Abstract
Education stakeholders receive a multitude of public-facing messages about literacy teaching and learning. We identify the messages literacy researchers communicate to a public audience by analyzing 59 interviews of the Classroom Caffeine podcast. Findings indicate four key messages conveyed to educators and the public: (1) Researchers emphasize the social, intimate, and action-oriented nature of literacy, highlighting the importance of comprehensive instruction, diverse materials, and student choice; (2) they stress the human element in education, advocating for teacher expertise, student-centered practices, and strong relationships; (3) scholars also critique power structures and policies that constrain effective teaching; (4) calling for more open and adaptable views of education. These findings reflect tensions between education research, literacy teaching, and the enactment of educational policies.
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The Science of Reading trend and its presence in public discourse has led to several U.S. states implementing legislation specifying that certain educational practices must be utilized while others may not. As one example, Florida House Bill 7039 requires that phonics instruction be the primary strategy for teaching students to read and, further, that there be no mention of the three-cueing system which encourages students to use meaning and orthographic cues to solve unknown words (Florida Legislature, 2024). Many literacy experts argue that there are multiple effective ways to teach reading (see e.g., Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021; Lee et al., 2020; Tierney & Pearson, 2024), and that approaches should be tailored to students’ unique strengths and needs. Current policy discourse often treats literacy as a discreet, technical skillset where readers must decode, drill, and isolate skills to be leveraged across subject areas. Against this backdrop, researchers consistently emphasize literacies as a nuanced, complex, and social practice, that may be shaped through interaction, identity, and purpose. As a result, teachers often find themselves caught between supporting individual learners and following policy implementation guidelines.
Working within these constrained realities, teachers have leveraged their own multimodal and intertextual literacies as ways to gain access to professional learning through formats such as webinars, social media, and podcasts. As digital technologies’ gain popularity for accessing information and influencing policy, education researchers have begun to seriously reconsider the ways in which research translates into classroom practice. Yet, questions remain about how we, as a scholarly community, can support teachers’ autonomous access to and application of education research within practice (Fischman et al., 2018), especially with a complex and nuanced issue such as the Science of Reading. One way to respond to these questions is to share research through widely accessibly platforms and reflect on the messaging that scholars disseminate to the public. Our goal with this study is to synthesize scholars’ key messages to create guideposts for teachers and stakeholders who must navigate and critically understand public conversations around literacies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze a selection of content centered on the public messages education stakeholders possibly receive from the academic community through one scholarly podcast.
Podcasts are a popular way to get information. Recent polls suggest that more than half of adults listen to podcasts with “learning” stated as a major reason for listening to shows (Shearer et al., 2023). Fundamentally, podcasting is an efficient, accessible, and multimodal means of communicating with an interested community (Dong et al., 2021; Lim & Swenson, 2021; Naff, 2020). Podcasts have the capacity to convey a humanized experience of research (Diebold et al., 2020) through conversational anecdotes. Anecdotes shared through a podcast in the form of stories can translate specialized research communication structures into a narrative, making them conceptually different from traditional academic publishing. Both writing about research and storytelling about research are inherently reductive acts. However, writing for research publication reduces experience in service of epistemic clarity and normative rigor, whereas storytelling about research is reductive in service of meaning, connection, and human sensemaking. As a form of oral storytelling about research, scholarly podcasts can democratize knowledge acquisition by making research more accessible and freely available to a broad audience (Persohn & Branson, 2025).
The author team hosts and produces a scholarly podcast specifically designed to share the stories of literacy research, and these episodes represent the corpus of data for this study. Although studying our own podcast may seem like a conflict of interest, we justify the use of our podcast for the following reasons. The podcast offers one set of oral stories from both long-standing, influential scholars as well as scholars who are newer in the field. Many guests on the show are highly cited and well-recognized. As of January 2026, it has been downloaded nearly 40,000 times and has reached listeners in 129 countries and territories. It is considered in the top 10% of over 3.4 million podcasts worldwide (Listen Notes, n.d.). Classroom Caffeine has a Podcast Success Index (Singh et al., 2016) of 1.14 (which has been likened to a journal impact factor by Danford et al., 2022). Respondents to our ongoing listener survey indicate that they seek information about how to apply research to their K–12 classroom practice. Listeners also indicate that they share the show with their “teacher friends.” Taken together, these data points suggest that the Classroom Caffeine podcast informs a public audience.
