Staff Profiles

• Language Teacher development on the TESOL pathway through the MA, and TESOL leadership role.
• Reflective Professional Development and academic literacies across all MA Education pathways. 
• Writing for Academic practice and supervision on EdD programme.
• PhD supervision of doctrate students within the fields of language education.
• Creative writing and methodology modules on the BA in English and English Language and Communication

Research interests

1. Action research in teacher development and teacher education
2. Teacher narratives and reflective practice
3. Internationalisation of the curriculum and the international University
4. Higher education pedagogies and M-levelness
5. Creativity in the language curriculum: story, narrative, poetry and text development

Research projects

Research and consultancy projects

• 2007 Transitions and Transformations ï¿½ a project exploring creativity in the language arts and education � with Open University and Nottingham University (AHRC funded)
• 2007- 2008 Student Voices project; student experience of the international University (BSLE funded)
• 2008- 2009 Educated outside UK: international students� experience of UK study (BSLE funded)
• 2009- 2011 Reflective practice in MA level study (Teaching Fellowship funded)
• 2011  Reflective practice across disciplines/Reflective practice in Applied Linguistics (jointly funded by Cambridge University Press, British Association of Applied Linguistics and National Teaching Fellowship)
• 2011- 2012 ESRC project Poetry Matters participant with Universities of Exeter, Leicester and Greenwich

Books

• Crisfeld E, Spiro J, Linguistic and Cultural Innovation in Schools: The Languages Challenge, Palgrave Macmillan (2018)
  ISBN: 9783319643816 eISBN: 9783319643823
  Abstract This book presents case studies of five schools engaged in radical change in order to engage with children’s home languages and cultures in a more multilingual and inclusive way. Located around the globe, from Hawaii to Kenya, the case studies are informed by both researchers and professionals on the ground. While the schools in question are each anchored in a unique context and situation, they also have a common mission to see language diversity as a resource, and a responsibility to embrace all the languages of their pupils. The authors offer a rich resource for education professionals and policymakers, including not only theoretical insights but useful practical tips. This innovative volume will be a helpful resource for educational professionals interested in following a path of multilingualism as well as students and scholars of second language acquisition, heritage languages and cultures and multilingual educational policy.Website 
• Spiro, J. and Crisfield, E. , Linguistics and Cultural Innovation in Schools: the languages challenge, Palgrave Macmillan (2018)
  ISBN: 9783319643816 eISBN: 9783319643823
  Abstract

  This book presents case studies of five schools engaged in radical change in order to engage with children’s home languages and cultures in a more multilingual and inclusive way. Located around the globe, from Hawaii to Kenya, the case studies are informed by both researchers and professionals on the ground. While the schools in question are each anchored in a unique context and situation, they also have a common mission to see language diversity as a resource, and a responsibility to embrace all the languages of their pupils. The authors offer a rich resource for education professionals and policymakers, including not only theoretical insights but useful practical tips. This innovative volume will be a helpful resource for educational professionals interested in following a path of multilingualism as well as students and scholars of second language acquisition, heritage languages and cultures and multilingual educational policy. -- Provided by publisher.
  

  Website 
• Spiro J, Changing Methodologies in TESOL, Edinburgh University Press (2013)
  ISBN: 978-0-7486-4619-7 eISBN: 978-0-7486-7764
  

Journal articles

• Dr Carol Brown, Dr Jane Spiro, Dr Sarah Quinton, 'The Role of Research Ethics Committees: Friend or Foe in Educational Research?'
  British Educational Research Journal 46 (4) (2020) pp.747-769
  ISSN: 0141-1926 eISSN: 1469-3518
  Abstract

  Ethics committees have an important role to play in ensuring ethical standards (e.g. BERA, ESRC, RCUK recommendations) are met by educational researchers. Balancing obligations to participants, society, institutions and the researchers themselves is not, however, easy.  Researchers often experience the Ethics committee as unsympathetic to their research endeavour, whilst Ethics committees find some research approaches do not make ethical implications sufficiently explicit. This potential for misunderstanding is evident in the literature; but studies investigating how participants perceive this relationship is missing. 
  

  This study comprises a novel empirical study which explores researcher perceptions of research ethics committees. Fifty-five participants in Higher Education departments of Education responded to an online survey. Open and closed ended questions were used to collect data on roles, methodological stance, experiences of the research ethics committee, perceived tensions and examples of good practice. 
  

