Skip to content

Dr Ben Screech

Lecturer in Primary English

Staff profile picture fallback silhouette
I am passionate about supporting ITE students to reach their potential as innovative and dynamic teachers of English.

Biography

Before joining the University of Gloucestershire, I taught in various primary schools in my home city of Bristol. I have also been an SEND teacher and a youth worker for a charity promoting community inclusion for young people with emotional and behavioural challenges. As a primary English specialist, my main area of interest in terms of teaching and research is children’s and young-adult literature. I am particularly interested in children’s emotional responses to fiction and how primary teachers can support, encourage and engage with reader-response in the classroom. I lead the Cheltenham ‘Reading Teachers, Reading Pupils’ (RTRP) group, in conjunction with the Open University and the Cheltenham Festival, and am also on the RTRP book selection panel.

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons): English, University of the West of England, 2008
  • MA: English, University of the West of England, 2009
  • PGCE: Primary Education, University of the West of England, 2010
  • PhD: Reading Otherness in British Fiction for Young People, 2001 – 2012, University of the West of England, 2018

Awards

2015 Santander Travel Award

2018 – ‘Best Paper in Section’ Award – CEA annual conference, St Petersburg, Florida

Teaching & Research

Teaching

Although predominantly a teacher trainer teaching core English and literacy-based specialist modules on the B.Ed pathway, I also teach children’s literature modules on the Education Studies degree and the Masters Degree in Education. I also supervise PhD students.

Research

My research is predominantly focused on ‘othered’, marginalised and excluded young people, and their representations in contemporary culture – particularly in children’s literature and film. My current post-graduate teaching and research in this area centres on depictions of young people with mental illnesses in YA fiction. I am also interested in how childhood as a ‘site’ of emerging identity is conceived of in late twentieth-century British poetry. With this in mind, I am currently working on an extended study exploring childhood to adulthood transitions in the work of the late Gloucestershire-based poet U.A. Fanthorpe.

Publications

More publications from Dr Ben Screech can be found in the Research Repository.

External responsibilities

Subject for media interview

Children's and YA Literature Reader-Response Social and emotional literacy skills