Dr Helen Hendry

Professional biography

My research interests include early years and primary literacy, particulalry reading for pleasure and play-based learning with a focus on iniital teacher education and professional development in these areas.I am Co-direactor of the Centre for Literacy and Social Justice and have recently  completed a 3 year (Mercers' Company) funded project exploring promoting reading and writing for pleasure through extra curricular programmes for disadvantaged pupils leading to a new framework for practice. The next phase (2024-28) centres on the role of talk in reading and writing for pleasure in Literacy programmes for 5-16 year olds. Alongside this I have recenly completed a study of informal book talk with early years and KS1 practitioners, and am currently researching the experiences of student teachers as readers and as RfP ambassadors with their peers in ITE.I gained my PhD in October 2016. My doctoral study focused on the development of student teachers’ and newly qualified teachers’ knowledge and practice for teaching early reading. This was influenced by a cultural historical activity theory perspective on learning and considered tensions between policy and practice experienced by trainee teachers as well as challenges presented by the history of debate about teaching early reading. 

I am involved in research and partnerships around improving access to training for early childhood educators in lower income countries as well as co-creation and mentoring in UK ITE. I have conducted UK Government funded research into expert consensus for the training of ECD cadres at scale in collaboration with an international team of early years researchers as well as contributing to a mapping study of UNICEF interventions in South Asia in connection with the pre-primary framework areas.  I have completed a case study of play-based pedagogy as an approach to support tranisition and inclusion in Year 1 and acted as a co-invetogator for a baseline evaluation of a play-based learning initiative in Primary schools in Ghana. I also led an internally funded reseaarch and scholarship project establishing a model for module co-creation with Masters in Education students which has influenced current practice at the OU.

Drawing on my passion for developing EY practitioners' expertise I led a funded exploration of ECD practitioner training needs in South Africa and Kenya and created a proposed framework for an innovative approach to training for marginalised EY practitioners in low-resource contexts with partners in these countries. This has now been recognised as part of the Open Societal Challenges initiative and we are working together to seek funding to pilot this programme with practitioners.

I  am a Senior Lecturer on the Education Studies (Primary) programme, with a specific focus on E309 Comparative and international education as well as equality, diversity and inclusion, employability and student voice across the programme. I am currently leading production of a new edition of an Education Studies Core modlule 'Learning and Teaching in the Primary Years', supporting the work of seven academic authors, liasing with a wide range of OU teams and an external AV team ensuring key current issues in education are addressed, including well-being and sustainability, integrating support for students' study skills, enhancing representation and diversity in module materials and increased interactivity in module content.

Previously, I worked with the Masters academic team on the Inclusive Practice pathway and chaired the EE812 Educational Leadership and Management module.This involved working with the team to support students and associate lecturers, planning for new developments and developing new online content. I have also worked with other team members on  Personal Development Planning and reflective practice activities for students linked to Master’s module developments and contributed to new developments on the E822 multi-disciplinary dissertation module. Before joining the OU, I developed a Masters programme in Children’s Literature and Literacies in collaboration with colleagues from English, Education Studies, Early Childhood Studies and BA Primary QTS and the Library. I have collaborated on the design and authoring of free to access online professional development materials including 'Professional development for inclusive education' for teachers in low resource contexts as well as a badged online course 'Developing reading for pleasure: engaging young readers'  available on OpenLearn.

I have been a member of the United Kingdom Literacy Association for many years and have been involved in their digital literacy SIG and student shadowing of the UKLA book awards. I am currently part of the ITE SIG working with other HEIs and I also lead an OU UKLA collaboration to support early career teachers with developing Reading for Pleasure.These Student RfP ambassadors are spearheading bespoke activities in their teaching programmes with the support of the OU/ UKLA team and their HEI tutors. Over the last 3 years this initiative has supported over 40 cohorts of students on UK ITE programmes.

In 2020, I began working with Professor Teresa Cremin and colleagues from the Reading Agency to design the 'Teachers Reading Challenge' including a website and series of resources to support teachers, and others working with children and young people to enrich their knowledge of contemporary children's literature, and continue to support this inititiative with new content and developments. This initiative continues to develop and has now reached over 6,000 educators. I am one of the leaders of  the year long OU 'Reading Schools' whole school improvement programme for Primary English Leaders and school staff with OU colleagues. This transformative programme shows an impact on reading engagement and reading attainment for pupils who have previously not enjoyed reading.  

I am a member of ECDAN (Early childhood development action network) and I also convened an informal research netweork of Early Childhood researchers between The Open Unievrsity and the University of Sheffield for 3 years. I was an affiliated Fellow of the Lincoln Higher Education Research Institute. Through this membership, I worked with the National Collaborative Outreach Programme in the East Midlands to provide Year 12 students with experience of research in Higher Education and near-peer mentoring from undergraduate students.

I have collaborated on research into training for Early Childhood Development cadres for the UK Department for International Development with colleagues from the University of Hong Kong, McGill University, Canada, University College London and the University of Nebraska College of Public Health. This involved canvassing the opinions of 14 global experts comprising wide experience and expertise related to ECD cadres training. The panel included individuals with extensive front-line experience in training ECD cadres across diverse, low-resource contexts spanning the world regions, including East, Central, South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific; Central, Eastern and Southern Africa, and South America. Experts occupied senior leadership positions across leading international non-governmental organisations and academic institutions and / or contribute to global policy setting via membership of key steering committees. I have also liaised with frontline staff from UNICEF regional offices in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, as part of a mapping study of pre-primary interventions for UNICEF. I recently gained OU funding to bring together academics, policy makers and policy influencers in ECD for a knowledge exchange summit. This 2 day event connected research with policy direction and enabled forward planning for potential new developments in ECD practitioner training in lower income countries.I have facilitated the TESSA MOOC with teacher educators in Africa andI developed online Inclusive teacher education modules for teachers in Kenya with OU colleagues and the Commonwealth of Learning. In 2020-21 I led a research and development project with the support of SAIDE in South Africa and SAPCONE in Kenya, to create a research-informed proposed framework for multi-sectoral ECD practictioner skills-focused professional development as well as working closely with colleagues from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana on a baseline evaluation of a play-based approach to learning in the primary phase. I continue to work in partnership with SAIDE and colleagues in Turkana, Kenya to share these ideas with others and progress towards making this resaerch led programme into a flexible, sustainable, open access professional development resource for use by training providers and multi-sectoral practitioners in Sub-Saharan Africa.