  The results indicated that contemporary educational researchers regard research ethics committees as friends when researcher and reviewer are transparently engaged in a shared endeavour. When this shared endeavour breaks down, for a variety of reasons including apparently unreasonable demands or mutual misunderstanding, the research ethics committees can become foe.  The difference between foe and friend lies in the quality of communication, clear systems and a culture of respectful mutual learning.
  

  The contributions of this study have practical implications for the ways that education researchers and research ethics committees relate to one another within university settings, both to alleviate areas of tension and to arrive at shared understanding which will enable best ethical research practice. 

  Website 
• Spiro J, 'Becoming whole: bringing the land back into the curriculum'
  English as an Additional Language Journal 2 (2017) pp.16-
  ISSN: 2398-8533
  Website 
• Dymoke S, Spiro J, 'Poet-Academics and Academic-Poets: writing identities, practices and experiences within the academy'
  Writing in Education 3 (2017)
  eISSN: 1361-8539
  Abstract This paper reports on a pilot project which investigates the writing identity construction, writing practices and experiences of 17 authors from varied subject disciplines in higher education, whose publications include poetry and academic writing. We have defined the writers as poet-academics or academic-poets according to their perceptions of place of comfort, default position or natural “go-to” place as a writer. We consider the writing practices and experiences of both groups: poet-academics who see their primary writing as poetry (but who also write academic research and other prose forms) and academic-poets who view their primary writing as academic research (but who also write and publish poetry). Given that these two groups have different writing priorities and write from different generic starting points, we question how such authors construct their identities as writers within the Academy and consider if and how they experience these different writing selves as a separation. We explore the contrasting writing challenges, pressures and pleasures apparent in these two domains, reflect on synergies in practice and point to potential implications for research accountability, writing, mentoring and professional development within institutions.
  
  Keywords: academic identity, communities of practice, poetry identity, writing identity, writing poetry, writing practicesWebsite 
• Spiro J, Butcher D, Greenway K, Twissell A, 'Paving the way: creating space for the doctoral journey'
  Educational Journal of Living Theories 8 (3) (2015) pp.75-94
  ISSN: 2009-1788
  Abstract When I was a doctoral student, I recognized a transformation in both perception and experience, from doctoral journey as compliance and imposition to doctoral journey as empowerment. It enabled me to clarify my values and understand how these are lived in practice, as an educatorresearcher-writer. ‘Creating space’ emerged as a founding principle that connected these different roles and provided congruence between them. In becoming a doctorate supervisor myself, my concern was how to offer ‘creative space’ for others to clarify their own values in a cycle of self-discovery and empowerment. My wish was that others too might experience the doctoral journey as a means of finding a voice and extending it to a wider audience. In this paper I share the process of transforming my own journey into a pathway for others, through the founding principle of ‘creating space’, and demonstrate what this means in practice through co-authorship with doctoral students who were part of my doctoral writing programme.
• Spiro J, 'Writing the self: creative writing and the search for authenticity'
  Humanising Language Teaching 17 (2) (2015)
  ISSN: 1755-9715
  Website 
• Spiro J, 'We are what we read: personal reading histories and the shaping of the teacher'
  European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL 3 (2) (2014) pp.107-126
  ISSN: 2192-1032
  
• Spiro J, 'Learning Interconnectedness: internationalisation through engagement with one another'
  Higher Education Quarterly 68 (1) (2014)
  ISSN: 0951-5224 eISSN: 1468-2273
  Website 
• Spiro J, 'The reflective continuum: reflecting for change and student response to reflective tasks'
  Brookes eJournal of Learning and Teaching 5 (2) (2013)
  ISSN: 1744-7747
  Abstract This paper emerged in response to the author’s frequent teaching encounters with students across subject disciplines, who expressed confusion when confronted with the request to be ‘reflective’ in their written assignments.  Amongst the confusions voiced by them, was how far ‘reflective writing’ gave them permission to make themselves visible personally in their writing. Yet content and linguistic choices are less significant than the learning which underlies them.  The study described here asks:  how did students respond to the invitation to be ‘reflective’ and what did this reveal about their understandings of the term?  Does the systematic development of reflective writing actually develop the capacity to reflect?  It will attempt to answer these questions by considering how one cohort of student teachers, engaged in a teacher development programme, responded to a reflective task at the start of a period of study, and at the end.   The cohort included both domestic and international students, so it is also possible tentatively to suggest patterns of response that might differentiate between these two groups.  Whilst this study is specific to a particular student group, the research questions invite us to consider how far perceptions change as an outcome of higher education study. The study also causes us to review our assumptions about students from domestic and international backgrounds, and to consider what is, or is not, valued in their experience of higher education.
  
