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Mark Torrance

Mark Torrance

Associate Professor

School of Social Sciences

Staff Group(s)
Psychology

Role

I am coordinator and leader for Psychology undergraduate and taught postgraduate Research Project (dissertation) modules.

Research areas

My research explores the cognitive and educational processes associated with writing – keyboarded and hand-written production of anything from sub-word units to multi-sentence text. Previous and current research covers, amongst other things, written picture naming, spelling processes, psycholinguistic processes underlying written sentence production, writing in children with dyslexia, reading during writing, identifying and supporting young struggling writers, and empirical evaluation of approaches to writing instruction.

External activity

Current

  • Adjunct Professor, National Reading Research Centre, University of Stavanger
  • Academic collaborator in the Doctoral Program: Educational Psychology and Educational Sciences Doctoral Program in the Faculty of Education, Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy Department of the University of León.
  • Consultant researcher / research team member projects at Iowa State University (US), University of León (Spain), University of Stavanger (Norway)
  • Doctoral program collaborator: Faculty of Education, Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy, University of León.
  • Joint Editor, Journal of Writing Research
  • PI / leader. European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction Emerging Fields Group, EarlyWritePro - Developing methods for understanding early writing through analysis of process dysfluencies.

Selected Previous

  • Working Group Coordinator (Literacy Technologies) and Steering Committee member, EU COST Action IS1401 Strengthening European Capabilities by Establishing the European Literacy Network (ELN; https://www.is1401eln.eu/en/).
  • UK management representative and editorial coordinator EU COST action IS0703: European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively.
  • Statistics Editor, Journal of Second Language Writing