The question central to the podcast and to the corpus of data in this study is: “What would you like listeners to know about your work?” The target audience of the show is teachers, and so the expert guests are invited to share stories for an imagined/real audience of individuals who support youth in classrooms, as well as preservice teachers. This question semi-structures a large portion of the conversations on the podcast as guests convey the aspects of their experiences and research they choose to feature. This consistent, open interview style lends itself well to data analysis.
In this study, we work to answer the research question: “What do literacy researchers narrate across their work when addressing public audiences on a podcast?” We strive to thematically understand the messages shared by scholarly guests to succinctly add to the ongoing public dialogue about literacy research. We analyzed episodes of the scholarly podcast Classroom Caffeine using a content analysis methodology to help us identify themes in researchers’ messages as they shared narratives about their scholarship. Situated within a contemporary climate of political scrutiny and narrowed conceptions of literacy, this synthesis identifies the ideas literacy researchers most consistently foreground when given a narrative public-facing space. Across stories, researchers emphasize literacy as social and action-oriented, education as fundamentally human, policy as a shaping force of power, and the need for openness and adaptability.
Theoretical Frame and Connections to the Literature
Central to our theoretical approach is the understanding that literacy is not confined to traditional forms of reading and writing but encompasses a broad spectrum of communicative acts within sociocultural contexts. As the world has become increasingly multimodal and intertextual, the field of literacy has responded in ways that consider “reading” as an act no longer confined to print-based texts. Therefore, we define literacy as “reading the world,” after Paulo Freire (Freire & Slover, 1983). Literacy includes broad socio-cognitive sense-making of texts at the individual, local, and global level. For educators, and especially for educators in the United States, reading the world through an expansive definition of literacy has become increasingly complex and overtly politically charged.
As a support for expanding conceptions of literacy while disseminating literacy research for public and practitioner use, the author team hosts and produces a scholarly podcast. We talk with scholars and expert educators about what they want teachers (our target audience) to know about their work. As producers of the show, we support both practitioners and researchers in our field. In this way, we view the Classroom Caffeine podcast, and, thereby, members of our podcast team, as Sponsors of Literacy (Brandt, 1998). Sponsors of Literacy have been defined as “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt, 1998, p. 166, 2001, p. 19). The concept of Sponsors of Literacy is important to our theoretical framework for the podcast as well as the current analysis because podcasts have the potential to influence public concepts of literacies as well as literacy instruction.
We also draw on the theoretical framework of knowledge mobilization (Boyer, 1996). Knowledge mobilization is “an umbrella term encompassing a wide range of activities relating to the production and use of research results, including knowledge synthesis, dissemination, transfer, exchange, and co-creation or co-production by researchers and knowledge users” (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [SSHRC], 2025, para 3). Conveying research knowledge to interested public audiences is a challenge that exists across disciplines (Persohn & Branson, 2024). Researchers in medicine (Dong et al., 2021; Nwosu et al., 2017), social work (Fronek et al., 2016; Singer, 2019), agriculture (Lim & Swenson, 2021), and education (Naff, 2020) have studied podcasting as a tool to disseminate research for use by practitioners. Scarcity of practitioners’ time and attention to locate, read, absorb, and apply research contributes to persistent challenges in knowledge mobilization. Furthermore, the cost, generic conventions, and complexity of traditional print academic texts also create obstacles in knowledge mobilization.