• Spiro J, Macdonald M, 'Assessing culture, assessing creativity: assessment as development'
  Teaching, Evaluation and Assessment (2013)
  ISSN: 1814-697 eISSN: to be confirmed
  
• Spiro J, 'Independent learning crossing cultures: learning cultures and shifting meanings'
  Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 42 (4) (2012) pp.607-620
  ISSN: 0305-7925
  Website 
• Spiro J, 'Guided interaction as intercultural learning: designing internationalisation into a mixed delivery teacher education programme'
  Higher Education Research & Development 30 (5) (2011) pp.635-646
  ISSN: 0729-4360
  Abstract In this paper the process of building an international student community is explored. Strategies discussed include guided interaction within a virtual environment between home students studying in their own culture and international students studying at a distance. The context includes both the state and private sector in South East Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. The subject is a Master of Arts in Education for practising in-service teachers of English. Through exchanging teacher narratives, students identify shared concerns and values about their profession and recognise connections with their peers in apparently widely different cultural settings. Student and tutor evaluations suggest that participants developed the competence of recognising connections between their own meanings and behaviours and those of others. They also deconstructed their assumptions and unexamined beliefs through engagement with others. The paper concludes by analysing how these competences impacted on the self-knowledge and practice of the participants, and suggests the generative principles which made this learning effective.Website 
• Millar J, Davis S, Rollin H, Spiro J, 'Engaging Feedback?'
  Brookes eJournal of Learning and Teaching (2010)
  ISSN: 1744-7747
  Website 
• Spiro J, 'Creating space: where I stand'
  Educational Journal of Living Theories 2 (1) (2009) pp.140-171
  ISSN: 2009-1788
  Website 
• Spiro J, Henderson J, 'Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) at Brookes? where is it? what is it? why does it matter?'
  Brookes eJournal of Learning and Teaching 2 (2) (2007)
  ISSN: 1744-7747
  

Book chapters

• Spiro, J., 'Found in Translation' in Alan Maley (ed.), Developing expertise through experience, British Council (2019)
  ISBN: 9780863559501
  Website 
• Spiro J, 'Researching in your own voice: Making the research leap' in D. Xerri and C. Pioquinto (ed.), Becoming research literate: Supporting teacher research in English language teaching, English Teachers Association, Switzerland (2018)
  ISBN: 9783033069619
  Abstract

  This article suggests teachers move through stages of alienation, social acculturation, and ownership as they become research writers. This view is verified by 50 teachers who perceived research writing as less authentic than professional writing. This article describes a writing programme scaffolding the writing leap from alienation to ownership.

  Website 
• Spiro J, 'Foreword: Creativity in English Language Teaching' in D. Xerri and O. Vassallo (ed.), Creativity in English Language Teaching, ELT Council (2016)
  ISBN: 978-99957-1-000-2
  
• Nixon J, Buckley A, Cheng A, Dymoke S, Spiro J, Vincent J, 'The 'questionableness' of things: opening up the conversation' in McNiff J (ed.), Values and Virtues in Higher Education Research, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 978-1-138-91682-1
  Website 
• Spiro J, Dymoke S, 'Translating writing worlds: writing as a poet, writing as an academic' in Jones R H, Richards J C (ed.), Creativity in Language Teaching, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 9781138843653
  Website 
• Spiro J, 'Second language readers and first encounters with Shakespeare: reader strategies and negotiating the new' in Paran A (ed.), Researching Shakespeare as a Second Literature, Multilingual Matters (2016)
  
• Spiro, J. and Dymoke, S. , 'Translating Writing Words: writing as a poet, writing as an academic  ' in Jones, R.H. and Richards, J.C. (eds.)   (ed.), Creativity in Language Teaching, Routledge (2015)
  ISBN: 9781315730936 eISBN: 9781315730936
  Abstract

  As writers move between poetry and writing in and for their subject disciplines, it is interesting to ask whether the adaptations they make are mainly ones of language and discourse or whether they reflect something fundamental about the selves they are revealing. This chapter considers the way these writers adapt their message as they cross from one community to the other and the different aspects of themselves they choose to express with each audience. As each writer shares aspects of their writing history, people can able to ask why, how, and at what personal or professional cost they traverse the two writing worlds and what is lost or gained in translation between the two. The chapter addresses the links between discourse-level choices and core identity as a writer by sharing the reflective testimonies of seventeen writers who are both poets and academic writers across multiple subject disciplines, including history, social studies, lexicography, botany, creative arts, technology, and English literature.
  

