The University of Sheffield
The School of Education

Dr Kate Pahl B.A., M.A., Cert Ed., Ph.D.

Photograph of Kate Pahl


Reader in Literacies in Education

Tel: (+44) (0)114 222 8112
Fax: (+44) (0)114 279 6236
Email: k.pahl@Sheffield.ac.uk
Room: 7.05

Research interests

Ways of Knowing

Kate is involved in the ‘Ways of Knowing’ project which is funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programme from February 2013 for one year. This project will be exploring the different ‘ways of knowing’ which emerge from collaborative, participatory or action research. For more information about this project visit our blog: http://waysofknowingresearch.wordpress.com/

Making meaning differently: Towards an understanding of representation in local decision-making

Kate has been asked to prepare a policy briefing and a film for central government on representation in community governance. This is with Dr Steve Connelly from Town and Regional Planning, Dr Stuart Muirhead from RESS and Dr Dave Vanderhoven from Town and Regional Planning with Steve Pool, artist. The project is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Connected Communities Programme. People from community groups with different perspectives and experiences will help shape the research. The team will run workshops with five groups across England and South Africa, who are experimenting with innovative forms of community governance, particularly arts-based approaches to representation. The aim is to explore the forms and limits of representation and explore how these are made more or less effective by different understandings of legitimacy and accountability. The project runs from November 2012 – end April 2013.

Language as Talisman

Kate Pahl was awarded a Development Grant from Febrary - November 2012 from the AHRC's Connected Communities programme to do a study called Language as Talisman in partnership with the Youth Service in Rotherham together with Jane Hodson, Richard Steadman-Jones and Hugh Escott, members of the English Department at the University of Sheffield, as well as David Hyatt, School of Education. The project focused on language in community contexts and included a research review of the literature on language and dialect in Rawmarsh, Rotherham as well as a community project to engage families and young people in creating a myth around language in the community.

Family and community literacy

Kate´s research centres on ways in which families use literacy in everyday contexts. She has conducted a research project called Writing in the Home and in the Street, funded through the AHRC’s Connected Communities programme, which was an ethnographic study of writing within homes in Rotherham. This draws on her previous AHRC funded project that looked at home objects and stories within British Asian families, funded through the Diasporas, Migration Identities research programme.

Kate is particularly interested in literacy practices within families. She conducted a research study, funded by Booktrust, of home literacy practices in Sheffield, with Margaret Lewis and Louise Ritchie, researchers. She has conducted an evaluation of the Inspire Rotherham initiative, funded by Yorkshire Forward. She is interested in using inter-disciplinary and participatory approaches to research on literacy and language in communities. She was co-investigator on a project called SPARKS: Urban green-space as a focus for connecting communities and research funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programme which brings together anthropology, geography, linguistics, contemporary science and environment science to look at the role of public parks in language development. The SPARKS film can be viewed here: http://youtu.be/7m27DmiBHFQ.

Kate uses these research ideas in her teaching. She is the director of the EdD in Literacy and Language, which is a doctoral programme aimed at professionals interested in deepening their understanding of literacy and language in a wide variety of contexts, using cross-disciplinary perspectives. She also draws on her wide experience of community engagement in South Yorkshire to develop her teaching on the MA in Working with Communities.

She is also co-director, with Dr Julia Davies, of the Centre for the Study of Literacies.

Narratives and artefacts in homes and museums

Kate conducted a research project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council´s diasporas, migration and identities programme (www.diasporas.ac.uk) about the relationship between narratives of migration and artefacts in the homes of the Pakistani community of Rotherham. She won a Knowledge Transfer grant to develop a pack of learning resources for family learning tutors to use. The website is now online at: www.everyobjecttellsastory.org.uk. This was described on the Moving People Changing Places site. She was funded by Museums Libraries and Archives (MLA) Yorkshire, working with Thirsk Community Primary School and The World of James Herriot to create family stories as part of a family learning project relating to home objects and narratives. She conducted a research project with the Hepworth Wakefield, on a project called `A Space to Engage´ funded by the University of Sheffield, which is a site specific participatory research project with a group of young people in Wakefield.

