Abstract
Quantum physics concerns the physical theories that explain the nuclear world, specifically nature at its smallest scales of energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles. Although it may appear perplexing as to why we invoke quantum physics in our editorial statement, the work of Karen Barad (feminist theorist with roots in theoretical physics) is influencing the field of literacy research. Her influence is evident in recent publications of Journal of Literacy Research (JLR; see for example, Ehret, Hollett, & Jocius, 2016; Muth, 2016; Tanner, 2017) and several sessions at the 2017 annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association, including a study group titled “Knotty Articulations: Wrestling With Posthumanism, Intersectionality, and Justice in Literacy Research.”
In celebration of the 50th volume of the JLR, we engaged in a re-view of the previous editorial statements (Volumes 1 - 49). We carefully read and discussed each statement, analyzing how the editors re-presented complexity in literacy research. For this editorial statement, we focused on the methodological complexities raised by past editors. We summarize our findings in the following sections using several concepts from the work of Barad to frame JLR editorial statements since its inception in 1969 as the Journal of Reading Behavior (JRB).
Affordances of Apparatuses
At a surface level, an apparatus is a tool needed for a particular activity. However, apparatuses are “not passive observing instruments; on the contrary, they are productive of (and part of) phenomena” (Barad, 2007, p. 142). Barad (2010) suggested the object and the “agencies of observation” are inseparable such that the concepts are the “specific material arrangements of experimental apparatuses” (p. 253). That is, the only way for a concept to be understood is through the apparatuses used to measure and describe it. This is true of the methods used in JLR studies.
Historically, JLR editors have recognized the pioneering work taking place within the journal. Yet, they also realized the need for more sophisticated ways of engaging in research. This was particularly true with the onset of pedagogical research in JLR. For example, Kingston (1975) called for pedagogical research to be more than “merely descriptive” (p. 222). Likewise, although there was no specific mention of methods in Allington and Ohnmact’s (1982) editorial statement, they drew attention to “some of the different ways researchers have chosen to look at reading in classrooms” (p. 1).
Some editors made specific calls for “other approaches” to methodology (Barr et al., 1986, p. v). And, although others were “sensitive to the concern of the membership that JRB be open to different types of research designs (qualitative and quantitative), literature reviews, historical perspectives, and theoretical presentations,” they could not print such studies because they did not receive “manuscripts with diverse formats” (Gambrell, Morrow, Neuman, & Pressley, 1993, p. 363). More recent editorial teams have called for “the development of more sophisticated and promising methodologies” (Anders, Yaden, de Silva Iddings, Katz, & Rogers, 2014, p. 6). Similarly, we began our editorship with a call to “interrupt these grand narratives (and the methodological designs and sociolinguistic patterns that give rise to them) . . . ” (Sailors, Martinez, Davis, Goatley, & Willis, 2017, p. 8) and “invite the submission of manuscripts that represent diverse research paradigms and theoretical orientations and that use a variety of methodologies and modes of inquiry” (p. 9).
Editorial Diffractions of Literacy Research Methods
Diffraction is a phenomenon in physics that has to do with the way waves combine when they overlap and the apparent bending and spreading out of waves when they encounter an obstruction (Barad, 2007, p. 28). We used diffraction as a metaphor and observed how editors who engaged in discussions of research methods did so without rejecting earlier methods and used the foundations of earlier methods to think anew. It was through their diffraction that allowed for the transcendence above self/other identity politics. In many ways this was a form of transdisciplinary boundary-crossing that brought about “engagements with different disciplinary practices” (p. 93).
In many cases, editors’ statements diffracted “insights from different areas of study through one another” (Barad, 2007, p. 25). For example, guest editor Wittrock (1977) wrote about the rise of the cognitive revolution and how it turned the study of reading into a “behaviorist’s nightmare” (p. 109). Similarly, Barr’s editorial statement described the growth of early literacy research because of an “infusion of alternative theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches” (Barr et al., 1987, p. 3). In a later statement, Barr et al. (1998) envisioned future research based on the past, noting that research efforts that incorporate additional or alternative methodologies would strengthen our knowledge of how readers utilize text. Particularly interesting would be data from studies that extend over longer periods of time and that are conducted with real classroom materials used by the readers. (p. 199)
More recently, Anders et al. (2015) presented a themed issue in which all articles “demonstrate[d] how literacy researchers are drawing on sophisticated theoretical perspectives and productive methodologies to create change that positively affects both teachers and students . . . ” (p. 295-296).
In other cases, it appeared to us that the editorial team recognized their role as diffractors (although they did not use the term). For example, Tuinman (1975) intentionally included a “lead article” that “is quite different from anything we have published so far” (para. 1); the piece used a type of analysis (what later might be called a content analysis). Years later, other editors also drew attention to their role in strategically including methodological pieces, such as Graves and Taylor’s (1983) “addition of descriptive essays on research methodology” (p. 1). The Readence team (Readence, Konopak, Lomax, & McGee, 1990) recognized that the field of literacy “has emerged as an interdisciplinary area of inquiry, using diverse research paradigms and providing theory-based applications to instructional contexts” (p. 99). They saw their role as editors to “expand JRB’s role in serving as an intellectual forum for examining divergent theories, stances, and methodologies” (p. 99).