  Website 
• Spiro J, 'Learner and writer voices: learners as writers and the search for authorial voice' in Disney D. (ed.), Exploring Second Language Creative Writing: Beyond Babel, John Benjamins (2014)
  ISBN: 9789027234087 eISBN: 9789027270351
  
• Spiro J, 'Kinds of International: internationalisation through engagement with one another' in Bilham T (ed.), For the Love of Learning, Palgrave Teaching and Learning (2013)
  ISBN: 978-1-137-33429-9
  Abstract This essay is written from the perspective of a Higher Education (HE) educator who, for 30 years, has been passionate about the notion of students as international participants, long before the rhetoric of ‘internationalisation’ entered University mission statements.  It aims to tell the story of how the landscape of higher education has gradually transformed in its response to international students, illustrating the way in which this impacted on learning and teaching.
   
  ‘International’ is here deemed to describe students studying in an HE context that differs from their pre-University education, and is thus likely to be in a second language or culture.  I shall illustrate a shift in view of the international student as economic resource, to a view of the whole University as an international environment committed to mutual listening and learning from one another.  What this means in concrete terms will be illustrated by four projects conducted in a post-1992 University, in which home and international staff and students became equal participants in learning from one another. The projects offer a template for developing mutual learning opportunities that can be adapted to any subject discipline or teaching context.  
  
• Spiro J, 'Crossing the bridge from appreciative reading to reflective writer: the assessment of creative process' in Testing the untestable in language education, Clevedon (2010)
  ISBN: 9781847692658
  

Reviews

• Spiro, J., review of Arting and Writing to Transform Education: An Integrated Approach for Culturally and Ecologically Responsive Pedagogy [ISBN: 9781845536558] / by Meleanna Aluli Meyer, Mikilani Hayes Maeshiro and Anna Yoshie Sumida., in Children's Literature in English Language Education 7 (2) (2019) pp.6-9ISSN: 2195-5212
  Website 
• Spiro J, review of Creativity (2018) / by A. Maley and T. Kiss., in ELT Journal 73 (1) (2018) pp.98-100ISSN: 0951-0893 eISSN: 1477-4526
  Website 
• Spiro J, review of Teaching English Worldwide, in ELT Journal 70 (3) (2016) pp.360-362ISSN: 0951-0893
  Website 

Conferences

Recent conference papers

• Learners, changing, teachers changing: changing methodologies:  Harrogate IATEFL April 2014
• Learning Interconnectedness:  HEA conference Bringing Graduate Attributes to Life   November 2013  Oxford Brookes University 
• Teacher stories:  March 2013  Worldwide webinar  Oxford,  Oxford University Press 
• Creativity and language play  Worldwide webinar  Oxford University Press March 2012
• Reading from the Inside  Poster presentation ESRC Poetry Matters Seminar University of Leicester September 2011
• Creativity in the Language curriculum   Oxford University Press Teacher Development day, Zagreb, Croatia   December 2010
• Embedding e-learning into programme design  HEA University of Newcastle December 2010
• Developing online learning communities  University of Northumbria HEA Evidence-based seminar  March 2010
• Story writing as a learning resource at the University of Stockholm, Sweden November 2009

Other experience

Her previous posts include: Senior Lecturer in International Education at the College of St. Mark and St. John; Assistant Director of Studies at Janus Pannonius University, Hungary; co-ordinator of the English Language Centre at Nottingham University; course manager of Cambridge Diploma in English Language Teaching for Adults (DELTA) in Switzerland. She has been consultant on government , Oxford University Press and British Council projects in materials writing, test writing, curriculum development and creative writing in India, Japan, China, Malaysia, Kenya and Sri Lanka; UK Co-ordinator for a European Language Testing Consortium and co-editor of the journal Reading in a Foreign Language.

She has also been presenter and writer of interfaith programmes for Carlton and West Country Television. She is the author of Creative Poetry Writing (2004) and Storybuilding (2007) with Oxford University Press and is currently writing a core book for the development of teachers of English worldwide with Edinburgh University Press.  She  is a published poet and novelist with a research/teaching commitment to the connections between creative practitioner and educator.

Her PhD on this subject was completed in 2008 and published in full online by the University of Bath.

Further information

Former keynote papers in the field of creative language education

• MICELT Malaysia (2004, 2005)
• Oxford University Press Teachers Conference Helsinki, Finland (2004)
• British Council at Oxford University (2004)
• Intercollege conference in Nicosia, Cyprus (2003)
• TESOL Conference Paris, France (2003)