Greenhow and Gleason (2014) suggest we, as researchers, can “evolve the ways in which scholarship is accomplished in academia” (p. 394). One way that scholars mobilize knowledge is through social scholarship. Social scholarship (Singer, 2019) is defined by scholars’ leveraging of social media tools and platforms to create, distribute, and engage the public with academic work. Podcasts are one type of social scholarship that supports interactive and collaborative communities both offline and online (Persohn & Branson, 2025). Scholarly podcasting has been found to demonstrate increased visibility, approachability, and applicability of research ideas through podcasts (see e.g., Dong et al., 2021; Fronek et al., 2016; Naff, 2020; Persohn & Branson, 2025; Singer, 2019). In podcasts, spoken, personal anecdotes emphasize lived experiences through the speakers’ voices. Speakers have the opportunity to share “literacy events that [may] otherwise be forgotten and hidden” (Duffy, 2007, p. 88) in the body of traditional research outputs. Podcasts differ from written accounts of research because the aural mode points to a particular tolerance of spoken language for unfinished thoughts, looping back to previously stated ideas, and conveying the sense of a word (Vygotsky, 1962/1970, p. 146). Podcasts can offer a public audience situated understandings of knowledge explained in the voice of the expert, leveraging conventions and affordances of talk over type.
Our previous research has explored how the messages shared on the show may impact listeners’ ideas and practices. In the Summer of 2022, we conducted a pilot study (Persohn et al., 2025) wherein we invited primary grade teachers at one elementary school to come together to tell us what they viewed as their professional learning interests and needs. We provided suggested playlists of podcast episodes related to those interests, then brought participants together to talk about what they heard. We found that participants took up specific phrasing from the podcast, shifting some deficit-oriented language to the asset-based language of the podcast guests. Throughout these “Pod Club” meetings, we noted how the discussion of the shared text formed patterns of uptake between the podcast content, listener, and group. With these findings, Pod Club participants used the podcast and Pod Club space as a “ready response” to upcoming challenges they anticipated facing in the new school year.
Our Pod Club study demonstrates that the messages teachers receive from sources impact their thinking. This finding led us to ask what public-facing messages teachers may be receiving from the podcast we host and produce. We hope to simplify and elevate scholars’ key messaging to coalesce ideas that matter across a wide variety of literacy researchers’ work, so these ideas may be put forth into the public domain to counter or enrich other public discourses around literacy topics.
In the spirit of knowledge mobilization (Boyer, 1996) and social scholarship (Singer, 2019), we identify and analyze the messages disseminated through the podcast to a public audience. In this study, we work to answer the research question: “What do literacy researchers narrate across their work when addressing public audiences on a podcast?” We aim to better understand themes across specialized literacy research areas discussed by the scholarly guests from this public and conversational standpoint. We analyzed 59 episodes of the scholarly podcast Classroom Caffeine using a content analysis methodology to help us identify themes in researchers’ messages as they shared narratives about their scholarship.
Data Sources
The sample analyzed in this study draws specifically on episodes of the Classroom Caffeine podcast. The show is designed to support the translation and mobilization of literacy research to classroom practice. The Classroom Caffeine podcast episodes offer conversational stories from guests who speak from a wide range of research, professional, and personal experiences (see Table 1). We contacted potential guests for the show through snowball sampling, direct recruitment based on listeners’ requests related to guests’ areas of expertise, and personal contacts at research conferences. These guests include professors of all ranks from Assistant to Emeritus, Endowed Chairs, and Center Directors. Many guests on the show are highly cited and well-recognized. They have served as leaders of national and international education organizations (e.g., Literacy Research Association, International Literacy Association, American Educational Research Association, etc.). They are members of the Reading Hall of Fame, Research Fellows for the National Academy of Education, and the like. They are award winners. There are awards named in their honor. They are journal editors and reviewers. They teach and lead literacy and education initiatives locally and globally.
Featured Episode Guests in Order of Release Date
For this analysis, we included episodes (n = 59) from all guests who hold terminal degrees in literacy or a related field, and/or work or have worked in literacy in higher education. Through the podcast episodes, these guests shared research about literacy from a broad range of subtopics, including instruction of foundational reading skills to vocabulary development, writing instruction, children’s literature, multiliteracies, disciplinary literacies, as well as literacy factors like motivation, engagement, identity, and culturally responsive instruction. Part of our goal in this study is to understand how a variety of perspectives can be interpreted to convey themes from literacy research. Episodes range from about 20 minutes to just under an hour, because the podcast format allows for guests to talk as concisely or for as long as they like.
