Our projects embrace children’s literature, education and English Language Teaching (ELT) research. Empowered language learners need a rich learning environment The group’s activities embrace researching children’s literature in language teaching, in-service and pre-service teacher education and multilingual/multicultural contexts with minority and indigenous perspectives. In this group, children’s literature refers to all formats, picturebooks, graphic novels, chapter novels, verse novels, poetry and digital texts, used in instructed contexts across educational levels.
The Nord Research Group for Children’s Literature in ELT (CLELT) group encompasses children's literature, education, and English Language Teaching (ELT) research, with a strong focus on interculturality, multilingualism, indigenous perspectives and social justice. We believe that empowered language learners thrive in a rich learning environment that fosters challenging reading, cognitive engagement, mental flexibility. Providing access to diverse children's literature, addressing global issues like sustainability and well-being can drive societal transformation. By strengthening local and international connections and enhancing our understanding of effective pedagogical approaches and quality research, children's literature can support children's agency today for transformative action tomorrow.
The Nord Research Group for Children’s Literature in ELT (CLELT) group encompasses children's literature, education, and English Language Teaching (ELT) research, with a strong focus on interculturality, multilingualism, indigenous perspectives and social justice. We believe that empowered language learners thrive in a rich learning environment that fosters challenging reading, cognitive engagement, mental flexibility. Providing access to diverse children's literature, addressing global issues like sustainability and well-being can drive societal transformation. By strengthening local and international connections and enhancing our understanding of effective pedagogical approaches and quality research, children's literature can support children's agency today for transformative action tomorrow.
The projects in this research group are positioned as dialogue between
- children’s literature educational research (litteraturdidaktikk),
- applied linguistics,
- language education psychology and English subject pedagogy (engelsk fagdidaktikk).
The aim of research group is to reposition and consolidate teacher education for English Language Teaching (ELT) as a fruitful combination of these four informing disciplines. Twenty-first century formats of children’s literature relevant for language education with 6–16-year-olds are frequently multimodal, which may be image-mediated (e.g. picturebooks, graphic novels), action-mediated (e.g. drama) or oral-aural (e.g. oral storytelling and performance poetry). Thus, the concept of ‘texts’ becomes ever more inclusive, as also stipulated by the Læreplan i engelsk (2013, p. 2): ‘Language learning occurs while encountering a diversity of texts, where the concept of text is used in the broadest sense of the word’.
The research group also aims to deepen both interdisciplinary and international connections for children’s literature in language teaching, for example, it is founding member of ARCLEN (Association for Research on Children’s Literature in English in Norway) and its members contribute to international conferences and publications on various aspects of children’s literature on a regular basis.
All projects in the CLELT research group are linked to educational activities. The NOTED and ERASMUS+ projects are anchored in pre-service and in-service teacher education: each year these projects will fund international student teacher exchanges. The innovative aspect of the NOTED project is to guide and enlist the support of dynamic student teachers together with their mentor teachers to strengthen the quality of English teaching and learning, in primary and secondary school (grades 1–10). The ERASMUS + project will prepare and deliver in-service teacher development of 1–7 teachers of English in five different European countries.
The Children’s Literature in English Language Education journal is dedicated to research in using children’s literature in English language educational settings.
Maria Nayr de Pinho Correia Ibrahim, leader of the Research Group
Ingrid Hekneby Braseth
Heidi Grosch
Chanice Sørlie Johansen (student member)
Anita Aune Nestvold
Charlotte Pannicke
Åse Marie Ommundsen
Anke Zondag
Active Research Projects
This is a university schools project funded by seed funds for 2024-2025. The main aim of this project is to encourage research-practice dialogue between pre-service and in-service teachers and thus strengthen the theory-practice connections in teacher education around the theme of multilingualism. The call for acknowledging and integrating multilingualism in classrooms is evident in LK20, yet there is still a need for educating pre- and in-service teachers about multilingualism and multilingual pedagogical approaches to shift perspectives and include more concrete pluralistic practices in language education. One of these pedagogical approaches is the concept of dominant language constellations (DLC) and DLC artefacts, that engage teachers and pupils in a creative, experiential and reflective process in identifying as multilingual. The project includes student teachers from Nord University, teacher and school pupils from Bankgata, creating their DLC artefacts/objects and reflecting on their language identity.
Project partners:
Nayr Ibrahim, Project leader
Bente Pettersen, teacher
Rebeca Marìn Barbero, teacher
Aleksandra Kalinowska, teacher
Vikki Helle Augestad, teacher / student teacher
Project partner representing University Schools: Hege Elisabeth EdvardsenThe EMPART pilot project (= Empowered participation in teaching practice) is funded by såkornmidler 2021–22. The project involves trilateral cooperation (Trekantsamarbeid) between the university school, Bankgata Ungdomsskole, Nord University Faculty of Education and Arts, and second year MAGLU student teachers with English specialization.
The focus of the project is to create and trial a window for reciprocal preparation, mentoring, supervision, and discussion of students’ teaching practice that involves the different stakeholders – school mentoring teachers, university supervisor and student teachers (and ultimately also the school students).
Project partners:
Janice Bland, Nord University
Ruta Andreassen, Bankgata skole
Remi Antonsen, Bankgata skole
Katrine Lekang Eiterjord, Bankgata skole
Research Projects – closed projects
The project was led by Janice Bland, Nord University, and was funded by NOTED for 2020-2024.
The aim of the four-year NOTED project was to establish outstanding cooperation on English language and literature learning in teacher education programmes in the Faculty of Education and Arts, Nord University, Norway, and the School of Education, Bishop’s University, Québec, Canada. Despite the ubiquity of English in the environment of these countries, the educational focus of English for in-depth learning needs to be strengthened. The project intends to develop the study of English as a window of opportunity for creative language and literature education – deep reading for in-depth learning – and to achieve a steadfast development towards an international orientation in the subject.
