Website: www.ukla.org
Chairperson: Tracey Parvin
Vice-chairperson: Roger McDonald
FELA representative: Elizabeth Broad
UKLA was founded in 1963 as the United Kingdom Reading Association, changing its name to the United Kingdom Literacy Association in 2003, to reflect more accurately its wide remit. UKLA seeks, through education and advocacy, to promote research and good practice in language and literacy teaching. It is energetic in its work to influence UK education policy. Its sub-committees promote research, international relations, publications, conferences and awards. It has a strong publications section, with two refereed journals, Literacy and Journal of Research in Reading. It also publishes, in conjunction with the English Association, English 4-11, as well as a broad range of books, position papers, practice and planning guides. The full range of titles can be viewed on our website.
Our awards programme is extensive and includes the UKLA Book Award, the Brenda Eastwood Award for good practice in teaching for diversity and inclusion, the John Downing Award which celebrates a class’ response to one of the UKLA is a member of FELA and part of Elinet and is further strengthening its ties with colleagues across the world through an International Ambassador scheme. It supports a number of literacy projects in Africa.books shortlisted for the Book Award, the UKLA Digital Book Award, the UKLA Wiley-Blackwell Research in Literacy Award, the UKLA Academic Book Award and the UKLA Literacy School of the Year. Further details are again available on our website.
Recent activities:
Due to C-19 our conference activities have been suspended since March 2020. However, UKLA has remained very active on virtual platforms, responding to current events and providing webinars to support professional development, and home learning resources to support all stakeholders currently engaged in home schooling activities. We responded to Black Lives Matter with useful resources and lists of texts by black authors via Twitter. Our Twitter account is lively and very current.
Recently published research includes The Impact of the Systematic Synthetic Phonics Government Policy on ITE in England.
Upcoming events:
Subject to C-19 restrictions in place at the time, it is intended to run the following:
- Open University/UKLA Reading for Pleasure Conference: Saturday 7th November 2020; University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.
- 2-4 July 2021: UKLA 56th International Conference, Oxford: ‘We need to talk about literacy’: why spoken language matters in literacy learning and teaching [postponed from July 2020]