Dr Jess Anderson

I am a post-doctoral fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling. A primary teacher and teacher educator for many years, I bring a practitioner lens as well as theoretical and research perspectives to issues of social equity and inequity in primary school literacies.

My research interests centre around primary school literacies and issues of social in/equity. I am particularly passionate about working with teachers in different ways to cultivate fairer and more celebratory conditions for working-class children of all ethnicities to thrive as readers and writers. I understand reading as a multimodal practice, centred on meaning making across visual, print and other mediums of communication. My doctoral work also developed cross-disciplinary perspectives on reading differences.

I began in education as a primary teacher and language development teacher in Kensington & Chelsea, London, before moving into initial teacher education at the Institute of Education, UCL. There I joined the literacy team, developed a masters level children's literature module and established a series of children's literature book groups as a compulsory element of the PGCE programme. After 13 years I returned to Scotland, where I briefly taught in a primary school in Edinburgh, which helped familiarise me with Scottish primary education. Subsequently I became a literacy researcher at Strathclyde University which led me to doing a PhD on the experience of children placed in the so-called bottom reading group from their perspective and the perspective of social justice. I am also a guest lecturer on literacy modules at Queen Margaret University. I have worked in education now for 30 years and my two enduring passions are literacy and supporting teachers' professional development.