The National Centre for Reading collects, creates and circulates knowledge about literacy, reading, writing and language for the benefit of individuals and society as a whole. The vision is to contribute so that everyone develop their skills within literacy, reading, writing and languages, and thereby getting an opportunity to improve themselves and to take active part in society.
The National Centre for Reading was established in 2006 on the initiative of the Danish Ministry of Education, and is now operating through a cooperation between the seven university colleges in Denmark.
The centre is housed as part of the University College Capital (UCC) in Copenhagen. The university colleges finance part of the operating costs, while income generated from projects, conferences and consultancies covers the major part of the costs of the centre.
Knowledge is collected and created through research- and development projects carried out in cooperation with university colleges, universities, schools and day care centres, municipalities and other knowledge centres in Denmark, as well as in other Scandinavian countries.
The projects address small children in daycare centers as well as students in all ages throughout the entire education system in Denmark.
The particular expertise of the centre lies within literacy in a broad sense covering reading, writing, speech and other communication as a social and cultural activities.
The centre employs this understanding in all its activities.
Cases from daily school life and observations form basis for project design.
In a combination of research and existing practices actual issues within literacy are identified and projects designed in ways where every participant contributes to the common development of knowledge and new practice.
The projects are carried out in cooperation between professional teachers, preschool teachers, pedagogues and advisers, researchers and lecturers.
The National Centre for Reading communicates knowledge about literacy widely and through several channels such as the homepage http://www.videnomlaesning.dk, newsletters, social media, youtube.com, the journal “Viden om Literacy” (Knowledge about Literacy), conferences and courses.
Both knowledge obtained from project interventions initiated by the centre, and knowledge collected from other methodological and theoretical domains, are communicated so different approaches to the work with, and to the understanding of literacy, is brought forward.
