Literacy Learning and Literacy Difficulties (MA)

This masters degree will:

• impart a deeper understanding of the processes involved in learning to read, write and spell, the sources of difficulties, and approaches to intervention
• enable you to read research critically and to design and conduct your own small-scale research.

This masters degree provides the opportunity to:

• draw on the strengths of a team with research expertise in literacy and experience in evaluating early literacy interventions
• investigate literacy acquisition and problems in depth, covering reading, writing and spelling.

Literacy consultants, advisers and coordinators; special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs); and teachers (including newly qualified teachers) wishing to improve their understanding of literacy learning. The MA will be particularly useful for those working in Key Stages 1 and 2, but those working with older children, including in secondary schools and the post-compulsory sector, may also apply.

A good honours degree in a relevant subject or the equivalent.

• Research methods in literacy
• Literacy development.

• Literacy practice in writing and comprehension
• Reading and spelling difficulties
• Teaching children in Reading Recovery (for Reading Recovery teachers)
• Reading Recovery in primary literacy leadership (for Reading Recovery teachers).

By coursework assignments and a 20,000-word dissertation or 10,000-word report.

Face-to-face evening sessions.

Graduates of this masters degree are currently working as:

• literacy coordinators and special educational needs coordinators
• literacy advisers and consultants
• deputy headteachers, principals and headteachers
• managers of literacy difficulties in secondary schools and in post-compulsory education.

• Literacy Development
• Reading and Spelling Difficulties
• Research Methods in Literacy