child's in a primary setting or a secondary second, they're in literacy, identity. What does that look like in a school, in an actual school? What does that look like in terms of you know? What would a lesson or a or a session look like, when? How would you do that?

Teresa:

about and the right reading reigns. Really all the writing reigns.

Teresa:

In school we have traditionally held the reading. Reading, writing reigns Literature and it's very close because we are in the lead. We apparently have the knowledge that they're going to go, they're going to share or going to study this text and we're going to mine it and analyze it, or expecting them to write Whatever it might be Narrative, description, something, a narrative within which there's a paragraph of description. So we share what's required, the learning objectives, success criteria, etc. And then we try to offer them the skills to support them on that journey now.

Teresa:

That's developing skills and that's important and powerful. What I'm arguing for here is and indeed it's and Enshrined in the national curriculum in terms of reading that reading for pleasure, choosing to read, the will to read, rather than the skill, is also supported. And so this work with the mercies foundation was looking at the desire, the motivation and motivation to malleable and do we can make a difference that way, really, you know, I mean you already make a difference. Look what you said, you did you infused. You didn't critique. You didn't say you're missing a full stop here. You didn't say I don't understand what all these books and bits are about, all these said that to me, but you didn't say it to him. So in supporting his Identity, his sense of self as a writer, in that context you were giving him positive feedback, positive phrase, and we saw in the programs very often in the way that we might, in classrooms, offer a kind of evaluative feedback, you know and you know traffic lights or some kind of commentary on what the next steps or whatever. Very often in the in the programs we observed it was open and honest. There were some critical elements, but the critical out for really Softly offered a really strong piece was. I valued what you wrote. I found that last it really funny. So it was up praise, holding up, affirming positive, as it were. And indeed, in relation to reading, it was often In relation to just discussing the book with them, not discussing whether you have particularly understood the key themes within this text, just chatting about it. And by chatting about it, you're valuing and respecting the other person's perspective Without evaluating it. So developing the will To choose to write and choose to read in your own time, which is hugely influential on academic Consequence, as we all know, and indeed social, emotional well-being.

Teresa:

Developing that desire is about, in my view, respecting what the research says, respecting the individual and upholding them, but providing space for them to grow. So giving them access to high quality text, giving them access an opportunity to discuss with one another, to hear books read aloud. That doesn't necessarily support the young person's identity. I need to pay attention. It could be two or three children and they're completely disengaged. So we need to learn more about individuals. Really. What are they coming in with? What's their disposition to reading and writing? Yeah, it's in, you know they.

Andy:

It's interesting because Since the reforms and sort of around 2010, there has been a big. There has been a big push to knowledge, hasn't there around? And and that's I believe firmly that a firm knowledge base is crucial to understand the curriculum and accessing the curriculum, being able to write. You need knowledge of a full stop capital. You need those things in order to do the fundamentals. Of course you do, but it's, it's just it takes a really skilled individual to be able to tease those things apart. And as you say, up praise, you know that kind of that's a nice phrase, that isn't it? Up up praise. And on that, just at the tail, under what you were saying Now, you were talking about what learners are bringing in on an individual level. What, what did you find was working? What did you find was most relevant for particularly less advantaged People's, pupils that were really coming in with less knowledge, probably less cultural resources as well? What? What did you find there about what was helpful? Was there any patterns?

Teresa:

Well, I mean the four. These six programs were looking and they were expected to. Their focus was meant to be on disengaged readers. I'm just engaged, from multiple reasons, it's true, but socioeconomic gender, you know wide range of different kinds of challenges the young people engaged in or facing, and and poverty too.

Teresa:

So what we noticed was and I suppose this is observational data, but it is underscored by larger scale studies that if we can really hook our young people into reading, recreational reading, then they're not only Widening their conceptual understanding, widening their knowledge base almost by osmosis, because they're choosing to read 15 minutes today, 15 minutes tomorrow, even if it's 10 minutes a day, roughly speaking, because I'm choosing to do it, I'm giving myself an hour and 20 minutes more education a week. You so the OECD data is really clear on that. If we can hook young people into being regular, frequent readers of choice on books that they are choosing to read, not books we're setting and although they may choose to read the books we set to, they may want to then the RFP reading from pleasure is a mediator of both gender and socioeconomic background, so we can shift for these young people. It is a social justice issue, andy really I think it is.

