Summer research in School of Education
Research experience in evidence base for spelling teaching practice
Research experience in evidence base for spelling teaching practice
Project
Spelling it right: Building an evidence base for spelling teaching across educational settings
Research lead
Dr Georgia Niolaki
Research objective
This project addresses a significant gap in the evidence base for spelling teaching practice across educational settings. Spelling is a core transcription skill underpinning writing quality and academic achievement at every level; yet how it is taught varies enormously across primary, secondary, and FE/HE contexts, countries, and orthographies. The British Dyslexia Association (2025) reports that 77% of dyslexics identify spelling as a key difficulty, and the UK Delphi definition of dyslexia (Carroll et al., 2025) confirms it as a significant barrier to learning. Despite this, no consolidated, cross-setting account of spelling teaching practice currently exists.
In direct alignment with the University of Birmingham's commitment to uniting education and research, and to building an evidence base that informs practice beyond individual programmes, this project will produce a systematic literature review of spelling teaching practices across countries, cultures and educational settings.
Research pre-requisites
Access to bibliography
Research experience in department of disability, inclusion and special needs
Research experience in department of disability, inclusion and special needs
Project
Supporting language skills of multilingual children on the autism spectrum
Research lead
Dr Prithvi Perepa
Research objective
This project is focusing on understanding the strategies that teachers in the UK use to support the language development of multilingual children on the autism spectrum in their home language. While there is substantial research on language development in children on the autism spectrum, there has been less focus on how this is facilitated within an educational context. Therefore, this project aims to undertake a small-scale study to understand how children's home language is supported or encouraged in mainstream and special school settings.
The students involved in this project will be engaged in all stages of the research project, for example undertaking a literature review, gathering questionnaire data and analysing it. If you are not familiar with qualitative data analysis, then you will be provided some guidance in thematic analysis. If the research is published, you will be named as co-authors. By the end of the research programme you will develop basic understanding of how small-scale research projects are conducted in the field of education.
Research pre-requisites
Some basic understanding of autism is essential.