Creativity and literacy

Kate is interested in how creative approaches to literacy can develop new ways of understanding how children come to write and compose. She has looked at ways in which partnerships between artists and teachers can support children´s literacy learning. She is particularly interested in areas of multimodality and how children draw on a number of modes to make meaning.

Multilingualism, literacy and ethnography

Since working with multilingual families in London, Kate has always been interested in how multilingual families use literacy in everyday life. She belongs to the Linguistic Ethnography Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics and continues to bring the lens of linguistic ethnography to her work with multilingual families.

Teaching

The experience of being on Kate’s courses is to become immersed in visual, ethnographic, participatory and innovative approaches to research. Students understand the field of literacy and language in relation to communities, identities and creativities. All courses taught by Kate encourage a wide ranging, interdisciplinary approach to the subject of literacy and language in home and community contexts.

Kate directs the EdD in Literacy and Language. This is an exciting doctoral programme that gives students a research-led approach to studying literacy and language using theory from a wide variety of sources. Literacy is understood as a situated social practice, linked to space, place and identity. She also teaches on the MA in Working with Communities. This is a multi-disciplinary course that looks at working with communities. Kate’s contribution is to develop research skills that are visual, participatory and creative, so that students can develop their own research projects in community settings. Her research students work in the areas of visual methodologies, the New Literacy Studies, ethnography, multilingualism, multimodality, creativity, museums and art education.

Activities

Publications

Books

Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2012) Literacy and Education: Understanding the New Literacy Studies in the Classroom 2nd Edition. London: Sage

Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2012) Early Childhood Literacy. (Four volumes) Sage Library of Educational Thought and Practice. London: Sage

Grenfell, M, Bloome, D, Hardy, C. Pahl, K, Rowsell, J and Street B (2012) Language, Ethnography and Education: Bridging New Literacy Studies and Bourdieu. New York: Routledge

Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J (2010) Artifactual Literacies: Every object tells a story. New York: Teachers College Press.

Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (eds) (2006) Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2005) Literacy and Education: The New Literacy Studies in the Classroom. London: Paul Chapman

Pahl, K. (1999) Transformations: Children´s Meaning Making in a Nursery. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books.

Chapters and articles

Rowsell, J. Kress, G., Pahl, K. and Street B. (2013) The Social Practice of Multimodal Reading: A New Literacy Studies - Multimodal Perspective on reading. In: Alvermann, D.E., Unrau, N.J., & Ruddell, R.B. (Eds.). (2013). Theoretical models and processes of reading (6th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.pp 1182-1207

Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2012) Artifactual Literacies. In J. Larson and J. Marsh (Eds) The Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. Second Edition London: Sage pp. 263-278

Pahl, K. (2012) Time and Space as a Resource for Meaning-Making by Children and Young People in Home and Community Settings. Global Studies of Childhood 2 (3) pp. 201-216

Pahl, K. (2012) Every object tells a story: Intergenerational Stories and Objects in the Homes of Pakistani Heritage Families in South Yorkshire, UK. Home Cultures 9 (3) pp. 303 -328

Pahl, K. (2012) “A Reason to Write” Exploring writing epistemologies in two contexts. Pedagogies: An International Journal 7 (3) pp 209-228

Pahl, K. and Pool, S. (2011) Living your life because its the only life you’ve got: Participatory research as a site for discovery in a creative project in a primary school in Thurnscoe, UK. Qualitative Research Journal, Vol 11 (2) 17-37.

Pahl, K., & Rowsell, J. (2011). Artifactual critical literacy: A new perspective for literacy education. Berkeley Review of Education, 2(2), 129-152.

Pahl, K. and Allan C. (2011) I don’t know what literacy is: Uncovering hidden literacies in a community library using ecological and participatory methodologies with children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Vol 11 No 2 190-213

Pahl, K. (2011) Improvisations and transformations across modes: the case of a classroom multimodal box project. In J. Swann, R. Pope and R. Carter (Eds) Creativity in Language and Literature:The State of the Art. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan pp 156-171.

