Dr Helen Hendry

Professional Biography

I am a specialist in early education with a particular focus on literacy and inclusion. I draw on nearly 30 years’ experience as a primary teacher, and senior leader, advisory teacher for SEN, teacher educator, academic and researcher. My current core role is as a Senior Lecturer on the Education Studies (Primary) programme, doctoral supervisor and member of the OU Reading for Pleasure team.

Originally an early years and primary teacher and senior leader for EYFS and Literacy in schools in Cornwall, Slough and Buckinghamshire, I later became a Lead Practitioner for Early Years and then an Area SENCO where my role was to train and support early years settings with SEN provision in Slough. I worked with multi-agency teams across education, health and social care to provide referral, advice and training for the maintained, private, voluntary and independent Early Years education sector. In 2006, I joined Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln where I contributed to initial teacher training in curriculum and pedagogy for the EYFS, KS1, Literacy, inclusion, PSHE and cultural and linguistic diversity. I provided school experience supervision and mentoring training across the Primary phases. In this role, I led Literacy in ITE for several years and organised the 'Leading partners in Literacy' project to develop collaborative practice with schools in ITT at BGU funded by the TDA. I also co-ordinated 'Poetry Train' in conjunction with the Poetry Society to research and support trainee teachers' confidence and strategies for poetry teaching.

Following my experience of the Primary PGCE programme I gained a role as a Senior Lecturer for the Education Studies undergraduate programme at Bishop Grosseteste University and later became Programme Leader. I led modules on Education policy and curriculum, research methods and language and literacy in education. I am motivated to develop student-centred innovative practice in HE e.g. I created a collaborative research module in which students and staff worked together on practitioner research and publication as co-inquirers. I am also a passionate advocate for children’s literature and regularly involved students in enrichment experiences such as shadowing the UKLA children’s book awards and working with visiting authors, illustrators and librarians on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. 

Open University role

I am a Senior Lecturer on the Education Studies (Primary) programme, and have been deputy chair for  E309 Comparative and international education as well as focusing on equality, diversity and inclusion, employability and student voice across the programme. I most recently led production of a new edition of an Education Studies Core module 'Learning and Teaching in the Primary Years', supporting the work of seven academic authors, liaising with a wide range of OU teams and an external AV team ensuring key current issues in education are addressed, including well-being and sustainability, integrating support for students' study skills, enhancing representation and diversity in module materials and increased interactivity in module content. I am now supporting the module team as this new module is in its first year of student study.

Previously, I worked with the Masters academic team on the Inclusive Practice pathway and chaired the EE812 Educational Leadership and Management module. I also led Personal Development Planning and reflective practice activities for students linked to Master’s modules and contributed to new developments on the E822 multi-disciplinary dissertation module. Before joining the OU, I led the development of a interdisciplinary Masters programme in Children’s Literature and Literacies in collaboration with colleagues from English, Education Studies, Early Childhood Studies, BA Primary QTS and library staff. I have co-authored free to access online professional development materials including 'Professional development for inclusive education' for teachers in low resource contexts as well as a badged online course 'Developing reading for pleasure: engaging young readers’ available on OpenLearn.

Research interests

My research interests include early years and primary literacy, particularly reading for pleasure and play-based learning with a focus on initial teacher education and professional development in these areas. I am Co-director of the Centre for Literacy and Social Justice  and have recently completed a 3 year (Mercers' Company) funded project exploring promoting reading and writing for pleasure through extracurricular programmes for disadvantaged pupils leading to a new framework for practice. The current phase (2024-28) centres on the role of talk in reading and writing for pleasure in Literacy programmes for 5–16-year-olds.  With Professor Teresa Cremin I lead on Open Societal Challenge Reading for Pleasure- changing children’s lives work, exploring how the OURfP research can support the work for Literacy charities. Alongside this I have recently completed a study of informal book talk with early years and KS1 practitioners and am currently researching the experiences of student teachers as readers and as RfP ambassadors with their peers in ITE. My ITE research builds on my PhD which focused on the development of student teachers’ and newly qualified teachers’ knowledge and practice for teaching early reading. This was influenced by a cultural historical activity theory perspective on learning and considered tensions between policy and practice experienced by trainee teachers as well as challenges presented by the history of debate about teaching early reading. 

