Professor Clare Wood

MY RESEARCH VISION

My research is concerned with understanding the factors that impact on educational achievement and achievement in literacy in particular. Literacy skills underpin all areas of the curriculum and it is essential that children are enabled to achieve all that they can in primary school, in order to unlock their potential across the curriculum at secondary school. It is essential that research is responsive to the current concerns of educators, parents and children. As a result my current research is concerned with evaluating the impact that everyday technology has on children's educational experiences and outcomes, and working with teachers and third sector partners to evaluate approaches to supporting children who are underachieving in literacy. The development, robust evaluation and sharing of effective intervention ideas and approaches is an important focus of my research going forward.

Centre Executive Director

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BIOGRAPHY

Clare Wood received her BA (Hons) in Social Psychology from the University of Kent in 1993 and her PhD from the University of Bristol in 1997. She has worked as a lecturer at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education (now University of Gloucestershire), University College Northampton (now Northampton University), and the Open University, before joining the Department of Psychology at Coventry University in 2005. Her research interests are concerned with understanding the precursors of literacy difficulties, the impact of technology on educational outcomes and the processes of teaching and learning.

In 2000 she won the International Reading Association's Reading/Literacy Fellowship, which is awarded to "a researcher residing outside the US or Canada who has shown exceptional promise in reading research" (see reading.org). In 2006 she also received the British Psychological Society's Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Psychology. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Research in Reading and is Director of the Centre for Applied Research in Psychology. In 2011 she was made Professor of Psychology in Education.

SELECTED OUTPUT

• Holliman, A.J., Williams, G.J., Mundy, I.R., Wood, C., Hart, L., and Waldron, S. (2014) 'Beginning to disentangle the prosody-literacy relationship: A multi-component measure of prosodic sensitivity'. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 27 (2), 255-266.

• Wood, C., Kemp, N., Waldron, S., and Hart, L. (2014) 'Grammatical understanding, literacy and text messaging in school children and undergraduate students: A concurrent analysis'. Computers and Education 70, 281-290.

• Holliman, A.J., Wood, C., and Sheehy, K. (2012) 'A cross-sectional study of prosodic sensitivity and reading difficulties'. Journal of Research in Reading 35 (1), 32-48.

• Wood, C., Meacham, S., Bowyer, S., Jackson, E. Tarczynski-Bowles, M.L., and Plester, B. (2011) 'A longitudinal study of children's text messaging and literacy development'. British Journal of Psychology 102 (3), 431-442. 

• Wood, C., Jackson, E., Hart, L., Wilde, L., and Plester, B. (2011) 'The effect of text messaging on 9- and 10-year-old children's reading, spelling and phonological processing skills'. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 27 (1), 28-36. 

• Veater, H., Plester, B., and Wood, C. (2011) 'Exploring the relationship between text message abbreviations and literacy skills in children with dyslexia'. Dyslexia 17, 65-71.

• Holliman, A.J., Wood, C., and Sheehy, K. (2010) 'The contribution of sensitivity to speech rhythm and non]speech rhythm to early reading development'. Educational Psychology 30 (3), 247-267. 

• Holliman, A.J., Wood, C., and Sheehy, K. (2010) 'Does speech rhythm sensitivity predict children's reading ability one year later?'. Journal of Educational Psychology 102 (2), 356-366.

• Wood, C., Pillinger, C., and Jackson, E. (2010) 'Understanding the nature and impact of young readers' literacy interactions with talking books and during adult reading support'. Computers and Education 54 (1), 190-198.

• Plester, B., Wood, C., and Joshi, P. (2009) 'Exploring the relationship between children’s knowledge of text message abbreviations and school literacy outcomes'. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 27 (1), 145-161.

SELECTED PROJECTS

• Education Endowment Foundation Grant.  February . (£397,315): To fund an 18 month project evaluating and extending the Reading Agency’s Chatterbooks reading groups as a mechanism for raising reading achievement in underachieving secondary school pupils.  

• Leverhulme Research Project Grant.  September 2011- August 2014. (£75,761): To fund a three year PhD studentship examining the utility of prosodic sensitivity in the context of a reading intervention programme.  [Co-Applicant: Dr Andrew Holliman]. 

• UKLA Research Grant.  April 2011- March 2012 (£1,500): Evaluating the impact of dialogic reading techniques on early literacy skills and parental attitudes to joint storybook reading. (Co-Applicant: Claire Pillinger). 

• Nuffield Foundation Research and Innovation Grant.  September 2010-Decemember 2012. (£144,814): To investigate the interrelationships between grammatical development and text messaging. (Co-Applicant: Dr Nenagh Kemp) 

• British Academy Small Research Grant.  February 2010 – August 2011 (£7,492): To investigate the nature of the relationship between texting and spelling attainment. 

• BECTA Research Grant. April 2008 – March 2008 (£19,993): To conduct an intervention study considering the impact of text messaging on 9-10 year old children’s literacy development.  [Co-applicant: Dr Beverly Plester] 

• British Academy Small Research Grant.  September 2007 – December 2008 (£7,439): To support a cross-lagged longitudinal study of children’s use of text message abbreviations and their relationship to reading and spelling development. [Co-applicant: Dr Beverly Plester] 

• Understanding the role of prosody in reading. Insight grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2013-2017. $169,750: (PI Lesly Wade-Woolley.  Co-investigators: A. Holliman, L. Jarmulowicz, & C.P. Wood) 

• Reading Agency, December 2012 – July 2013 (£1507): To design the methodology of an evaluation programme for Chatterbooks and conduct data analysis for the Agency. 

• Thriftwood School January, 2012 – December 2013 (£17,500): To pilot literacy interventions for children with complex needs.