Editorial

This Special Issue of Education 3-13 offers a state-of-the-art edition of the journal focused on research into children’s language, literacy and literature. It marks a moment in time, post the pandemic, and seeks to provide academics, practitioners, and trainee teachers with a key reference point for contemporary research and practice in these fields. Drawing together the work of key scholars, the issue distils research insights that extend contemporary understandings of language and literacy and of the vital role of literature in children’s learning.

Despite widespread recognition of the significant role of language and literacy in learning, children’s language development is not always specified in national curricula and narrow conceptualisations of literacy continue to prevail in many countries. These persistently proclaim or imply that literacy is an autonomous skill that can be taught and tested divorced from context, and fail to recognise literacy as ideological- that reading and writing are socially, culturally and historically situated practices (Street, 1984, 2008). Furthermore, children’s texts, and literature in particular, tend to be positioned in policy and practice merely as tools to teach literacy (Simpson and Cremin, 2022), and professional knowledge of contemporary children’s texts is seen to be both scant and underrated (Conradi-Smith, Young and Yatzeck 2022; Cremin et al., 2024).

However, not all texts or contexts are the same, and models of literacy need to take account of difference - of different contexts and different texts and of the uniqueness of each individual learner. Teachers need expansive conceptions of literacy that encompass awareness of the multiplicity of literacies across the different realms of children’s lives, homes and schools. Recognising children’s everyday, digital and multimodal literacies and the transformative potential and pleasures to be found in diverse literature is not an optional extra. It is fundamental to being able to scope ways forward that connect to and resonate with young people, engaging them in a rich and inspiring vision of language, literacy and literature. So, in this Special Issue, we sought to include papers which not only review particular fields and include new research, but also consider the contribution of their field to this broader vision.

Our first paper appropriately reflects on the role of oral language in the dialogic primary classroom. Focusing on policy, research and examples of children’s dialogue from schools, Maine highlights that oral language is positioned in national curricula in very different ways, ways which will have considerable consequence for the nature of the opportunities offered to children. She draws on a large-scale data set generated from a European project which sought to develop children’s cultural competence through focusing on the dialogic dispositions of tolerance, empathy and inclusion (DIALLS 2021). In particular, Maine explores how language can promote collaborative learning and notes the distinct contribution that provisionality and vagueness afford in dialogic classrooms. This is illuminated through a linguistic-ethnographic analysis of interactions in primary schools which shows that when teachers make use of a high degree of open-endedness, and extensive modelling, they provide genuine space for the development of children’s ideas. Maine closes by arguing that more recognition needs to be given to oral language in dialogic classrooms, both by policy makers and by educators, so that intercultural competence and enhanced empathetic understanding of others can be fostered today and in future generations.

Also connecting to the oracy agenda, Cremin, Hendry, Rodriguez-Leon and Hulston explore spontaneous informal book talk and consider what casual conversations about texts might offer young children. They also reflect upon the pedagogical practices that nurture such relaxed text-based interactions and the significant role that well-known and familiar texts play. The authors posit that research into talk in classrooms tends to focus on adult-led and adult framed discussions, often related to measuring gains in children’s vocabulary and comprehension. In contrast, their paper links to studies of child-led book talk that show the pleasure children derive from being able to talk about books in ways that enable them to make personally resonant connections with texts and each other (e.g. Kuzmičová and Cremin, 2022; McGeown et al. 2020). They report on their own school-based study of child-led, naturally occurring book related interactions with 4–7-year-olds. The observational data demonstrate the subtle, layered affordances of such non-assessed interactions around self-chosen texts, and indicate that informal book talk can offer meaningful opportunities for children to build and strengthen their social relationships. Furthermore, through their agentic engagement in such conversations, the authors found that children took ownership of their reading experiences, and some began to reposition themselves as knowledgeable readers, enacting new and more positive reader identities. It is clear that in order to foster such spontaneous book talk, and motivate and engage more readers, supportive reading cultures that foreground child agency and relaxed social interaction around texts need to be created.

