Informing literacy research through an exploration of teachers’ and students' attitudes to reading and writing and their experiences of reading and writing interventions.

Within NUI Maynooth, staff of the Education Department, the Centre for Teaching and Learning and the Writing Centre, in their separate and distinct roles, collectively identified concerns around literacy in second and third level education. In an attempt to contribute to the national discussion on literacy, and in the context of the publication of the Irish national literacy and numeracy strategy, ‘Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life – The National Strategy to Improve Literacy and Numeracy among Children and young people – 2011-2020’, this group began a process to derive a clear research question around literacy in contemporary Ireland. The question would draw on the group’s own belief that discovering more about the attitudes, experiences and motivations that students and teachers have with regards reading and writing, while being interesting in and of itself, might go some way to contributing to the design of effective interventions for the improvement of reading and writing. With this in mind, the researchers surveyed approximately 150 primary and post-primary teachers enrolled on the Postgraduate Diploma in Educational Leadership (Toraiocht) – in NUI Maynooth. Participants were asked about their reading and writing dispositions; the range and quantity of their reading and writing both in work and outside of work; their views on current supports for reading and writing; their opinions on the sorts of writing problems that they encounter in students’ work; their views on the importance of writing for lifelong learning, work, citizenship, quality of life etc; and their ideas around what might be done to improve literacy levels. In this paper we will present findings from this survey with specific reference to two items: the fact that the survey participants, while teachers, are also third level students; as such they can offer a unique insight into literacy issues from both perspectives; the connections between the issues that these teachers are observing in their educational settings and those that colleagues are reporting in higher education; this facet of the research will be explored with reference to the topic of transfer i.e. what literacy skills do students bring with them, particularly from second level, that they can employ in third level.