Teresa Cremin
Teresa Cremin (previously known professionally as Teresa Grainger) is Professor of Education at The Open University. Her work involves research, teaching and consultancy in the fields of literature, literacy and creativity. Teresa has just completed two years as President of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (2007-9), and remains a Trustee of the Association. She is joint co-ordinator of the BERA Creativity SIG with Anna Craft from Exeter University and Pam Burnard from Cambridge University and is a Trustee both of BookTrust and of The Poetry Archive. Teresa is also on the Assessment Panel of the International Reading Association's Outstanding Dissertation Award and is on the DCSF English Board sub-group on Reading Comprehension.
Teresa began her academic career as a psychologist, graduating in social psychology from Bristol University in 1980. Intending to train as an educational psychologist, she undertook a PGCE at Homerton College Cambridge and during her time as a teacher and LA staff development co-ordinator became fascinated by children's language and literacy development. Teresa studied for a Masters degree in Language and Literature in Education (English as a Mother Tongue) at the Institute of Education in London, (1988-1990) and moved to Canterbury Christ Church College in 1989, establishing a large Masters programme in Language and Literacy amongst other initiatives. In 1998-2003, Teresa was Editor of the journal Reading Literacy and Language (now entitled Literacy) and became President of the United Kingdom Reading Association in 2001-2. Initially appointed as a lecturer, Teresa completed her doctorate in 2007 and left Canterbury Christ Church University as a Professor in Education in the same year, when she was appointed to a chair at the Open University.
Teresa has written and edited over 20 books and numerous research papers with colleagues over the years and has given many talks to national and international audiences. Her research and teaching has focused on four main areas: voice in writing; children's imaginative development, teachers as language artists; and creativity and creative teaching and learning. Teresa has a number of forthcoming projects including her forthcoming book with Debra Myhill Writing Voices: Thinking critically about teaching writing (Routledge 2010). This seeks to profile the act of composition and give voice to children, their teachers and professional writers. Also her new series Learning to Teach in the Primary School (Routledge), is planned to accompany the Routledge textbook of the same name which she co-edited. The first three books focus on English, Maths and Science, the last two are due out in 2010. Her current new book Teaching English Creatively (Routledge, 2009), compliments many of her other texts which explore the synergies between literacy and creativity, both theoretically and practically.
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Teaching English Creatively
What does it mean to teach English creatively to primary school children?
How can you successfully develop pupils’ engagement with reading and writing skills?
Teaching English Creatively…
read moreJune 2009 | Paperback: 978-0-415-43502-4 (Routledge)
Jumpstart! Drama
Games and Activities for Ages 5-11
Jumpstart! Drama contains more than forty engaging, practical, easy-to-do and highly motivating drama activities which will appeal to busy primary teachers who wish to enliven…
read moreMarch 2009 | Paperback: 978-0-415-48248-6 (David Fulton Publis)
Learning to Teach in the Primary School
This comprehensive new textbook provides valuable support to student teachers on primary ITT, BEd and PGCE courses. It provides a sound and practical introduction to…
read more2006 | Paperback: 978-0-415-35928-3 (Routledge)
more information about Learning to Teach in the Primary School
Creativity and Writing
Developing Voice and Verve in the Classroom
This clear yet authoritative book affirms the vital role of creativity in writing and considers and encourages flexible, innovative practices in teaching. Importantly, the book…
read more2005 | Paperback: 978-0-415-32885-2 (Routledge)
The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Language and Literacy
In this essential collection of readings, Teresa Grainger provides carefully chosen journal articles and chapters that offer significant and serious insights into the changing face… read more2003 | Paperback: 978-0-415-32767-1 (Routledge)
more information about The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Language and Literacy
From the outset of my academic career, my research stance has been a collaborative one; I value multiple perspectives and frequently work alongside university based colleagues and practising teachers in co-participative projects. For example in 2001-3, Kathy Goouch, Andrew Lambirth and I worked with 18 primary teachers as action researchers in the project 'We're Writers', in which we explored the creative process of written composition and documented both teachers' and children's learning journeys as they engaged as writers. The 'Write Voice' project followed with another 18 teachers (from 9 schools) and both studies were drawn upon in the book Creativity and Writing: Developing Voice and Verve in the Classroom (Routledge, 2005). In this we responded to the over-emphasis on knowledge about language form and feature and re-asserted the significance of authentic language use, of content and context, meaning, purpose and authorial agency.
