Integrative Research Syntheses as Sites of Disruption in Literacy Teacher Education

Abstract

In this Insight article, we look across the syntheses in this issue to consider how they help readers notice dominant flows and identify sites for disruption within the field of literacy teacher preparation. We first consider the meaning of disruption with respect to the metaphor of flow. We then identify and discuss possible sites of disruption authors of research syntheses create, providing examples from the literature. Finally, we suggest how research syntheses might be framed and crafted for purposes of disrupting the flows of dominant discourses and power structures in the field of literacy teacher preparation.

Integrative research syntheses typically offer thematically or chronologically organized accounts of research findings in a particular field, providing overviews of what is collectively known. The authors of research syntheses describe the visible and various topographies within a larger landscape, map their surface features, and make interpretations about the deeper realities they see below the surface. In this way, like syntheses of any kind, research syntheses are interpretive and creative.

However, integrative research syntheses, as particular representations of multiple research studies, are cultural artifacts that can be written and read as ongoing dialogues that invite readers into conversations within particular synthesized, shared domains. As such, research syntheses have the potential to be co-generative dialogues (Stetsenko, 2008), with the purpose of constructing new common understandings and promoting mutual growth of participants. Of course, promoting mutual growth and generating common understandings can involve conflict and the disruption of closely held beliefs and practices. It follows that the work of creating research syntheses is not merely descriptive and interpretive, but dialogic and disruptive.

In this Insights essay, we think through the dialogic, disruptive purposes of integrative research syntheses using the metaphor of flow, borrowed from Ahmed (2017), to describe the widely held dominant sets of beliefs and practices of a field, and the notion of disruption to describe the interruption of those flows. We first consider the meaning of disruption with respect to the metaphor of flow. We then identify and discuss possible sites of disruption authors of research syntheses create, providing examples from the literature, and raise questions about sites of disruption yet to be mined. Finally, we suggest how research syntheses might be framed and crafted for purposes of disrupting the flows of dominant discourses and power structures in literacy teacher preparation.

We approach this essay from specific subject positions as two White female literacy researchers and teacher educators who grapple with many of the themes articulated by the reviews in this issue. Lysaker has worked with preservice teachers (PTs) for over 20 years and participated in program reform aimed at social justice and equity, with her time split between literacy teacher education and reading research. Handsfield devotes the majority of her professional time to language and literacy teacher preparation and often integrates her research on language, literacy, and identity into her work with preservice and novice teachers.

To Burst or Break Apart: Literature Syntheses as Ebbs in a Flow

The word disruption, derived from Latin, means to break or burst (-rupt) apart (dis-). If we consider dominant understandings within teacher education and literacy research as discursive streams or flows of information, knowledge, beliefs, and practices, disrupting them means working to break apart those flows. Disruption opens them to reveal their constitution—their structures and particulars, including tacit assumptions, inclusions, exclusions, purposes, and consequences.

Disruption is difficult and constant work because dominant discursive flows have momentum. As Ahmed (2017) points out, momentum is a function of power: “Power works as a mode of directionality, a way of orienting bodies in particular ways, so they are facing a certain way, heading toward a future that is given a face” (p. 43). Momentum as a function and consequence of power positions us, pointing us in particular directions with respect to research in literacy teacher preparation. Disruption makes these functions of power and directionalities visible and open to revision.

Importantly, the momentum of these directionalities—the structural and systemic flows of ideas, knowledge, and beliefs—has a material impact not only on the work of teacher educators and PTs but also on academic practices such as conducting and reviewing research. Edmondson (2002), for instance, identified functionalist literacy research as inquiry that presumes researcher neutrality or objectivity and avoids discussions regarding how ideologies of literacy and learning infuse research and practice. Disruption of this, or any dominant flow in the field, can elucidate structures of power that feed the flow’s momentum while damming up others and can “compel researchers to consider how power is used to define the parameters of particular questions, to set the rules for particular practices, and to shape particular agendas” (Edmondson, 2002, p. 118).

We view the notion of mainstreams, or dominant flows, within research as central to understanding the potential of integrative research syntheses to become tools of disruption. Research syntheses momentarily slow down, or ebb, the flow of ideas so that they can become objects for study, dialogue, and critical reflection, making both power and vulnerabilities visible. Ebbing a flow functions as a pose (Garcia & O’Donnell-Allen, 2015)—an eddy within which we can generate a wobble, or turbulence, prompting the redistribution of existing flows and opening up new channels of inquiry.

