Post:	Senior Lecturer in Education
Other posts:	Director of Taught Programmes (ESW Support)
Location:	Essex House EH 103
Email:	jlw24@sussex.ac.uk
Telephone numbers
Internal:	7326
UK:	(01273) 877326
International:	+44 1273 877326

Biography

I have 9 years of secondary school English teaching in three different London comprehensive schools as my background, with two years as a Teacher Trainer in Uganda as a VSO teaching English both at a National Teacher's College and in a secondary school.

I then worked as a Senior Lecturer in Education at Canterbury Christ Church University on the secondary English PGCE, and went on to develop the new flexible PGCE across primary and secondary, before being appointed at Sussex as a Lecturer in Education in September 2003. 

I teach across many of the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Education, with a specialism in wider reading and reading for pleasure at secondary school and research methods appropriate for the English classroom. 

I am also a Principal Investigator for the Teacher Preparation in Africa project, looking at what teachers know about the teaching of early reading and mathematics and how they teach in the first three grades of primary school in six sub-Saharan African countries.

I am currently Director of Taught Programmes in the School of Education and Social Work.

Role

I am a Senior Lecturer in Education currently teaching in the Sussex School of Education and Social Work and Director of Taught Programmes.   I teach on the secondary English PGCE programme,  the BA (Hons) English and Mathematics Education Studies programmes, and supervise on the Masters in Education Studies, the MA in International Education and Development and the International Professional Doctorate in Education.

Research

I am interested in what secondary students read, how, and for what purpose, and specifically in their independent, private reading - and who monitors, encourages and assesses this. I am particularly intrigued as to how students get access to whole narratives, especially novels, and make sense of them within the school context and how this might translate or impact on their private reading.  English teachers' knowledge of the reading process and how best to get students, especially less skilled readers, to really engage with a longer narrative over 4-5 weeks was the subject of my doctorate Narrative Reading Processes and Pedagogies in the Secondary Classroom (2009).

I am also interested in how reading is taught in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and how teachers there can make best use of their larger class sizes and challenging resources to encourage their students to read, write, speak and listen in their local language and the official language, or English. 

A further interest lies in how beginning teachers in either developed or developing countries become embedded in their schools or resist the 'washout' effect through becoming critically reflective and active practitioners.

Teaching

I teach across many programmes and courses in the Sussex School of Education: the secondary English PGCE, the BA Honours English and Mathematics Education Studies Programmes and the Diploma in Professional Education Studies for Teaching Assistants, and am a supervisor on the Masters in Education Studies, the Masters in International Education and Development and the International Professional Doctorate.

Selected publications

2007

Wider reading at Key Stage 3: Happy Accidents, Bootlegging and Serial Readers in Literacy Volume 41 pp. 147-154