Following three other research projects with teachers which variously explored other aspects of writing (particularly the role of talk and writing at home), in 2006-7 I turned my attention to reading and led a UKLA Phase I project to establish primary teachers' subject knowledge of children's literature. The results represented genuine cause for concern, so Marilyn Mottram, Fiona Collins, Kimberley Safford, Sacha Powell and I worked with forty teachers from five Local Authorities on a Phase II project which sought to develop children's reading for pleasure by enriching teachers' subject and pedagogical content knowledge with regard to children's literature and other texts. This study 'Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers' also examined the reciprocity which developed when some of the teachers began to share their reading lives with children. Phase III (2009-2010), takes this further and seeks to support teachers as ethnographers in their school community contexts, documenting the everyday reading practices of primary children and their families and creating more culturally responsive curricula.
I have also researched and published with my Masters students, examining issues such as the influence of dramatic tension and imagined role perspectives on ideational fluency and voice in writing. In separate studies, with Anna Craft, Pam Burnard and Kerry Chappell and groups of teachers, we sought to identify what characterises possibility thinking in children's learning experiences and how teachers' pedagogical practice fosters this critical aspect of creativity. I have additionally worked with my colleagues in HEIs researching our own work as university educators; subjecting our teaching to interrogation and analysis and exploring the extent to which it might be described as ‘creative’. In these and many other studies, the resultant papers and books have inevitably been co-written, yet intriguingly over the years I have been regularly critiqued for researching and publishing so extensively with others. I remain unrepentant on this issue and in particular perceive teachers deserve not only to be included as researchers in externally funded projects, but also deserve to be empowered as authors of the collaboratively wrought findings. Collaborative studies such as these, both with colleagues in universities and teachers in schools, can help to support each of us in functioning simultaneously as practitioners and researchers and may help to blur the boundaries between experience and inquiry, action and analysis, and doing and theorising.
Profiling teachers' engagement as researchers in other contexts, I have included a new chapter on this in the forthcoming Learning to Teach in the Primary School (Routledge first edition 2006, New edition 2011), which I am editing with James Arthur. The text explores issues around teaching as a research based/research informed profession and in all the 38 chapters (written by 46 contributors), synergies between theory and practice, teaching and research are examined. The new series which I am editing that accompanies this core text is also entitled ‘Learning to Teach in the Primary School’. In responding to the changing primary agenda, it explores the dynamic interplay between teaching subjects creatively and teaching for creativity and also highlights the teacher's role in fostering children's curiosity, capacity to make connections, problem solve, take risks and innovate. The first three books include my new text Teaching English Creatively (Routledge, 2009), and the forthcoming Teaching Science Creatively by Dan Davies and Ian Milne and Teaching Mathematics Creatively by Linda Pound and Trisha Lee (both 2010).
My own research continues to consider aspects of personal and professional artistry and teachers' creative dispositions that enable them to handle ambiguity and complexity and respond imaginatively to diversity. Arguably my interest in creative practice emerged from my own experience of combining drama and literature in primary classrooms over many years, as well as extensive childhood involvement in amateur dramatics. We spend our lives exploring ourselves perhaps... I believe the role of improvisation and imaginative play are seriously underestimated in education, and argue for example that the serious play of writing and the skilful improvisational practice of creative teachers deserve more attention.
My forthcoming book with Debra Myhill Writing Voices: Thinking Critically about Writing (Routledge, 2010) will consider these issues further and will in particular examine the significance of teachers' and student teachers' identities as writers and designers. Stretching across primary and secondary practice, it will also reflect upon children's voices and those of professional writers, as they compose and talk about their writing and themselves as writers. Critical issues such as the role of talk, texts, agency and metacognition will be examined and my new research starting autumn 2009 exploring the discourse of teacher modelling will also be included.
