Lab Aims:
The Language, Literacy, and Inclusion Research Lab is dedicated to fostering understanding and promoting practices that support language development, literacy acquisition, and inclusive education for diverse and non-diverse learners. Our mission is to bridge the gap between psychological research and practice to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their background or abilities, have access to high-quality language and literacy education.
Research Goals:
- Language Development: Examine processes and factors that influence language development in children (and adults?) with a focus on language difficulties in relation to reading, spelling, writing and comprehension.
- Literacy Acquisition: Explore effective instructional strategies and interventions that enhance literacy skills, from early childhood through adolescence and adulthood, including reading, spelling, writing, (and digital literacy?).
- Inclusive Education: Develop and evaluate inclusive educational practices that support learners with diverse needs, including those with disabilities, language barriers, and socio-economic challenges and difficulties relating to mental health and wellbeing.
- Policy and Practice: Inform educational policies and practices by translating research findings into actionable recommendations that can be implemented in classrooms and educational settings.
- Community Engagement: Collaborate with educators, families, and communities to co-create and exchange knowledge and solutions that address local and global challenges in language and literacy education.
Through our interdisciplinary research, the Language, Literacy, and Inclusion Research Lab aims to contribute to a more equitable and inclusive society where all individuals can achieve their full potential.
Research Areas:
- Reading, Spelling and Writing: development, challenges, assessment and interventions
- Linking Literacy, Cognition and Mental Health outcomes with children and adolescents
- Teacher and Parent experiences and perspectives of literacy outcomes and mental health
Lab Lead(s):
Team Members:
Dr. Emily-Coyne Umferville
Grace Richards (PhD Student)
Collaborations
Projects: Development of Standardised Spelling Assessment, research on cognitive and literacy predictors of spelling
Collaborators: Dr. Janet Vousden (Nottingham Trent University), Dr. Georgia Niolaki (Bath Spa University), prof. Jackie Masterson (University College London) and Prof. Saskia Kohnen (Literacy Clinic - Australian Catholic University)
Project: Raising awareness about Dyslexia in primary and secondary schools and co-creating interventions to support literacy difficulties with learners with diverse needs
Collaborators: Dr. Georgia Niolaki (Bath Spa University), SENCOs and Teachers from primary and secondary schools, Gloucestershire Dyslexia Association and British Dyslexia Association
Project: Modelling the limits of grammar: Integrating lexical frequency in a Gradient Harmonic model of lexical stress; Evidence from young and adult Greek speakers’ grammars
Collaborators: Aristotle University in Thessaloniki- Greece