Sites of Disruption

Viewing the integrative research synthesis as a genre, we wondered how sites of disruption might be generated in research syntheses within literacy teacher education. In this essay, we focus on three important ways authors of integrative research syntheses use this genre to generate sites of disruption and prompt dialogue: (a) choosing criteria for inclusion in the syntheses and providing rationale for that inclusion, (b) critically attending to their positionalities as authors, and (c) highlighting alternative or potentially limiting methodological and theoretical frames employed within the studies reviewed.

Study Criteria and Strategic Selection

Perhaps the most obvious task of writing an integrative research synthesis is selecting the studies to be included. This is not a neutral act, but one that enacts a position toward the research being reviewed. What is included is what is voiced and positioned as important to the dialogue. One example is the report of the National Reading Panel (2000), which selected only studies using experimental and quasi-experimental research, thus positioning those methodologies as most worthy of consideration in the field. Others may narrow criteria by limiting their synthesis to research that is more disruptive. For instance, Mosley Wetzel et al. (2019) offer a substantial and thorough review focusing exclusively on studies preparing socioculturally aware teachers. The studies they reviewed varied with respect to pedagogies for promoting sociocultural knowledge, and their focus allowed for nuanced analysis, disrupting complacent acceptance of a dominant flow. However, such omissions may inadvertently constrict possibilities for cross-theoretical dialogue.

Disruption in research syntheses is enhanced through dialogic positioning of contrasting voices. In a synthesis piece about the teaching of writing, Bomer et al. (2019) include any study that directly addressed the teaching of writing, regardless of practice or ideology. By including a wide array of studies, the authors position “potentially disruptive” studies within the larger flow of research. In doing so, they recast the dominant flow as one voice among many, disrupting its power and inviting dialogue.

Reviewer Positionality

Literacy researchers are increasingly asked to articulate their own positionalities and how they negotiate them via their research methods and interpretations as a check on their biases. However, this is also important for authors conducting integrative research syntheses. This may involve acknowledging their own particular value systems and preferred approaches to literacy and teacher education, such as critical literacy and antiracist pedagogies (see Flores et al., 2019), and how their own theoretical commitments and professional positionalities may tacitly or explicitly affect interpretations (e.g., Hoffman, 2019). This kind of reflexive articulation disrupts the persistent dominant discourse of researcher neutrality. In addition, making authors’ own positionalities explicit distributes authorial power beyond the typical reader/writer binary, repositioning readers as co-constructors of the knowledge base within the dialogue of the research synthesis itself.

Highlighting Methodological and Related Theoretical Issues and Trends

Literacy teacher education research is populated by differing ideological stances and the pedagogies and methodologies that flow from and alongside them (Handsfield, 2016). Making these aspects of the research enterprise clear by disrupting unexamined assumptions and creating space for dialogue is another possible function of integrative research syntheses. Hikida et al. (2019) highlight the dominant, persistent presence of deficit perspectives in literacy teacher education research focused on reading processes, calling for more relational, humanizing theoretical frames.

In addition, research syntheses can disrupt ideological flows by challenging or recasting specific terminology. For example, Hoffman et al. (2019) propose replacing the term tutoring with mentoring to describe the relationship offered to readers needing support. This signals a recalibration to a different theoretical base, one that disrupts deficit models of “struggling readers,” which are common in the tutoring/mentoring literature. This shift hints at a new set of assumptions about readers, as well as teacher–reader relationships that could both disrupt and replace deficit views.

Authors of integrative research syntheses also can propose and develop alternative theoretical frameworks, which can shift ideologies within a field, as Lysaker (2018) did by framing comprehending and composing from a relational perspective. Similarly, Mosley Wetzel et al. (2019) apply a sociocultural and critical stance to examine PTs’ sociocultural insights and understandings and push against hegemonic views prevalent in teacher education. They call for researchers to attend to frameworks of race and racism and reflect that such a focus will bring more diverse voices into the conversation. In doing so, they highlight the need for further disruptive work, including dialogue within flows of inquiry that already engage criticality. Previous reviews have called for teacher education researchers to attend to participant identities and differences (Risko et al., 2008; Roskos, Vukelich, & Risko, 2001), and as Mosley Wetzel et al. (2019) argue, making participants’ identities visible can potentially disrupt the homogenization of “who” is “researched.” However, more attention has been paid to student demographics and identities than to teacher candidate identities, let alone researcher positioning (Flores et al., 2019; Risko et al., 2008; Wetzel et al., 2019; Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998).

