Curriculum-related research

‘Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on learners in Wales.’ (In collaboration with Aberystwyth and Trinity St David’s universities)  

Accessing Welsh during the COVID-19 pandemic – challenges and support for non-Welsh speaking households.  (In collaboration with Aberystwyth and Trinity St David’s universities)  

From relationships to partnerships – the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parental engagement in children’s learning in Wales and the implications for initial teacher education. (In collaboration with Swansea University)

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales on the health and wellbeing of learners and practitioners, including the implications for initial teacher education. (In collaboration with Wrexham Glyndŵr and the University of South Wales)

The Remote Instruction of Language and Literacy (RILL) project is designed and run by researchers at the School of Psychology, and the Miles Dyslexia Centre at Bangor University. It comprises a short language and literacy programme for Key Stage 2 children, and was launched in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting national lockdown in April 2020. Our mission is to ensure that children can continue to receive the best possible literacy tuition during school closures, and to rapidly regain literacy skills once schools reopen. We are funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and by the Welsh Government. So far, our curriculum has been delivered to over 200 children in England and Wales. 

‘Optimising and Efficacy-Testing Remote Online Assessments of Children’s Literacy-related, Phonological Skills’, funded by Sêr Cymru – Tackling COVID-19, and led by Dr Markéta Caravolas sought to develop a viable solution to the current limitations on in-person assessments for children with specific learning difficulties (SpLD), and special educational needs. Assessment tools of cognitive and academic skills for children are generally designed for in-person test administration. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has motivated many assessors to make idiosyncratic adaptations of such test materials for remote online screen-sharing platforms, which may have generated unreliable results. Our aim was to produce a set of reliable, state of the art, online tests designed for the remote assessment of children’s phonological skills, these being fundamental to diagnostic literacy assessments, and yet, particularly difficult to measure online. The software design innovations produced in this study place Wales at the forefront of remote assessment of children’s language and literacy skills and offer a unique Welsh language capability. This technology is adaptable for multiple languages, uses, and contexts, for example when pupils are unable to attend school for long-term medical reasons, or in the case of school closures due to additional waves of COVID-19 infection.