We felt it was important to attain Institutional Review Board approval for our study and consent directly from guests despite the podcast being hosted in the public domain of the internet. Our position as host and producer allowed us to gain explicit consent. Of 67 consent forms sent to past guests who met our inclusion criteria in this study, 59 agreed to participate, while eight declined to participate or did not respond within a 30-day window.
Content Analysis Methods
Coding
After establishing inclusion criteria for this content analysis (i.e., literacy scholars by training or job role, signed consent to participate), we uploaded episode transcripts into a MAXQDA database. Consistent with good practice in content analysis, we began by piloting a coding system with a set of episodes before studying the larger corpus (Krippendorff, 2013). We selected three episodes that featured scholarly guests whose research stream aligns with different specialties in literacy. Additionally, we chose episodes from different seasons in the show to ensure that there was consistency in coding across the lifespan of the show. As with any project, a podcast program may evolve over time and can change in form and format as it develops and responds to challenges and opportunities (Persohn et al., 2024). However, we have found the three questions that frame each Classroom Caffeine interview provided a stable structure for our systematic coding and subsequent analysis. As our research question concerned what literacy researchers have to tell public audiences, we selected scholarly guests’ responses to the second question (“What do you want listeners to know about your work?”) as the sample. This portion of the show tends to highlight the guests’ research findings in a storied way, whereas the first question in each semi-structured podcast conversation (“From your own experiences in education, will you share with us one or two experiences that inform your thinking now?”) asks guests to recall experiences. Responses to the third question (“What message do you want teachers to hear?”) tend to be brief messages of hope and gratitude for teachers and the work they do in schools, often loosely connected to the guests’ research findings. During the pilot analysis, we asynchronously coded all three episodes. Then, we met to decide on an operational definition of the analysis unit and establish rules on how to distinguish the messages of each transcript (Krippendorff, 2013). We define a “message” as a summative and/or significant point, especially one that has educative, social, moral, or political importance. Operationalizing messages as our data point was a purposeful decision with the aim of taking varied literacy perspectives and identifying big ideas in order to make them more publicly accessible. Our discussion and clarification of the codes allowed us to reach interrater reliability and robust sense-making of each guest’s message. Therefore, we ultimately decided to code the data together.
After the initial pilot round of coding, we selected three more episodes to pilot a collaborative coding process. One member of the team read the transcript excerpt aloud while the other team member listened. At natural breaks in the podcast conversations (i.e., paragraph breaks or conversational turns), one of us would identify the message(s) we heard the podcast guest conveying to listeners. We then worked collaboratively to refine each message to a three-to-seven-word code, identifying agreed-upon key ideas conveyed by the guest. These summative statements constitute the “messages” we coded from the episodes. We did not seek a predetermined number of messages. We would often read the passage more than once to confirm our coding. If a message was reiterated, we would agree that there was no new message in a passage, attaching no new codes to the text. This process allowed us to fully operationalize our coding technique, which we applied to the remaining corpus of data.
During the pilot coding phase, we found that the guests often signaled their messages to listeners by using key phrases such as “this is important,” “I think,” and “I know.” These words became part of a systematic technique that guided our identification of messages expressed by the podcast guest. We used these keyword phrases to refine our coding process. Additionally, we became interested in who the guest was speaking about in their message (e.g., teachers, policymakers, administrators, researchers). Therefore, we paid close attention to pronouns and direct objects within each message. This allowed us to identify who or what group was the subject and object of the message or simply what the idea was about. Additionally, the messages often had an intended audience. So, we used color-coding to indicate what subgroup of listeners the message may have been intended for (e.g., teachers, administrators, policymakers, researchers, or the general public).
Occasionally, a podcast guest told stories of their work that did not include the key phrases but implied (rather than explicitly stated) their message. Here, our analysis approach involved the negotiation of meaning, where we drew upon direct quotes from guests, the topic of their story, and our own knowledge of the guests’ body of work. In these instances, we identified shifts in narrative style (e.g. moving from a story to advice) and repeated words. From those shifts, we identified key terms then negotiated a message. For example, Alfred Tatum (Episode 47) stated: I’ve seen young boys tilt toward the sunlight, when they get a rich and meaningful literacy experience. And I’m going to continue to move in that direction without equivocation, to make sure that I play a small part, to interrupt that hierarchy that leads to national conversations where these boys are at the bottom of the queue. Not just physically but in people’s imagination.