Pahl, K. (2011). My Family, My Story: Representing Identities in Time and Space Through Digital Storytelling. In S. Schamroth- Abrams & J.Rowsell's Rethinking Identity and Literacy Education in the 21st Century. National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook. Volume 110, Issue 1. Pp17-40

Pahl, K and Rowsell, J. (2011) The Material and the Situated: What Multimodality and New Literacy Studies Do for Literacy Research (Third Edition). In: D. Lapp and D. Fisher Eds. Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts. Oxon and New York: Routledge

Pahl, K. Comerford-Boyes, L., Genever, K., and Pool, S. (2010) Artists, Art and Artefacts: boundary crossings, art and anthropology Creative Approaches to Research Vol 3 (1) pp 82 -101

Pahl, K. and Pollard, A. (2010) The Case of the Disappearing Object: Narratives and artefacts in homes and a museum exhibition from Pakistani heritage families in South Yorkshire Museum and Society 8 (1) 1 – 17

Pahl, K. (2010) `Changing Literacies: Schools, communities and homes´ In J. Lavia and M Moore (eds) Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Policy and Practice. Decolonizing Community Contexts. London: Routledge pp 58-71

Pahl, K, with Pollard, A and Rafiq, Z (2009) Changing Identities, Changing Spaces: The Ferham Families Exhibition in Rotherham. Moving Worlds Vol 9 No 2 80 – 103

Pahl, K. (2009) Interactions, intersections and improvisations: Studying the multimodal texts and classroom talk of six to seven year olds Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 9 (2) 188-210

Pahl, K. (2008) Looking with a different eye: creativity and literacy in the early years. In: J. Marsh and E. Hallet (eds) Desirable Literacies: Approaches to language and Literacy in the Early Years pp 140 – 161

Pahl, K. (2007) Timescales and Ethnography: Understanding a child´s meaning-making across three sites, a home, a classroom and a family literacy class. Ethnography and Education. Vol 2 no 2 pp 175-190

Pahl K (2007) Creativity in events and practices: a lens for understanding children´s multimodal texts Literacy Vol 41 Number 2 pp 86-92

Rowsell, J. and Pahl, K. (2007) Sedimented identities in texts: Instances of practice. Reading Research Quarterly. Vol. 42, Issue 3 pp 388-401

Reports

Pahl, K (2007) Looking with a different eye. Report on a partnership between artists and teachers in an Infants´ School in Barnsley.

View a full list of Kate Pahl’s publications

Recent Funded Projects

Evaluation, Inspire Rotherham: Grant from Yorkshire Forward from May 2009 - April 2010 to study the impact of the Inspire Rotherham project on families, schools and communities in Rotherham.

A Reason to Write: Grant from Cape UK to study the impact of three artists on a school in the Dearne valley, and to focus on artists and teachers practices January 2009 for 2 years.

My Family, My Story: grant from MLA Yorkshire from June 2008 – Feb 2009 to research digital storytelling project with Thirsk community school and The World of James Herriot

Every Object Tells a Story: Family Literacy project funded by the Knowledge Opportunities Transfer Fund, University of Sheffield, to develop an archive of narratives and images into a family learning project. Jan - March 2008

Artefacts and narratives of migration: Rotherham museum collections and the Pakistani/Kashmiri community of Rotherham AHRC small grant from the Diasporas Migration Identities programme 2006-7

Creativity in schools and community contexts: A Creative Partnerships Project, funded by Barnsley Doncaster and Rotherham Creative Partnerships 2005-6

Research Students

Abdul Assim

Parven Akhter
An exploration of `funds of knowledge´ and `new literacies´ in diverse family cultures

Sallyann Bentham

Jared Bryson

Eleri Davies

Sarah Freeman

Abi Hackett

Zoyah Kinkead-Clark

Christine Lofaro

Ninette Pace-Balzan

Kath Swinney