Importantly, the structures (dominant flows) of teacher preparation often constrain methodological frames to one or two semesters (Risko et al., 2008). This limits how literacy teacher education pedagogies may or may not carry over into subsequent semesters, clinical work, or in-service teacher practices (e.g., Hikida et al., 2019). This issue is particularly salient in research on clinical experiences, which are often particularly limited in scope and time. Hoffman et al. (2019) highlight this problem in their review of research on literacy tutoring/mentoring. Bringing these temporal and methodological trends to the surface opens up the tacit acceptance of these programmatic structures as sites for disruption.

Navigating With and Within Multiple Divergent Streams

The syntheses in this issue, along with previous reviews on literacy teacher education, point toward research syntheses as a potentially disruptive scholarly genre, capable of unsettling dominant flows of information, beliefs, and practices. Such disruption can simultaneously provoke dialogic encounters with challenges facing the field of literacy teacher education. In this section, we suggest how these possibilities might be developed.

Dialogicality and Multiplicity

We have proposed three ways that research syntheses can disrupt dominant flows and promote dialogue through analysis and critique. But how might authors create dialogue within research syntheses themselves (rather than between them)? Generating dialogicality within a single synthesis may be difficult, given the demands of the genre, yet we see possibilities. Could authors of studies being reviewed write responses and pose questions regarding how their work is represented within research syntheses? Could research syntheses coauthored by scholars whose work stems from different ideological perspectives provide contrasting simultaneous views of the field of literacy teacher education?

We suggest that synthesizing studies with competing frames (“functionalist,” “sociocultural,” “critical”) in which key theoretical assertions, disciplinary groundings, and methodological practices are put alongside one another may further the transformative power of research syntheses. In this way, multiplicity becomes vivid and takes hold, disrupting our collective tendency to fall into comfortable silos where singular stances are more easily fortified and protected. Such integrative research syntheses could interrupt monolithic flows, highlight contrasting views, expose structures of power and marginalization, and perhaps build synergy between disparate theoretical frames, disciplines, and methodologies. But if, as Ahmed (2017) argues, momentum is a function and consequence of power, how do we create alternative and enduring momentums in teacher education? In other words, how do we make dialogicality and multiplicity momentous?

The Future of Research Reviews

The CITE-ITEL project (upon which the reviews in this issue are built) offers a potential model for how research syntheses might take on such multiplicity and dialogicality. Deriving its name from its expressed goal of providing a Critical, Interactive, Transparent, and Evolving literature review in Initial Teacher Education in Literacy, CITE-ITEL is a web-based platform that serves as a “living” literature review (see Maloch & Dávila, this issue, for additional description, or https://cite.edb.utexas.edu/). Designed and maintained by a team of scholars housed at the University of Texas at Austin, and supported by the Literacy Research Association, the platform currently is used as a forum for generating, accessing, and discussing literature in the area of initial literacy teacher preparation (although its structure may be used for additional research reviews). Its interactive features allow users to comment on or correct errors in syntheses of research, recommend articles that were omitted, and dialogue with other scholars. CITE-ITEL is also “living” in the sense that it “grows” by 2 years annually, with the addition of literature from 1 year further back in time and literature from each current year.

CITE-ITEL’s structure embraces and utilizes both multiplicity and dialogicality by creating a fluid and collaborative space, bursting apart otherwise static structures for the construction of literature syntheses, such as time frames and traditional divides between producers and consumers of the research base. Unlike traditional academic publishing outlets, CITE-ITEL is free and open to all, enabling its use for a wide array of purposes in addition to academia. For example, it could be used to respond to or initiate policy and as a resource for teacher educators as they collaborate with school partners.

Conclusion

In this Insight essay, we have attempted to highlight how the integrative research synthesis as a scholarly genre can interrupt dominant flows within literacy teacher education by creating sites of disruption and dialogue. We have also suggested possibilities for further developing the integrative research review that can inspire new channels by breaking open dominant flows of information, beliefs, and practices. The goal of bursting open dominant flows of discourse, information, beliefs, and practices is to understand their momentum; to see, explore, and engage with what we find to “work the ruins” (St. Pierre & Pillow, 1999); and to redistribute those flows or create new and more equitable divergent ones. Oftentimes, this means being willing to get in the way—to be seen as “out of line” (Ahmed, 2017). We see the integrative research synthesis as one way to achieve these goals, which are critical to the well-being of any scholarly community.