We identified these statements as an indirect message because of the shift from metaphor to an axiological stance, evidenced in the guest’s body of research. In this example, the scholarly guest’s body of work centers on the advancement of literacy development for African American boys. With this knowledge and the context of the remainder of his episode, we synthesized the message and crafted the code “interrupt systemic racism in literacy learning” (see Table 2 for additional examples).
Sample Analysis of Defining the Coded Message From Podcast Transcript
Thematic Analysis Technique
Following Krippendorff’s (2013) methods for content analysis, our next steps involved thematic mapping or clustering of codes. In MAXQDA, and through synchronous meetings, we clustered codes in categories with similar topics. We grouped codes with matching verbiage to create categories. When multiple topics were present (e.g., if both families and teachers were in the code), we identified which main subject of the code was taking action to determine appropriate grouping. At times, we also grouped synonymous terms (e.g. instructors/educators/teachers, or children/students/learners). Codes that did not clearly align with a category on first read were set aside and discussed further after the groupings solidified. Once we sorted all the codes, we created interpretive categories of Relationships (34 coded segments), Literacies (87 coded segments), Teachers and Teaching (78 coded segments), Research (35 coded segments), Equity (42 coded segments), and Professionalism (33 coded segments).
However, we felt that more needed to be done to respond to the research question: “What do literacy researchers narrate across their work when addressing public audiences on a podcast?” We then represented each of these categories through color coding, printed the codes onto slips of paper, and met in person to organize the codes in a way that helped us arrive at statements indicating a thematic interpretation of these messages. In a process similar to our digital categorizing, we read the codes again and considered the message, who the message was about, and who the message was intended for. We sorted most messages into the categories of teachers, materials/methods related to education (which we dubbed “the ‘stuff’ of teaching”), and students/learners. Then, we were left with just 35 codes that notably conveyed broad ideas or conceptual takeaways from the podcast guests’ messages. We identified similarities within the broad ideas. These conceptual messages helped us to draft sentences that eventually constituted the big ideas being conveyed by literacy researchers. With themes solidified, we resorted the messages relatively quickly, arriving at a matrix of codes (see Figure 1 for the complete process).
Coding and thematic analysis process.
Assertions by Category
In our analysis of 59 Classroom Caffeine podcast episodes, we coded 237 messages from literacy scholars. From these segments, we identified four main themes that encapsulate the messages conveyed by literacy scholars to a public audience through this podcast platform:
Literacy is social, intimate, and action-oriented.
Every aspect of education has a human element.
Power structures and policies shape what happens in schools.
Views of education must be open and adaptive.
In the following sections, we define each theme, present the broad ideas that constitute its definition, and share supporting evidence in the form of guests’ quotes and our coded messages. See Table 3 for examples of each category and theme. These quotes are intended to illustrate our methods, demonstrate the storytelling nature of how research findings are conveyed through the podcast program, and elucidate the key messages in the theme. With the modal shift between auditory and written word, we have removed some conversational phrasing (e.g., “like” or “you know”) when it confuses the message as it appears in writing.
Examples of Codes in Each Category and Theme
Literacy is Social, Intimate, and Action-Oriented
While all episodes included in this study featured literacy researchers, only one-third of all coded segments specifically featured messages about literacy. Researchers collectively defined literacy as social, intimate, and action-oriented. Researchers communicated that literacy encompasses a broad range of meaning-making processes from cultural, personal, and community-based sources. Within this theme, seven literacy messages centered on teachers, 49 on the materials and methods of literacy teaching, and 14 on literacy learners.
