Angela Wootten

Angela Wootten

School of Education
Teaching Fellow in Education (Deafness and Hearing Impairment)

Contact details

Address
School of Education
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Angie Wootten has been a practising teacher of deaf children and young people for 32 years. She has worked with children and young people of all ages and in a range of provisions. Up until recently she worked as a hearing advisory teacher with Warwickshire’s Local Authority team.

Angie worked as a placement supervisor and a regional tutor for the university’s course Teachers of Children with Hearing Impairment for a number of years before joining Emmanouela Terlektsi to assist in running the programme which leads to the mandatory qualification to teach deaf children.

Her particular interest is in the use of drama as a tool for teaching deaf children and in particular its value in facilitating the development of personal, social and emotional skills. In 2007 she jointly authored Using Drama to Teach Personal, Social and Emotional Skills published by Sage.

Feedback and office hours

Works Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays only

Qualifications

  • MPhil (Deaf Education)

Biography

Angie trained to be a teacher of the deaf at Manchester University in the 1980s. Since then she has worked in a variety of settings including two units, a college for deaf students and three peripatetic services. Children she has worked with range from babies through to young adults but if her passion lies anywhere it is with teaching Key Stage 2 children. Along the way she gained a BSL Stage 2 qualification.

1999 was an important year for Angie when she became a research fellow on the RNID’s project The Review of Good Practice in Deaf Education with the universities of Birmingham and Manchester. Working alongside Linda Watson, Steve Powers and Sue Gregory she had the privilege of exploring and describing examples of good practice around the UK with deaf children, an experience which profoundly affected her own work.

Since her early days as a teacher she has been excited by the possibilities of drama as a tool for developing many different skills and as a springboard for learning. Around 2003 she met Jacqui O’Hanlon, a drama practitioner and now the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Education Director and between them they pooled their experience and particular interest in PSE skills to research and write Using Drama to Teach Personal, Social and Emotional Skills (2007). Although applicable to children generally the original focus was the education of deaf children. Using material from this handbook, Angie has worked with teachers and trainee teachers of the deaf around the UK.

In 2014 Angie worked as a data collector on an Ear Foundation project relating to children with cochlear implants and literacy skills. 

In 2017 she acted again as a data collector on a literacy project led by Brahm Norwich at the University of Exeter.

She is now working in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company in a project to give deaf children better access to Shakespeare.

Research

The focus for Angie’s MPhil was the facilitation of oral communication skills in deaf children as recalled by young deaf adults (2003).

Other activities

Angie is the Secretary for the Midland Region’s British Association for Teachers of the Deaf committee.

Publications

Powers et al (1999) A Review of Good Practice in Deaf Education. RNID

O’Hanlon J. and Wootten A. (2007) Using Drama to teach Personal, Social and Emotional Skills. Sage Publications Ltd

Angie formed a collaboration with Black Sheep Press and devised a number of the resources designed to facilitate social interaction skills in children, through the use of role play.

View all publications in research portal