Rebecca Simpson-Hargreaves

Starting out as a Primary School teacher in Greater Manchester, I moved into lecturing at the University in Initial Teacher Education in 2013. Over the course of time my role has developed beyond this to being unit director for the Early Years Education module for the MA International Education course and co-lead the Classroom Communication and Learning module for BSc Education students. 

My research is centred children's literature, in particular using picturebooks for promoting child voice and gathering perspectives around human rights values. I have also conducted research in developing pedagogical methods for developing global citizenship awareness through the use of picturebooks and Philosophy4Children. I am currently working towards developing a research project that focuses on how we can help children celebrate their rich cultural heritages through poetry and local, regional, international accents and home vocabularly. 

I have a passion for finding historical or lesser known forms of poetry and using them in conference workshops to develop participants' understanding and teaching of poetry for students. I have had several children's poems published on the poetry website https://dirigibleballoon.org/.

Constantly striving to ensure high quality literacy education for children, I engage with policy makers, as well as forge valuable researcher and practitioner partnerships. Working together I believe we can move forward with a well-rounded and transparent understanding of how to inspire a love of learning in children for generations to come.

I am a trustee and member of the Executive Council for the United Kingdom Literacy Association.