Research

I research in the field of poetry writing in education, creative literacy practices in schools and creative pedagogies.

Recent projects

My current project is Young Poets’ Stories, with Nottingham Trent University. We are investigating the impact of mentoring on your poets who have won prizes in the Foyle Young Poets competition.

Creative Toolkit: Societies and Cultures Development Fund (University of Exeter). Co-Investigator. (Current).

We Are the Possible: 12 Poems for 12 Days of COP28. Poetry: A Catalyst for Climate Action and Solutions: British Embassy – Gulf Strategy Fund. Co-Investigator. (2023).

CARE: Connecting Art with Real Life Issues: Erasmus+ (EU). Co-Investigator. (2021-2022).

Teachers as Writers: Arts Council England. Co-Investigator. (2015-2017).

Choice and Control: Improving writing through embedded attention to grammar: EEF. Co-Investigator. (2013). 

Poetry Matters Seminar Series: ESRC. Co-Investigator. (2010-2012).

The Write Team (Bath Festivals): Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Co-Investigator. (2010-2011).

PhD supervision

• Transformation through learning: An ethnographic case study of practices in a music-infused school.
• Enquiry into the enablers and barriers to health behaviour change through the use of narrative communication: The case for public health promotion in Nigeria.
• Saudi students’ attitudes and preferences towards using dictionaries for learning English.
• An investigation of the preparation of teachers for language teaching at primary level: Implications for an initial Language Teacher Education programme in line with the European framework.
• How does the Cornwall SCITT (school-centred initial teacher training) programme contribute to the development of creativity as part of teacher identity in pre-service teachers?
• The effect of change on teachers’ emotions and identity in a tertiary college in the Middle East.
• An Evaluative Study of Teaching Practice in the English Teacher Training Program at Rustaq College of Applied Sciences, Oman.
• The Teaching of Writing to Early Writers: A Comparative Study of Multimodal Classroom Practices amongst Teachers in Malaysia and England.
• Continuing Professional Development in Chinese Language Teachers in the UK: Crossing Boundaries and Transcending Limitations.
• Educating for Creativity in Narrative Writing: Constructing a Framework for Assessment and Feedback.

Selected publications

Dymoke, S., and Wilson, A., (2023). Introducing Young Poets’ Stories. Teaching English 31, 53-57.

Wilson, A., (2020). The reader, the text, the poem: the influence and challenge of Louise Rosenblatt. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 49, 79-95. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2020.1824704

Cremin, T., Myhill, D., Eyres, I., Wilson, A. C., Oliver, L., Nash, T. (2019). Teachers as writers: Learning together with others. Literacy, 54(2), 49-59. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12201

Wilson, A. C., and Dymoke, S. (2017). Towards a model of poetry writing development as a socially contextualised process. Journal of Writing Research, 9(2), 127-150. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2017.09.02.02

Myhill, D. A., Jones, S. & Wilson, A. C. (2016). Writing conversations: fostering metalinguistic discussion about writing. Research Papers in Education, 31(1), 23-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2016.1106694

Myhill, D. A. and Wilson, A. C. (2013). Teachers’ views of creativity in poetry writing. Thinking Skills and Creativity 10, 101-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2013.07.002

Wilson, A.C. (2013). A joyous lifeline in a target driven job: teachers’ metaphors describing poetry teaching. Cambridge Journal of Education, 43(1), 69-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2012.749217

Wilson, A. C. and Myhill, D. A. (2012). Ways with words: teachers’ personal epistemologies of the role of metalanguage in the teaching of poetry writing. Language and Education, 26(2), 553-568. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2012.669768

Wilson, A. C. (2010). Teachers’ conceptualisations of the intuitive and the intentional in poetry composition. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 9(3), 53-74.

Wilson, A. C. (2009). Creativity and Constraint: Developing as a Writer of Poetry. In Beard, R., Myhill, D., Nystrand, D., and Riley, J. (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Writing Development, pp. 387-401. London: Sage. 

Selected articles and reviews

With thanks to Rupert Loydell of Orbis, Ann and Peter Sansom at The North, and Joanna Cutts and Michael Laskey at Smiths Knoll for commissioning some of these pieces:

Sharon Olds’s The Matter of This World

Poetry Exhaustion

Seven Ways of Reading Gillian Allnutt

Worlds

Jo Shapcott’s Of Mutability

Sian Hughes and Cliff Yates

The Poets I go Back to

The Sniff of the Real: An Appreciation of Thom Gunn

Peter Carpenter, Peter Sansom, Mandy Coe and Hilary Menos

On DH Lawrence’s ‘Bare Almond Trees’

On Jaan Kaplinksi’s Evening Brings Everything Back