Linking to the value of social interaction and drawing on a large-scale Italian project, Batini and Tuti make a strong case for shared reading aloud as an effective tool for fostering language and literacy development. Their work, entitled ‘Leggere: Forte!’ (Reading Strong), seeks to kindle and ignite young people’s interest in reading and thereby improve their language skills, whilst also fostering a love of literature and the desire to read. While many other studies of shared read aloud exist and are integrated into this paper, these are predominantly situated in homes or in early years settings. However, this study uniquely investigated the effectiveness of shared read aloud in schools across different ages. The team’s approach to shared reading aloud in class which explicitly encourages participation in the discussion and analysis of texts, has been developed for well over a decade, both in primary and secondary schools, as well as with younger children. It encompasses several fundamental principles, including for example, child agency, social engagement, bibliovariety, and continuity within a regular daily read aloud time in which progressively more demanding texts are shared. The young people are enabled to contribute to text selection, to voice a desire to pause and discuss their views and to share connections. Analysing both quantitative and qualitative data from their studies of children aged 3–10 years, Batini and Tuti compare the contribution of reading aloud and regular teaching practices in enhancing children's language and comprehension skills. Their extensive evidence indicates the marked potency of this highly interactive approach to reading aloud, making clear that this pedagogical practice merits increased attention by both policy makers and practitioners.

Our fourth paper engagingly addresses the multidimensional nature of reading comprehension. In this, Dixon and Caine review the models and frameworks designed to understand the reading process and argue that useful though these are, they offer scant insight into pedagogies that effectively support pupils to develop their proficiency in comprehension. They also maintain that not enough is known about teachers’ professional knowledge of reading comprehension internationally. In response to this context, they designed and trialled a new tool, the Knowledge, Behaviour and Attitudes Test of Reading Comprehension (KBAT-RC). Unlike many other measurement tools of teacher professional knowledge, the KBAT-RC investigates not only the subject (content) knowledge of what to teach, and the pedagogical knowledge of how to teach it (Shulman, 1986), but significantly also attends to teachers’ motivation and the opportunities they create to teach reading comprehension. Using this to survey UK teachers, Dixon and Caine suggest that whilst the teachers involved were motivated to teach reading comprehension, they seemed to focus on particular aspects, such as the explicit teaching of vocabulary and decoding. In contrast, the practitioners understood far less about the metacognitive aspects of reading comprehension, for example self-monitoring for understanding and inference generation. The KBAT-RC takes a broad view of comprehension and is seen to be a potentially valuable tool which can be used in professional development contexts to discern teachers’ and student teachers’ needs.

Turning to writing, Graham, Collins and Ciullo examine the evidence base on teaching writing and offer recommendations for policy makers and teachers working with young people aged 5–18 years. Initially, they explain the nature of meta-analyses and meta-syntheses, and the designs of those that they included. Variously these sought to determine the effectiveness of writing instruction, and some included measures of written products, as well as writing skills, processes, knowledge, and motivations. For all but one of the recommended writing practices, the authors indicate the magnitude of its effect on writing. For the last recommendation, which relates to the creation of a socially supportive and motivating classroom writing environment, effect sizes are not feasible as this recommendation is based on qualitative, not quantitative studies. The authors argue that combined, their recommendations would make an excellent writing programme. Those proposed include for example, attention to the skills of writing, the desire to write, and the recommendation that educators nurture children’s creativity, critical thinking, and imagery in order to help them become better writers. They also show the benefits of using twenty-first century writing tools that connect to children’s worlds outside of school (Graham, 2019). The authors close by making some perceptive observations about the status quo, about educators contextualising this rigorous evidence base from the science of teaching writing, and remind the profession to bear in mind that teaching writing involves far more than just improving how well students write. As they contend, it involves enabling young people to participate in a wider vision of literacy that supports their engagement as citizens, shows them that writing can be personally meaningful and much, much more.