Literacy is Social, Intimate, and Action-Oriented: Messages About Teachers
Seven messages from seven literacy scholars focused on literacy and teachers. Researchers called on teachers to consider the influence they may have on students’ literacy learning. For example, Carol Lee (Episode 17) discussed her work on developing and researching comprehensive literacy curriculums that address the “whole child”; that bringing together students’ skills and social contexts is the very thing that makes teaching a creative and challenging endeavor: We have to, as teachers, engage in deep analysis of the demands—what Lee Shulman called pedagogical content knowledge–the deep demands of the of the task in these content areas that they were asking students to engage in, and then having to do the work of figuring out what is it that kids bring to this enterprise. . . . And that is a, I hope, one takeaway for teachers. (Lee, Episode 17)
Scholars also stated that within classrooms, teachers have the opportunity to share books in ways that foster social imagination and connection (Gunn, Episode 43; Bennett, Episode 44; Johnston, Episode 21). In his episode, Peter Johnston (Episode 21) shared a vignette about a study he conducted with eighth graders, in which the teachers wanted to study engagement with books, so they gave the learners books to read with “no strings attached” (Johnston, Episode 21). He shared: They introduced the books at the beginning of the year by reading or having previous students read brief, juicy bits, and inviting the kids to sign up for books they found interesting. And also they stopped asking comprehension questions. Because if you want to kill engagement, you just ask comprehension questions. So instead, they just use open prompts like, “catch me up” or “what are you thinking?” and they wove instruction into the conversations around a read aloud book, which they chose as something that kids were likely to . . . find engaging. (Johnston, Episode 21)
Teachers in this study described by Johnston (Episode 21) found an increase in engagement, test scores, and talk about books, leading to this guests’ message that teachers can inspire a radical change in reading that is more intimate and socially just, by changing a few elements. Overall, the scholars noted how teachers’ actions in literacy instruction have an impact on how literacy is perceived and taken up by students. Here, these literacy researchers offered a perspective of literacy as action oriented beyond teachers’ enactment of “single factor fixes” (Pearson, Episode 29).
Literacy is Social, Intimate, and Action-Oriented: Messages About Materials and Methods
Scholars’ messages about literacy mostly centered on the materials and methods within literacy spaces. The researchers’ heavy emphasis on materials and methods of literacy teaching indicates that the materials and methods matter greatly in making literacy actionable, social, and intimate (Kerkhoff, Episode 54; Mason, Episode 59; Risko, Episode 16). Many scholarly guests offered specific pedagogical considerations for a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction, including unconstrained skills (Ivey, Episode 31; Johnston, Episode 21; Kerkhoff, Episode 54; Lapp, Episode 9; Mason, Episode 59; Petrone, Episode 57; Rasinski, Episode 10; Tierney, Episode 36). For example, Vicki Risko (Episode 16) discussed current discourses on fixing reading difficulties and the amount of misinformation out there, to which he declared that “phonics is necessary, but it’s not sufficient” (Risko, Episode 16). Similarly, Rob Tierney (Episode 36) shared “a lot of the stuff going on in beginning reading, it’s displacing reading for meaning; my encouragement for teachers is make sure what you’re doing has meaning for the students” (Tierney, Episode 36).
A smaller portion of the messages about the methods of teaching literacy gave specific advice for approaches related to technical skills of reading, typically referred to as constrained skills (Harris, Episode 51; Johns, Episode 6; Neuman, Episode 14; Rasinski, Episode 10). For example, Jerry Johns (Episode 6), discussed his work on updating the Dolch word list, stating: I do want to say that if teachers can be committed to helping students master a list of 100, or 200 words, they can pretty much be content to know that those students will know at least half or more of the words in print. (Johns, Episode 6)
This technical advice was reiterated by Susan Neuman (Episode 14) who stated, “We know this is very important, frequency and repetition. So, in other words, these children will need to hear the same things again and again, even up to 28 repetitions before children actually learn the words” (Neuman, Episode 14). With these examples, we found that literacy scholars span the continuum in their approach to teaching literacy, both technical and comprehensive, with specific and, at times, conflicting messages about literacy methods.