Andy:

Yeah, my colleague calls it a democratization of knowledge and skills. I think it's a really important thing to say that I agree and in terms of this is a bit of a quirky question really, but my first. I'm thinking logistically as a teacher here. I'm thinking well about choice of books. What's your view on digital e-books, as opposed to kind of having a large library that not all schools may have access to? Do you think digital, the digitally mediated texts, have a role to play here in terms of the sheer choice available to people, to young people?

Teresa:

They certainly have a role to play. They exist and young people access them in their own you know local libraries if they choose to use e-books through that, and many schools have e-book systems, digital systems. What I'm less keen on is requiring children to only read in one form or another. The most skilled 15-year-olds the PISA results would show us a droidly use print to the purposes they wish to use it for, and e-books or online reading for the purposes they wish to use it, and can move between both with comfort and assurance.

Teresa:

But I think one of the things that does challenge me about some of the digital library systems is that they focus on an intrinsic, extrinsic motivational frame.

Teresa:

So, young people begin, some of them to read quicker, shorter books because I'll get 100% on them, they're easier, or they read to become a word millionaire. Well, this is not helping. The key piece for reading for pleasure, it's developing your intrinsic motivation, your personal curiosity, desire to find out what happens to the football team, what happens next in the narrative, the next in the series. So the research is really clear that intrinsic motivation is more closely associated with choice-load reading than is extrinsic motivators. They die out after a short while. They have a kind of uplift and then their potential is wiped. The other thing that isn't really well researched, in my view, and increasingly people are beginning to pay attention to, is social motivation Motivate each other. If your son is really enjoying that you mentioned, he's doing it with his mates.

Teresa:

They have a band, they have a group, so they're supporting one another in that not yet online, but on paper connections as writers, positioning each other as writers. You're good at this. You can do that bit for me, I'll do this for you. So, that shared ecology of being writers together and if you're in a family like yours, where he's being read to and you're reading, then it's normal. We do reading here, because reading is normal, like hitting toast is normal, we read.

Andy:

Yeah, it's interesting because we read before bed every night. He's dyslexic, so some nights we'll do a little bit, not long, a little bit of toe by toe, which we have found has really moved the dial for him. We found that really helpful for him. But we also read. It's lovely.

Andy:

I love what you're saying because we've read the Marcus Brashford book recently and that is for anyone listening who's got a prime, any age, actually, never mind primary. It's a beautiful book about overcoming your own, your own barriers, your own obstacles, setting yourself small targets. And so we read that book. We spend more time discussing it than reading it. We stop and talk about it and we link it to things in life that he struggles with and that he finds easier. But what's lovely is that he's well booked day soon and they're doing about the Romans in class and he won't.

Andy:

I took him to Waterstones the other day because I had a book voucher from ages ago and I said, right, you pick anything you like, and he picked a book on the rotten Romans because he's doing that in lessons and he wants to go to school tomorrow as a Roman. He's dressed as a Roman tomorrow and it's and I know that people have views. I've certainly shared my views in the past about dressing up for World Book Day and oh it's, you know it's. But actually, having listened to what you've said, it's about identity, isn't it? It's about I identify with what we're studying here. I identify and I'm getting confident from learning more about this.

Teresa:

And also he is positioning himself as a reader. I want a book from Waterstones with dad. Dad's given me the chance, so I'm seeing myself as a reader Now, if you can support him and educators can support him and all the other young people as readers and writers when they move to secondary school, where it's much more demanding to hold on to that position, because in secondary school not all of them, but in many readings readers are the boffins, Readings are the kids who go to the library you know and you like in your lunch break and you don't go otherwise.

Teresa:

And so we I mean obviously lots of secondary schools do fabulous work with regular visits to the library. But it's harder when you're shaping your own identity as an individual in the world to position yourself as a reader in when you're 11 to 13, much different from primary.

Andy:

There's a different type of social currency there, isn't there Going on for sure.

Andy:

And no, I totally agree, and it's interesting because I think reading is one of those things that evolves with you to go through your life as well.

