Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
- Associate Professor in Education
- IOE - Learning & Leadership
- UCL Institute of Education
Rachael took up the post of Associate Professor at IoE - UCL in February 2019, having spent the previous nine years working at The University of Sheffield. Her research and teaching interests focus on young children’s reading, which include children’s perceptions of reading and factors that influence motivation and engagement with reading. Her most recent research has explored the barriers and motivations to shared reading practices in families living in disadvantage. Rachael is also interested in the influence of gender on children’s attainment and engagement with literacy as well as the implications for opportunities within and beyond the schooling system.
Rachael is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College. Until recently she was the editor for the UKLA (United Kingdom Literacy Association) minibooks series. She also regularly reviews papers for a variety of literacy and early childhood journals.
Rachael is the author of Young Children Reading at Home and at School
https://sk.sagepub.com/books/young-children-reading


Rachael’s
research has included an exploration of young children’s perceptions of
reading; this involved designing an array of age-appropriate research tools to
understand children’s perceptions of reading during their entry into the formal
education. More recently Rachael led an
ESRC-funded study which explored shared reading practices, and the motivations
and barriers for shared reading in families living in disadvantage. Rachael has also been lead researcher for
three projects which have in various ways examined secondary school-age
children’s engagement with reading. Two of these projects were funded by
Booktrust.
Rachael is currently sharing leadership of the Research Methods module and Dissertation module for the MA Early Years Education, MA Early Years Education (online) and MA Primary Education (4 – 12). In addition Rachael also leads the Literacy Development module. She is a principle doctoral supervisor and has taken 9 doctoral students through to completion during her career. She was course director for the Sheffield EdD programme for 5 years.