In addition to the methods of teaching literacy, tools were frequently mentioned as mediators of literacy. Scholarly guests noted how technology gives learners a variety of ways to express themselves, which is important for literacy learning (Gunn, Episode 43; McCarthey, Episode 46; Pandya, Episode 23; Schneider, Episode 5; Serafini, Episode 18). To this point Jessica Pandya (Episode 23) talked about the balance between teaching students handwriting versus the digital skills they may need now, like typing: I think we’re all in a little bit of a gray area there with respect to how much should kids do with handwriting. And now, how much typing should your average third grader be doing, for instance? And then versus how much other kinds of composing in addition to those kinds of writing. So, it’s a really interesting time to be a teacher and also to be a researcher asking and looking at these questions. (Pandya, Episode 23)
For the scholars on the Classroom Caffeine podcast, the materials and methods of literacy teaching can make literacy actionable, social, and intimate. Scholars emphasized the need for a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction, including both unconstrained skills like reading for meaning and constrained skills like phonics. Overall, scholarly guests suggested that literacy instruction should be multifaceted, incorporating various methods, materials, and tools to create a relevant and engaging learning experience (Beach, Episode 37; Lemley, Episode 56).
Literacy is Social, Intimate, and Action-Oriented: Messages About Learners
We identified 14 messages that centered literacy and learners. These messages also affirm the larger theme that literacy is social, intimate, and action oriented. For example, in his episode, Jim King (Episode 2) explicitly indicated that literacy is social. He stated that in all his experience “if you can find . . . the social space that creates the “why” . . . learning to read is not that hard” (King, Episode 2). Within this theme, researchers stated that the relationship between children and their literacy practices can be actuated by the learner and their experiences with books. As Gay Ivey (Episode 31) noted in an anecdote about a study on book choice in middle schools: We [had] children who read 100 books in a year, and we had kids who read 10 books in a year, and they had never read books before. But it wasn’t the volume of reading that mattered as much. It wasn’t the volume; it was the fabric of their experiences around the books that mattered. (Ivey, Episode 31)
This message, that kids form unique relationships with and around texts, is reiterated by Dixie Massey (Episode 34). She stated: Books are a starting point—and students being able to choose. Now, if you have a classroom of students who are going to choose test passages and computer passages, well, I guess that’s a different deal entirely. But I’ve yet to meet that student. And the relationship that a student forms with a text is unique and I don’t think that we take that into account enough. (Massey, Episode 34)
Centering learners’ choices in book selection supported children’s right to read what they want (Walker-Dalhouse, Episode 8; Ivey, Episode 31).
Every Aspect of Education Has a Human Element
Researchers in the corpus of data most frequently cited the theme every aspect of education has a human element. We interpreted the human element as an integral part of education through coded messages such as: research findings tell us when something can work but humans bring variation (Shanahan, Episode 13) and education has multiple human dimensions (Leander, Episode 30). Within this theme, 22 messages centered on teachers, 30 centered on materials and methods, and 30 centered on learners. This suggests that literacy researchers on the podcast see the human element as central to all aspects of education.
Every Aspect of Education Has a Human Element: Messages About Teachers
As scholars shared their insights about education, they noted the importance of considering teachers as humans as well as professionals. For example, Mandie Dunn (Episode 45) discussed her extensive work with English teachers in the aftermath of experiencing death and loss of loved ones. She stated “we can’t really separate curriculum from our identities or from our relationships. . . . I want teachers to know that . . . it’s okay to have emotions” (Dunn, Episode 45). Furthermore, as teachers are humans learning a profession, (Lapp, Episode 9) suggested that “the whole world should stop criticizing a second-year teacher because he or she can’t handle all the differences of instruction going on or different needs that are being evidenced in a classroom” (Lapp, Episode 9). This coded message is reiterated by Rachael Gabriel (Episode 50) who indicated that the way teachers are treated trickles down into interactions with colleagues and students. Within this category, scholars humanized teachers despite education policies and practices that often do not. In his episode, Kevin Leander (Episode 30) connected the ability for teachers to show up as humans as part of building the relationships necessary for learning: “Every teacher brings for the most part . . . themselves to the classrooms. That’s what they bring . . . and to be able to give people permission to say, you know, showing up as yourself and the teaching is fundamentally relational” (Leander, Episode 30). Additionally, scholarly guests implored teachers to build relationships with students because learning is human and learning is more successful when teachers consider their students’ whole identity and context (Smagorinsky, Episode 11), including the students’ family (Risko, Episode 16; Compton-Lily, Episode 58; Edwards, Episode 4), gender and sexuality (Dunkerly-Bean, Episode 25), participation styles (Afolalu, Episode 53) or how the students perceive themselves (Hall, Episode 12). Taken together, these messages articulate the broader idea that every aspect of education has a human element, from the teachers themselves to their relationships with learners.