Project website: English Language and Literature – In-Depth Learning – Nord University, Norway & Bishop's University, Québec, Canada
Project partners:
Nayr Ibrahim, Nord University
David Valente, Nord University
Sunny Man Chu Lau (local project manager), Bishop’s University, Québec, Canada
Wendy King, Bishop’s University, Québec, Canada
Project partner representing internationalization: Charlotta Maria Langejan, Nord University
Financial administrator: Sunniva Svendsen, Nord UniversityThe project is led by Sandie Mourão, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal, and funded by Erasmus+ for 2019-2022
The main aim of this three-year ERASMUS + project, which focused on innovation in the Higher Education and School Education Sectors, was to strengthen the profile of the teaching profession through the development of practitioner competencies to confidently integrate intercultural citizenship education (ICE) into early EFL education. The target group was the school community – practitioners (teachers of English, teacher librarians, student teachers), children aged 5 to 12 years, and teacher educators. This project was awarded the European Language Label in Portugal and Italy and received the ELTons Award for Innovation in Teacher Resources. It also received a Commendation for young learner courses and materials.
Project website: Icepell
Project partners:
Nayr Ibrahim, Nord University, local project manager
David Valente, Nord University
Tatia Gruenbaum, Avans University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
Carmen Becker, Braunschweig University, Germany
Silvana Rampone, USR (Regional Education Office), Piemonte
APPI (Associação Portuguesa de Professores de Inglês), PortugalProject partner representing University Schools: Hege Elisabeth Edvardsen, Nord University
Financial administrator: Sunniva Svendsen, Nord University
PhD projects
Research fellow: David Valente
My project aims to investigate expectations of in-service teacher education for English teachers and the related classroom impact for learners in grades 5–7. This relates to the emphasis throughout Europe on interdisciplinary curriculum topics in critical thinking, diversity, citizenship and intercultural learning. Such topics require deep learning and the enhancement of teachers’ abilities to recognize and enable this. The project will investigate in-service teacher education in two parallel contexts: Nord University, Norway and Nova University, Portugal, framed according to how the programmes impact English teachers’ and learners’ mediation of children’s literature for its intercultural learning affordances.
Research fellow: Anke Zondag
This project investigates the potential of applying drama-based methods for English spontaneous speech practice.
Anke Zondag examines the influence of improvisation activities on the speaking confidence of EFL student teachers. After reflecting on their own improvisation experience at university level, student teachers tried out some improvisation activities in their school practice. The student teachers’ experiences in the university classroom and school practicum are studied for patterns.
Throughout the project, the phenomenon reluctant speaker is given special attention.
Associations
ELLRA (Early Language Learning Research Association) is an international network of researchers in early language (focused on learners aged 3–12 years). ELLRA’s goal is to encourage a comprehensive agenda for research in the field of early language learning and to create synergies across research areas concerned with young children learning additional languages in school and pre-school contexts worldwide. The ELLRA executive committee includes two CLELT members, Dr. Nayr Ibrahim as Treasurer and PhD fellow, David Valente as Communications Director.
Association website: About • ELLRA • Early Language Learning Research Association
ARCLEN (Association for Research on Children’s Literature in English in Norway) is a national association that is dedicated to innovative research in and pedagogical practices of children’s and young adult literature in English in Norway. The association was set up in 2024 by a group of researchers from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Jade Dillon Graig), Nord University (Nayr Ibrahim), Oslo Metropolitan University (Sissil Lea Heggernes) and the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Jena Habergger-Conti). The aim is to create a community of scholars and educators with an interest in exploring children’s and young adult literature through a critical, pedagogical and collaborative lens.
Association website: ARCLEN – Research – Department of Teacher Education - NTNU
Other activities
Project commenced in 2013, open-ended
Editor-in-chief: Janice Bland, Nord University, Norway.
Funded by Nord University (2017-2025) and University of Munich, Germany, and now Zurich University of Teacher Education, Switzerland.
Nayr Ibrahim is on the editorial board, which is made up of 30 peer reviewers from five continents. http://clelejournal.org/review-board/This is a no-fee peer-reviewed open access biannual journal. Articles have been published from over 20 different countries. The topics have encompassed:
- visual literacy
- critical literacy
- intercultural competence and ideology issues
- reader-response theory
- gender and diversity issues
- the canon of literary texts for ELT
- literary language play and children’s creative writing
- teacher education, methodologies and materials design.
The most commonly discussed literary format is the picturebook, followed by young adult literature, poetry, graphic novels, drama, chapter books, films and storyapps.
Journal website: http://clelejournal.org/
Funded by Nord University and Dekom (decentralized competence development scheme).
CyberBridge is a fusion of innovative iOS technology and educational techniques utilizing readily available, low cost production methods distributed through social media in order to create daily, accessible content for grade 1-10 teachers: Our 3 to 5-minute YouTube and Facebook episodes include songs, rhymes and games; grammar; ways to use literature in the classroom; and English across the curriculum.
This project is cross-campus, cross generational, cross-curricular as well as a two-way collaboration between schools and the university. The primary objective of this project is that digital learning goes both ways, and teachers and students actively contribute their ideas to fulfill the project’s mission statement that ‘you are never too old to learn, and never too young to teach’.
Project partners:
Heidi Haavan Grosch, program host, Nord University
Steven Williams, program host, Nord University
Greg Curda, technical consultant, Nord University
Camtimul, student-run technical crew
