UKLA is pleased to announce the JRR and Literacy winners of the prestigious UKLA/ Wiley Research in Literacy Education Award 2025
The Award is given annually for papers judged to be exemplary in terms of the criteria applied. The winning lead authors will be honoured at the UKLA International Conference in Liverpoool 27th-29th June 2025 and invited to present a seminar at the conference. The Awards Committee congratulates the shortlisted authors for this year’s Wiley Prizes.
Journal for Research in Reading
The winner of the Award was:
Vocabulary exposure to children is enhanced by using both informational and narrative picture books for read-alouds: A comparative modelling study using data science methods (Clarence Green, Kathleen Keogh) 47(4)
The Awards Panel commented:
This is a fascinating study, which has potential to contribute significantly to scholarly thinking, picturebook publishing/reading and EY practice. The work utilises interesting methodological approaches and excellent open research practices. The analysis considers not only word length and lexical diversity, but also semantic clusters, and is, according to the authors, the first to compare lexical profile of information and narrative picturebooks. The study has important practical implications, making it relevant to both theory and practice. The database created by the authors is available as an open research resource.
Also commended was:
Tracing the longitudinal role of orthographic knowledge in spelling development from primary to upper-secondary school (Jakob Åsberg Johnels, Christian Waldmann, Maria Levlin) 47(2)
The Awards Panel commented:
This is timely research building understanding about the important role of orthographic knowledge to long-term spelling development. The longitudinal research design provides a particularly useful and much-needed lens, which enhances our understanding of the field. The paper is accessible to practitioners in addition to researchers from diverse academic disciplines.
The other shortlisted article was:
The role of executive functions in 9- to 12-year-old children’s sentence processing: An eye-movement study (Nannan Cui, Yang Wang, Jiefei Luo, Yan Wu) 47(2)
Literacy
The winner of the award was:
Decoding, reading and writing: the double helix theory of teaching (Dominic Wyse, Charlotte Hacking) 58(3)
The Awards Panel commented:
Wyse and Hacking have provided a concise and important inquiry into the foundations of reading and built upon this to push forward the field with a new proposition. Their study provides a fascinating, comprehensive and accessible summary of a range of prevailing literacy learning models. The ‘seven components central to literary teaching’ they identify are of direct relevance to practitioners and researchers alike. Their cross-disciplinary perspective is unusual and yet much needed in the field.
The other shortlisted articles were:
Representation of neurodivergence in fiction books: exploring neurodivergent young peoples’ perspectives (Charlotte Webber, Elena Santi, Katie Cebula, Catherine J. Crompton, Sarah McGeown) 58(3)
Incorporating digital animation in a school play: multimodal literacies, structure of feeling and resources of hope(Michelle Cannon, Theo Bryer, Sara Hawley) 58(2)
‘I’m rewriting the law’ when children bring literacy into nursery school (Lars Holm, Helle Pia Laursen, Annegrethe Ahrenkiel) 58(1)
Booktuber: promoting reading and literacy in the classroom among Spanish pre-service teachers through a video review (Betlem Soler Pardo) 58(1)
The shortlists were chosen by panels convened by Literacy editors Sam Duncan, Sinead Harmey, Rachel Levy and Lucy Taylor, and JRR editors Helen Breadmore and Bonnie Chow.
The winners were chosen by the Wiley Award Panel:
JRIR: Sabine Little and Fiona Maine (Co Chairs), Danielle Dennis, Jonathan Solity, Frances Bodger, Sarah McGeown and Dongbo Zhang.
Literacy Sabine Little and Fiona Maine (Co Chairs), Danielle Dennis, Mia Perry, Frances Bodger and Dongbo Zhang.
The panel would like to congratulate all the authors who were nominated for the award, and Wiley for their continued generosity in supporting this award.