Andy:

Because, at the moment, one thing I constantly struggle with and my colleagues who listen to this and some of them do believe it a lot listeners, some of my colleagues that this will will attest to this that I'm not great at self care. You know my hours. I work two longer hours and it's nothing to do with anything else other than just I want to get more done and more done and and I think it's I've almost been quite emotional about it I struggle to put aside half an hour aside before bed to read every night, and I think, and I think that's about a self worth thing. Actually, it's for me, it's about I love it. So why not do more of it? Because, because I love it so much and I think it carries so much with it in terms of education, emotional well being, and if we can get more young people being enthused about it, it will carry so much for them in terms of education, prospects, choices in life, mental health, all of those things.

Teresa:

That's the horrendous, Andy. The stats are absolutely horrendous about children's attitudes. The National Literature Trust shows the lowest in 18 years for eight to 18 year olds attitudes to reading and children's engagement in the pearls and the PISA study, particularly in England 10 year olds for the pearls, 15 year olds for the PISA show again that our young people in England are less interested in reading than their peers internationally. So, they're in a very poor state here. So we need to do more in this space. We need to confuse, engage model. Invite in.

Andy:

But how interesting though that our phonic performance seems to be OK from what I read recently. How interesting that you know they're two separate studies, I get it, but how interesting that the two are almost odds with each other in a strange way. You need the knowledge to access the text, but this is the million dollar question. Then what do you think is causing that? Where's that coming from?

Teresa:

The contrast between the kind of high scores on the doors and the low attitudes. Yes, I think we're. I honestly think we may be teaching children to perform to the test. We're orienting an education system that enables children to jump through the hoops, but whether they're readers is an entirely different matter. So, they can get the high score on that. 10 year olds. We came forth internationally on comprehension in the progress in international reading lipstick study published in 23, but actually was from 2021.

Andy:

So once the analysis is done.

Teresa:

It comes out later, but we were four, so that's all good news and that is good news. I'm not putting that down. But I am also saying there is a huge challenge and attention between that and the disaffection scene in pearls. The same study for children to read in 29. Only 29% of our 10 year olds reported loving reading For us. 46% internationally reported loving it. So that's 57 countries kids at age 10 and just under a half reported loving it. That's a worry. But think of the numbers there 29% not even a third of ours engage in it.

Andy:

Ok, and in terms of more recently, I mean what I mean? I'm probably it's tough question to ask. But what about? What about social media screens, the world that the young people are living in now? Because when I was a teenager I'm revealing my age by myself but we had MSN messenger, we we'd be, we were the first sort of reclusive to go off to our rooms at night and be on MSN messenger all night with each other, and phones started coming in at the back end of my teen years really.

Andy:

But do you think there's much going on in terms of? I mean, I'm reading a book at the minute, a fantastic book called Dopamine Nation. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's incredible. It's all about addiction and the different forms of addiction. Is there anything to say to say here about? You know the fact that a lot of apps, a lot of modern life for young people, the social currency we were talking about before, is that pulling on this at all? And, by the way, younger pupils in my little boys' class are getting mobile phones, now iPhones in year three. It's happening. Is that? Is that?

Teresa:

there'll be a reception soon enough.

Andy:

Yeah, they were they were.

Teresa:

Of course it's influencing the agenda, but literacy changes over time. It has always and it will continue to do so, and the forms and modes in which it is enacted will continue to shift and that will influence young people's attitudes. But perhaps that's even more reason why, when we can see the evidence of relationship or association between choosing to read and academic attainment, as you mentioned before, you know, job prospects, as it were, emotional and social, emotional well-being, and there are not exactly parallel but not dissimilar studies related to writing for pleasure, choosing to write. So when we can see the evidence, we have to say well, technology is not going away.

Teresa:

We have to work with it and do it in a way underscore, develop more time and attention to choosing to read in the context of school, to nudge it in homes. But perhaps two parents need support. I mean, I was talking to one of the admin folks at the OU lovely lady and she was saying I wish I'd held my teenagers back from a bit of their online during those teenage years. One of them was never so keen on social media her daughter, by chance I don't think it's gendered, but you know her daughter and so she read avidly and continued to do so and has powered through secondary One year younger, her brother got hooked on social media and stayed there and hasn't really become the reader that Sam hoped you would.

