To avoid embarrassment, poetry should keep itself to itself”: an autoethnographic exploration of the place of poetry in adult literacy teacher education

This paper explores the reasons for the author’s reluctance to bring examples of her own poetry into her practice as teacher educator on a program for adult literacy tutors. The paper begins with the author’s poem, “The Place of Poetry”, which is used as a tool for reflection on the author’s assumptions about her identities as poet and as educator. The paper ends with poems written by the author’s students, which demonstrate that the use of poetry in education has the potential to facilitate transformative learning.

Holding eternity in an hour: A practical exploration of the arts in the health care of older people with dementia

This project involved creative artists working with older people with dementia and staff from two Belfast Health and Social Care Trust supported housing centres in a mixed programme of dance, painting, music and drama which culminated in an open workshop with relatives and friends of the tenants. The study steered away from traditional medical models of art/music/dance therapy where the participant is perceived as a ‘patient’ in favour of identifying the participant as a ‘student’ who avails of a life-long learning experience. A key premise was that access to the arts is a human right, especially in the context of advancing age and cognitive impairment. . According to one the tenants of Mullan Mews, the project served to ‘awaken - or reawaken - folk with dementia to the endless vista of possibility already in their lives if they will only look for it’. A phenomenographic analysis of video data generated by the project emphasises the importance of the individual experiences of participants in the programme. The evidence from these storylines gained strength from the development of a documentary-style film text that has proved successful in capturing and translating the live experience of the project participants into a supportive text that goes beyond the written word.

Utilising Creative Methodologies to Elicit the Views of Young Learners with Additional Needs in Literacy

The research described in this article aimed to explore and examine the dominant ‘assessment’ and ‘participation’ stories of upper-primary pupils with long-standing and marked literacy learning needs, their views on how their level of participation in the assessment and remediation of their additional needs might be increased and also how they perceive themselves as literacy learners. This qualitative small-scale study adopted a case study approach and utilised creative methodologies in the context of focus groups to investigate sensitively theviews and experiences of Key Stage 2 pupils with additional needs in literacy. The findings discussed here are based on the outcomes from the four Northern Irish schools that participated in the original cross-border (Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland) study. Findings are discussed in the context of strategies for promotingholistic and empowering pathways for learners with additional needs in literacy.

Impact of a play-based curriculum in the first two years of primary school: literacy and numeracy outcomes over seven years

In 2000–2002 an innovative early years curriculum, the Enriched Curriculum (EC), was introduced
into 120 volunteer schools across Northern Ireland, replacing a traditional curriculum similar to
others across the UK at that time. It was intended by the designers to be developmentally appropriate
and play-based with the primary goal of preventing the experience of persistent early failure in
children. The EC was not intended to be a literacy and numeracy intervention, yet it did considerably
alter pedagogy in these domains, particularly the age at which formal reading and mathematics
instruction began. As part of a multi-method evaluation running from 2000–2008, the research
team followed the primary school careers of the first two successive cohorts of EC children, comparing
them with year-ahead controls attending the same 24 schools. Compared to the year-ahead control
group, the findings show that the EC children’s reading and mathematics scores fell behind in
the first two years but the majority of EC children caught up by the end of their fourth year. Thereafter,
the performance of the first EC cohort fell away slightly, while that of the second continued to
match that of controls. Overall, the play-based curriculum had no statistically significant positive
effects on reading and mathematics in the medium term. At best, the EC children’s scores matched
those of controls.