About our project

Co-designing a programme, with children and teachers, to motivate and engage child readers

The Nuffield Love to Read project was a collaborative project between researchers, teachers, other professionals and children, which aimed to inspire and sustain a love of book reading

The project ran from September 2021 – February 2023 and had four phases:

Phase 1:  A literature review to summarise relevant theory and research and identify research-informed principles (access, choice, time, connection ,social and success) which underpinned the programme.

Phase 2: Interviews with children (n = 59, 4 schools) to learn about their perspectives and experiences of reading for pleasure in school, their own ideas to promote reading for pleasure, and their thoughts on the six research informed principles identified during phase 1.

Phase 3: The co-design of the Love to Read programme, with six teachers, drawing upon their professional and pedagogical knowledge, experience and expertise to create classroom activities to embed the principles into practice.

Phase 4:  An evaluation of the programme (in a mixed methods study) in four UK primary schools, examining the acceptability and feasibility of the programme, teachers and children’s perspectives and experiences of it, and to test for changes in reading motivation and/or engagement resulting from the programme.

Project researchers:

Sarah McGeown (Principal Investigator, University of Edinburgh)

Emily Oxley (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Edinburgh)

Jessie Ricketts (Co-Investigator, Royal Holloway, University of London)

Laura Shapiro (Co-investigator, Aston University)

Project partners:

Christina Clark (Director of Research, National Literacy Trust)

Megan Dixon (Headteacher)

Helen Fairlie (Senior Education Officer, Education Scotland)

Katrina Lucas (Primary school teacher)

Katherine Wilkinson (Head of Research and Evaluation, Scottish Book Trust)

Teacher co-design team:

Katie Juckes

Carol Ann Neil

Chereen Rain

Claire Sleath

Emily Weston

Chris Youles

Expert Advisory Group:

Professor Teresa Cremin

James Clements

Dr Mel Ramdarshan Bold

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