Abstract
As editors of Journal of Literacy Research (JLR), and now after reading several hundred submitted manuscripts over the past year and a half, we have sharpened our focus as to the types of manuscripts that we (and our reviewers) identify as potentially contributing substantively to the knowledge base of our field. In general, these are manuscripts that, not surprisingly, provide compelling research questions and theoretical rationales based upon what has been found (or not) in extant studies, describe what shortcomings have been identified in the designs employed, identify what data have been lost or not gathered due to the limitations of instrumentation or data collection techniques, elaborate on how findings might have been erroneously understood due to contested strategies of analysis and interpretation, and, most importantly, clearly describe how the current study will address one of more of these issues. Clearly, some of these aspects only emerge from a high-quality literature review that provides the foundation and intellectual cornerstone of any research study.
We are certainly not the first editorial group to recognize these features of high-quality manuscripts. For example, drawing on earlier authors, Boote and Beile (2005), in Educational Researcher, present 12 guidelines for producing a high-quality, informative literature review. Although their article focused on the limited training in doctoral programs for producing a rigorous and knowledgeable scan of a field, we believe that at least two of their principles have considerable relevance to crafting a rigorous literature review for a journal article as well. We elaborate on these two below as they pertain in particular to JLR manuscripts.
Identified the main methodologies and research techniques that have been used in the field, and their advantages and disadvantages. This guideline suggests that a good review justifies the current methods employed with a survey of what designs and methodologies have been used in prior research. This is not so much a justification of the method itself, but rather—why does the current method employed address issues not previously addressed in extant research, particularly if the methodology has been used before? We see plenty of rationales for quantitative and qualitative approaches, but these explanations oftentimes do not include either the contributions of prior research or why the previous designs and methodological choices have left gaps in the field of inquiry.
Related ideas and theories in the field to research methodologies. According to this principle, theories and underlying assumptions should be subsequently reflected in the types of designs, methods, and analyses chosen. In other words, the theoretical framework should be a guideline for the types of data collection techniques, instrumentation, or analyses that follow; and, in turn, the data that have been collected should be examined to extend, problematize, or critique the original conceptual framework. This kind of reevaluation of the findings as either confirmation or problematization of the theory and assumptions driving the research contributes to advancing and refining the perspectives and approaches in our field.
Articles in the Current Issue
We are encouraged that the four articles in this third issue of Volume 46 can serve as examples of the types of manuscripts for which we are looking to publish in JLR. As a group, although very different in design (conceptual, correlational, observation, quasi-experimental), they have strong, nuanced theoretical frameworks which pervade the research report from inception to conclusion; they provide detailed literature reviews which reveal the prior methodological and interpretive schemes of the extant research in the field of inquiry; and, for those with empirical results, findings are explained in the context of alternative theoretical and methodological hypotheses that may be operative as well.
For example, in the conceptual essay, “A Bernsteinian Analysis of Content Area Literacy,” Ross Collin examines the current debate between disciplinary literacy and English Language Arts (ELA) strategy adherents through Basil Bernstein’s “pedagogic device,” a conceptual system which unmasks both groups as having competing ideological stances, employing discourses which reframe knowledge according to those ideologies, and implementing procedures, assessments, and rules of participation that have differential effects on school-aged populations with varying demographics. In our view, this theoretical framing raises the level of the debate beyond an “either/or” argument to one where the underlying assumptions of each are made explicit and, thus, decisions of implementation can be made more informatively. Similarly, Tanya Wright and Susan Neuman’s observational study of the amount of oral language instruction in kindergarten provides a detailed review of the extant research which teases out several aspects of vocabulary learning which are then incorporated into the design, instrumentation, and analysis. While the examination was conducted with a small group of kindergartens in one state, this carefully designed study which discovered no systematic vocabulary instruction across schools and income groups raises important questions about vocabulary exposure for young children in other regions of the country.
In the article, “Speaking to Read: Meta-Analysis of Peer-Mediated Learning for English Language Learners,” Mikel Cole found consistent positive effects for three types of collaborative learning approaches on English learners’ reading at both word and text levels across the school-age span. Cole’s meta-analytic study is notable in that portions of the pool of 28 studies included not only those appearing in peer-reviewed journals but also from the “gray” literature, unpublished papers and dissertations, thus suggesting the possible generalizability of effects across many different research settings. Finally, in their quasi-experimental examination of a family literacy intervention, Lisa O’Brien and Jeanne Paratore differentiate the program effects on English learners by entry-level vocabulary proficiency, finding that children with the lowest initial levels achieved the greatest gains along with children whose parents participated in the program as well. Their nuanced and detailed literature review of the methodology and findings of extant family literature programs as well as their careful analyses of plausible, alternative hypotheses for the gains seen is an excellent example of a high-quality research report in the social sciences (cf. American Educational Research Association [AERA], 2006).
In our submission guidelines and inaugural editorial (JLR, Volume 46, Issue 1), we continue to encourage authors (and reviewers) to consult the general standards for reporting social science and humanities-oriented research developed by two AERA (2006, 2009) interdisciplinary committees which offer flexible and informative parameters for both new and experienced researchers in describing and interpreting their research. Lest we err, however, in seeming to overrely on procedure and system, the late Stephen Jay Gould (1987) reminded us that researchers across all fields “are human beings, immersed in culture, and struggling with all the curious tools of inference that mind permits—from metaphor and analogy to all the flights of fruitful imagination that C. S. Peirce called ‘abduction’” (pp. 6-7; cf. also Harste, 2013). Thus, in short, good research has as much to do with vision and hunch and asking the right questions as it does with procedure. We believe in JLR there should be a judicious mix of both.