I am involved in research and partnerships around improving access to training for early childhood educators in lower income countries as well as co-creation and mentoring in UK ITE. I conducted UK Government funded research into expert consensus for the training of ECD cadres at scale in collaboration with an international team of early years researchers as well as contributing to a mapping study of UNICEF interventions in South Asia in connection with the pre-primary framework areas.  I led a case study of play-based pedagogy as an approach to support transition and inclusion in Year 1 and acted as a co-investigator for a baseline evaluation of a play-based learning initiative in Primary schools in Ghana. Drawing on my passion for developing EY practitioners' expertise I led a funded exploration of ECD practitioner training needs in South Africa and Kenya and created a proposed framework for an innovative approach to training for marginalised EY practitioners in low-resource contexts with partners in these countries. This has now been recognised as part of the Open Societal Challenges initiative and we are working together to seek funding to pilot this programme with practitioners. I also led an internally funded research and scholarship project establishing a model for module co-creation with MA education students which has influenced current practice at the OU.

Impact and engagement

I am currently part of a new group working with support from the Fair Education Alliance and the Mercers' company, to promote collaboration between reading focused charities in the UK. The first 'Literacy Link' event takes place in April 2025. I have been a member of the United Kingdom Literacy Association for many years and have been involved in their digital literacy SIG and student shadowing of the UKLA book awards. I am currently part of the ITE SIG working with other HEIs and I also lead an OU UKLA collaboration to support early career teachers with developing Reading for Pleasure. These Student RfP ambassadors are spearheading bespoke activities in their teaching programmes with the support of the OU/ UKLA team and their HEI tutors. Over the last 3 years this initiative has supported over 40 cohorts of students on UK ITE programmes.

In 2020, I began working with Professor Teresa Cremin and colleagues from the Reading Agency to design the 'Teachers Reading Challenge' including a website and series of resources to support teachers, and others working with children and young people to enrich their knowledge of contemporary children's literature and continue to support this initiative with new content and developments. This initiative continues to develop and has now reached over 6,000 educators. I am one of the leaders of  the yearlong OU 'Reading Schools' whole school improvement programme for Primary English Leaders and school staff with OU colleagues. This transformative programme shows an impact on reading engagement and reading attainment for pupils who have previously not enjoyed reading. I also support the team contributing to conferences and online CPD for teachers, teacher educators and through invitation to work with the DfE English Hubs, and organisations such as the NEU and NLT. Our work on the OURfP team has recently been recognised with an award for Outstanding Research Impact on educators.

I am a member of ECDAN (Early childhood development action network) and I also convened an informal research network of Early Childhood researchers between The Open University and the University of Sheffield from 2021-2024. From 2016-2018, I was an affiliated Fellow of the Lincoln Higher Education Research Institute. Through this membership, I worked with the National Collaborative Outreach Programme in the East Midlands to provide Year 12 students with experience of research in Higher Education and near-peer mentoring from undergraduate students.

International links

I have collaborated on research into training for Early Childhood Development cadres for the UK Department for International Development with colleagues from the University of Hong Kong, McGill University, Canada, University College London and the University of Nebraska College of Public Health. This involved canvassing the opinions of 14 global experts comprising wide experience and expertise related to ECD cadres training. The panel included individuals with extensive front-line experience in training ECD cadres across diverse, low-resource contexts spanning the world regions, including East, Central, South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific; Central, Eastern and Southern Africa, and South America. Experts occupied senior leadership positions across leading international non-governmental organisations and academic institutions and / or contribute to global policy setting via membership of key steering committees. You can read the report here. I have also liaised with frontline staff from UNICEF regional offices in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, as part of a mapping study of pre-primary interventions for UNICEF. I gained OU funding to bring together academics, policy makers and policy influencers in ECD for a knowledge exchange summit. This 2-day event connected research with policy direction and enabled forward planning for potential new developments in ECD practitioner training in lower income countries.

I have facilitated the TESSA MOOC with teacher educators in Africa and developed online Inclusive teacher education modules for teachers in Kenya with OU colleagues and the Commonwealth of Learning. In 2020-21 I led a research and development project with the support of SAIDE in South Africa and colleagues in Kenya, to create a research-informed proposed framework for multi-sectoral ECD practitioner skills-focused professional development as well as working closely with colleagues from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana on a baseline evaluation of a play-based approach to learning in the primary phase. I continue to work in partnership with SAIDE and colleagues in Turkana, Kenya to share these ideas with others and progress towards making this research led programme into a flexible, sustainable, open access professional development resource for use by training providers and multi-sectoral practitioners in Sub-Saharan Africa.