Turning to the field of visual literacy and multimodal texts, Farrar, Arizpe and Lees review related research connected to this to children’s literature and young people's reading of such texts. They provide an insightful overview of how the field has developed over the last twenty years, including shifts during this period when for instance researchers turned to consider young people’s interactions with visual and literary feature of texts, the ways that texts influence readers’ perspectives and empathy, as well as the work to represent characters from diverse ethnic backgrounds more authentically. Looking to more recent research, Farrar, Arizpe and Lees highlight studies evidencing the empowering and emancipatory potential of wordless texts for marginalised groups (e.g. Arizpe, Noble and Styles, 2023; Oberman & Mallon 2023). They also emphasises the value of adult mediation within the visual reading process, the importance of support for such mediation and the possibility of mediated visual texts providing inclusive, safe experiences, even in emergencies. In common with the living-literacies perspective advocated by Bramley and Rowsell in a later paper, Farrar, Arizpe and Lees consider advances in the types of visual texts, the ways in which these afford different interactions and opportunities for meaning making, and how this material turn has also influenced research methodologies. These new developments provide positive possibilities for educators and researchers to ‘put thinking through the visual at the heart of learning’.

The next article in this Special Issue is Curtin’s interesting consideration of children’s personal connections in their reading. She urges educators to understand literacy as a human practice. Like many of the other papers, Curtin emphasises the importance of texts (whether print or multimodal) and interactions that create genuine connections with children’s lived experience and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992). She explores the motivational value of literature and argues that children should be supported to link their personal life experiences to their reading, whether or not these are positive ones. She emphasises that teachers can enable children to recognise that all literature is created in different ways and from different perspectives, and that they can bring their own personal and critical perspectives to reading and writing, rather than unwittingly reinforcing a ‘knowledge hierarchy’. In practical terms, Curtin encourages educators to embrace ‘a wide variety of stories and forms of storytelling, including an explicit focus on the stories and ways of knowing young learners are familiar with and already use every day’. Drawing on a research study that included creating social performances of poems and autobiographical diaries based on objects, she shares some specific insights from one author about ways to engage children in literacy with a focus on human connections. Her suggestions challenge educators to centre literacy around children’s personal, social and relational connections.

In the final article, Bramley and Rowsell explore key learning from their experiences of ethnographic research into filmmaking with children. Moving beyond filmmaking and viewing as a way of developing specific literacy skills, these authors conceive of filmmaking as a living-literacies approach. They urge practitioners to consider a broader view of literacy, in which filmmaking can offer a space to construct meaningful personal narratives to demonstrate criticality and challenge dominant perspectives about marginalised groups. They advocate for the possibilities of filmmaking in education research, as well as in classroom opportunities where children can lead, cautioning against a focus on children simply using film to record events. Instead, they argue for children’s creative ownership, and the provision of adult support that enables young people to craft their own messages. They contend that filmmaking ‘can mediate their [children’s] thoughts, convictions, and disruptions beyond the restrictions and boundaries of words’ which is surely a powerful incentive to employ filmmaking as a means for children to express themselves. Interesting parallels are made with indigenous filmmakers too, and Bramley and Rowesell argue that as film makers, children are experts and curators of their own cultures, and that as a consequence, such text creation should be taken seriously.

Looking across the papers in this Special Issue, it is evident that despite their diversity, there are areas of commonality. Interaction, drawing on children’s literacy lives beyond school, and the act of constructing meaning through making personal and textual connections all surface as salient features. Linked in some ways to a living-literacies perspective, more fully explicated by Pahl and Rowsell (2020), these features act as a reminder that literacy is not just an object of study, but is experienced affectively, socially and relationally by each individual, both within and beyond the classroom. As texts and the possibilities of reading, writing and interacting across different media proliferate outside formal education, it can be hard for educators to adapt their provision, ensuring it remains connected to the lives and interests of the young people with whom they work. This challenge is often exacerbated by the profile given to the standards agenda and the teaching of measurable literacy skills, but balance is needed. It is our hope that this collection of papers prompts all readers of the journal to consider their own conceptualisation of literacy/ies and offers support on the journey to develop a broad, balanced and inspiring vision of language, literacy and literature.