The Reinking team appeared hopeful in their statement (Reinking, Hynd, & Oldfather, 1996) that the “approximately balanced between qualitative and quantitative studies [published in the 28,1 issue]” would represent a “peaceful coexistence among those who gravitate toward different research traditions” including “new research emphasis and . . . traditional research emphasis” (p. 1). Guest editors Garcia, Willis, and Harris (1998) noted that the pieces published in their themed issue represented “a variety of methodologies (ethnographic, quantitative, theoretical/conceptual, and qualitative)” (p. 183). Similarly, more recent guest editors employed “storytelling, narrative inquiry, and autoethnographic methods as the central focus of [their] theoretical, epistemological, and methodological approaches to literacy research” (Johnson, Gibbs, Gibbs Grey, & Baker-Bell, 2017, p. 470). Finally, editorial teams acted as diffractors by the nature of their teams. For example, the Hartman team (Hartman et al., 2008) specifically stated the team represented a variety of “expertise in differing methodological traditions (literary criticism to experimental, single subject to multivariate, fMRI to ethnography)” (p. 3).
Celebrating 50 Volumes of the JLR: Re-turning Literacy Research
Although we could engage in reflection of the field at this anniversary juncture, a simple reflection is nothing more than a product of repetition, or returning to a topic (or method). Re-turning, on the contrary, as in “turning it over and over again” (Barad, 2014, p. 168) is a process of iteratively intra-acting, rediffracting, and diffracting anew, a process in the “making of new spacetimematterings” (Barad, 2014, p. 168). This first issue of Volume 50 introduces the first of four “re-turning” pieces. For each issue, we have asked scholars to select a topic and engage in epistemological and methodological “turns.” We hope that by re-turning these topics, these invited scholars might engage JLR readers in intra-actions that entangle and diffract the here-now and there-then (Barad, 2014).
The first “re-turning” articles appears in this issue. In it, Brooks and Cueto review scholarship that examines reader responses to diverse books as well as youth literature from across the African diaspora. They present a critical content analysis of young adult texts using postcolonial theory and a youth lens to interrogate how underlying ideologies embedded within the novels might support, refute, or reconstruct dominant beliefs about Black girls. They offer implications for theorizing about or further exploring the influences of culture and cultural practices on the selection and teaching of diverse literature and literacy more broadly.
Methodological Complexities in This Issue
Like many past issue, this issue contains studies that continue to diffract the field of literacy research. For example, Skerrett used qualitative research methods and theories of multimodality, transnationalism, and global cultural flows to examine an adolescent’s music literacy education across Caribbean and U.S. schools. Drawing on multimodal analysis procedures for visual data, Skerrett suggests that the youth’s music literacy practices continuously shifted in response to the cultural practices and values of the physical geographies in which he lived.
Weyand, Goff, and Newell employed a microethnographic approach to discourse analysis to examine how instructional conversations revealed the ways two teachers’ argumentative epistemologies (ideational and social process) shaped literacy events focused on the warranting of evidence. The literacy events within each teacher’s respective instructional unit revealed that each teacher’s epistemology shaped how they asked students to consider differing sources, relevancy, and sufficiency for warranting evidence within the context of writing extended argumentative essays.
Lewis Ellison and Wang used a case study design to explore the digital storytelling practices beween an African American mother and son social and cultural patterns, beliefs, values, behaviors, and tasks while collaborating to create a digital story. Using agency as a theoretical frame, the authors illustrated the ways in which the mother and son worked together through resisting and redirecting while creating a digital story.
Perry, Shaw, Ivanyuk, and Tham used both meta-study and discursively oriented metasynthesis techniques to review 101 recent publications on the topic of adult functional literacy. Using discursive review techniques, they analyzed instances of legitimation, dissimulation, reification, and “ofcourseness” to explore the ideological underpinnings of the field of adult functional literacy.
For the “Insights” column, Wickens draws on sociological and economic analyses of gender and work to explore issues of occupational gender segregation, privilege, and devaluation. She raises questions about increased female achievement in literacy research, and offers implications for literacy research organizations and policymakers.
Moving Forward
Barad’s work provides perspective on how new media matters in discursive-material relations (Ehret et al., 2016) and the role of multimodal texts in the readership and health of the JLR. We will continue to engage readers in digital outreach, including social media and affordances offered by our publisher. We are actively engaged on Twitter (@JLiteracyRes) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/JLiteracyRes/). Please follow, re-tweet/post, and engage with us in those environments. We will continue, upon release of articles on Online First, to produce an accompanying video abstract on the LRA YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/LiteracyResearch). We hope you subscribe to the channel.
In addition, we will take full advantage of celebrating the 50th volume of JLR. First, we will engage in “Throwback Thursdays” twice a month (second and fourth Thursdays), using social media to draw attention to seminal pieces published in JLR throughout its “spacetimematterings” (Barad, 2010). SAGE will make these seminal pieces available as free downloads so anyone can access them. Similarly, SAGE will “free” all articles published in JLR for 50 days, between May 15, 2018, and July 4, 2018. We will announce this event on the LRA listserv and via social media. Please engage with us and share/re-post as to widen our reach.
Concluding Thoughts
Thirty years ago, Barr and her team (1988) described their role as editors as to “not simply reflect an editorial vision of how the field should be defined” but to “mirror the diversity of debate and vision currently in the field” (p. 281). We echo Barr’s spirit. And, as we live in a time that is neo-capitalistic, neo-colonial, militaristic, racist, nationalistic, and riddled with environmental destruction, we expect that literacy research will continue its path of diffraction as “science and justice, matter and meaning are not separable elements that intersect now and again. They are inextricably fused together and no event, no matter how energetic can tear them asunder” (Barad, 2014, 35:54-36:02).