Sarah Critten

Sarah completed her BSc in Psychology (with first class honours) at the University of Hertfordshire in July 2003 and then worked as a graduate Research Assistant in the Psychology Department until September 2004. She then completed a PhD in the area of children’s implicit and explicit spelling development in July 2008. After lecturing at UH for a year she joined Oxford Brookes University as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in October 2009. This Leverhulme Trust-funded project (Project leaders: Vince Connelly, Julie Dockrell) examined the relationship between oral and written language in children with Specific Language Impairment and also involved the development of objective assessments for children’s writing. Follow-on funding from the ESRC enabled a series of workshops with project partners to explore issues of assessing writing further and culminated in a conference at Oxford Brookes involving teachers and other educational practitioners. In July 2011 Sarah joined Coventry University as a lecturer in Developmental and Educational Psychology and as Course Director for the Post Graduate Certificate in Reading Development. She is currently working in conjunction with colleagues at the Open University, Nottingham Trent University and UH on projects examining children’s strategy use in spelling and reading.

Critten, S., Pine, K.J., and Messer, D. (2013) 'Revealing children’s implicit spelling representations'. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31 (2), 198-211.
Connelly, V., Dockrell, J., Walter, K., and Critten, S. (2012) 'The effect of language, spelling and handwriting on text quality and written language bursts in children with language impairment and typically developing controls'. Written Communication 29 (3), 278-302.
Critten, S., Pine, K.J., and Steffler, D. (2007) 'Spelling development in young children: A case of Representational-Redescription?'. Journal of Educational Psychology 1, 207-220.
Critten, S., and Pine, K.J. (2009) 'Viewing spelling in a cognitive context: Underlying representations and processes'. In Contemporary perspectives on reading and spelling: New perspectives on learning and instruction. Ed. by Wood, C., and Connelly, V. London: Routledge, 92-108.
Steffler, D., and Critten, S. (2008) Research Review: Pre-Writing and Pre-Spelling Development 13-60 Months. Handbook of language and literacy development: A Roadmap from 0–60 Months.
Steffler, D., and Critten, S. (2008) Parent/Caregiver Narrative: Pre-Writing and Pre-Spelling Development 13-60 Months. Handbook of language and literacy development: A Roadmap from 0–60 Months.

Enhancing writing skills in children: The relationship between oral and written language in children with Specific Language Impairment and development of objective writing assessments .

Children’s reading and spelling strategies: Using general principles of learning to gain insight into spelling and reading representations and strategy type and potential pedagogic value.

The role of gesture in children’s spelling development: Children’s spontaneous gestures in relation to their verbal explanations of spelling knowledge and the potential pedagogic value for spelling instruction.

The relationship between prosody and literacy development: The relationship between awareness of prosody and reading and spelling and the mediating influences of vocabulary, phonological and morphological awareness.