Andy:

Yeah, and I think it's, and that's again. I mean, I don't know what your view, what your knowledge or your view is about the. Do you know much about the English language, gcse, for example?

Teresa:

To be truthful, I don't, so I don't want to talk.

Andy:

So it's interesting that you know you can actually massage pupils through a, an English language GCSE, with exam savvy and with a very formulaic way of writing. You can. You can hit the criteria to get a five on whatever. But, as you say before, it strikes me that there's an opportunity to reinvent some of the ways that we teach literacy. You know, bearing in mind our previous discussion about being able to understand things like presupposition, being able to understand the way that the media gender is set, I mean I'm open, I'll openly say, because I'm a linguist, I've got the Daily Mail app on my phone and I love it, because I love looking at.

Andy:

As a linguist, I love looking at the headlines and, as a linguist, I look at the pre-modification, I look at the attitude, I look at the subtleties that go into it. I look I've got, I had the telegraph as well and I love it. But and I feel empowered by being able to look at those things and I just wonder if we need to encourage that. I mean I and, on reflection, my teacher was great at that at school. He used to get us to look sideways at things all the time. Look at, look at it sideways, and I never forget. He was this fantastic, charismatic man. He would prounce around the classroom saying the text beneath the text, the text beneath the text. I'll never forget once. I genuinely I'm not a shame to say this I picked up the poem and looked underneath. I thought is there a hidden code under here? And that was a real, genuine, true story it's critical literacy, though Andy isn't it what you're reflecting is he was doing it in a very accessible manner.

Teresa:

Yeah, I mean in Australia, for example, critical literacies, part of the curriculum it's a lot.

Andy:

Does that look like in Australia?

Teresa:

well, I'm going there. There's some actually for a month fellowship, so I'll be able to tell you about it. But I mean the sense that even it is enshrined in a curriculum, which means teachers are responsible to attend to. How do I mean? I place for it and this is not here for GCSE or, you know, teenagers only, it's through the years.

Teresa:

Obviously it's like different in different states and parts, but nonetheless, it's there and that that is a powerful tool to help educators think how do I do this? Do I read three versions of Three Little Pigs when you're six to show that there isn't one version that exists and that we can play in parody with, etc. Etc. And enabling the children to, as you were reflecting there? You know, read not only the news headlines but the news per se. Who produced this, for whom, and who is left out of the voices here in this media presentation or whatever? What angle are they taking and why are hugely important issues for young people in this very tech world that they're living in? But you know that doesn't mean you can't also lose yourself in a novel, or lose yourself in a travel text or a book about the Romans and not think about those issues for that moment while you're trying to find out whether the witch gets killed or whatever it is.

Andy:

But it all comes back to, you know, infusing knowledge rich curricula together with experiential things in the curriculum that helps help pupils to understand it's. You know the old debate, the boring debate now knowledge versus skills. We know that's almost a false dichotomy, but it's a really important thing to understand that there's two sides of that and it's about knowledge and experience and the interplay and reflecting and, as you said before, the relationships that teachers have with their young people to help them explore these things.

Teresa:

I mean the knowledge and skills need to be aligned with attitudes we are fostering a life, attitude, dispositions and identities as individuals, as well as reader and writer identities. They're developing learner identities through schooling and the position themselves in relation to subjects, but also in relation to being a learner and an individual in the world, and so we do need to pay more attention to the attitudes, inclinations, personal interests as well as collective social interests of the young people now, because without that, we're doing curriculum to them rather than with them and alongside them.

Andy:

I think you know we think reading is a key vehicle for that, for so many different things, as you said before, which is, I think, a nice, nice place to end. I don't want to take a funny moment on him, because I think you've given us very generously.

Andy:

That's, you've been amazing and it's such an interesting conversation yeah, I've loved it and yeah, I hopefully, hopefully we can have you on again what sometime, because it's been such a pleasure I'm sure to thrill. So thank you very much and all the best with your month in Australia.

Teresa:

Very jealous yes, thank you. University of Adelaide, here I come.

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