Every Aspect of Education Has a Human Element: Messages About Materials and Methods
We identified 30 messages about the materials and methods used in facilitating human elements of education. Here scholars emphasized the idea that doing the work of teaching is figuring out what youth bring to learning and responding in situ. Carol Lee (Episode 17) connected her work on social emotional learning to curriculum design, noting that relationships and identity are key to teaching, and, “the point of it is: you can’t buy it” (Lee, Episode 17) as the enterprise of teaching requires human interaction. Relatedly, Robert Petrone asked, “What if the measure of a successful curriculum was how much the teacher learned? . . . How can I learn from these students?” (Petrone, Episode 57).
In these messages, teachers can use methods and materials to make intentional connections between learners’ lives and learning objectives. As Peter Afflerbach (Episode 15) stated, I think one of the keys there, again, is if we go back to the idea that kids know that language is meaningful and useful, then focus on use. How can we take reading assignments, and then turn them into kids’ applications, synthesis, analysis of what they’ve read in a meaningful way. (Afflerbach, Episode 15).
Similarly, in order to achieve meaningful purposes in teaching, Cynthia Brock (Episode 49) suggested planning curriculums with the end in mind: One thing that struck us is that we figured that their learning could be fostered more effectively, if I as the teacher had done a more thoughtful and careful job of thinking about this notion of beginning with the end in mind . . . this notion of what is it that we’re aiming for, and how can we use what it is that we’re aiming for, in our immediate context, to try to do a more productive job of fostering learning opportunities to bring about some of what it is that we’re aiming for? (Brock, Episode 49)
Scholars brought attention to the need for responsiveness in differentiating instruction (Dressman, Episode 42; Hadley, Episode 35), providing cognitive challenge (Robertson, Episode 55), and applying research to practice (Vaughn, Episode 34). Therefore, the material and methods of education must leverage the human elements between teachers, students, and instruction.
Every Aspect of Education Has a Human Element: Messages About Students
Scholars’ messages about education positioned learners as the most important factor in learning. The message that teachers as well as researchers should “listen to young people” (Rogers, Episode 48; Comber, Episode 40; Schneider, Episode 5; Bean, Episode 20) was directly stated four times within this category. We infer from the short and declarative nature of these messages, repeated more than any other message in a category, that students must be at the center of learning.
In Episode 52, Jerry Harste stated that students should be our “curricular informants.” He posed rhetorical questions that position learners in the center of their literacy learning so that adults can understand: What would school have to be like in order for this kid to be successful? And then I think what that leads to is you begin to see, what does that child currently know and what currently interests them? And how could you build from that particular point? (Harste, Episode 52)
Additionally, this may mean following pathways led by students for expanding our knowledge base (Walker-Dalhouse, Episode 8). Doris Walker-Dalhouse (Episode 8) stated, I think it’s looking for those books, those themes, those visuals within the community, whether they may be art, . . . whether they may be music, but I think it’s broadening our base of knowledge. And as we broaden that base, we establish that opportunity where we can communicate what is working in our classrooms, and using that knowledge to continue to stimulate each other as well as ourselves to further learn and grow. (Walker-Dalhouse, Episode 8)
Within this category, researchers declared that education stakeholders must center the students’ lives as a necessary part of meaningful instruction. James Gee (Episode 39) shared his work on affinity groups and lack of integrating the features that make us human, such as emotion and experience. He noted: A core point is this says that you are no smarter than the experiences you’ve had, right. And if you’re missing an experience that would make you smarter, you’ve got to go out and get it. And it doesn’t matter how quickly or slowly you get it, you gotta get it.
These student experiences must therefore be the starting point for human-centered learning within the classroom.
Power Structures and Policies Shape What Happens in Schools
Some of the researchers in our study provided messages about the power structures and policies within schools. Guests offered support for professional educators to think critically about the implications of educational policy. Guests also shared ways in which educators may navigate translation of policy to find space to do their best work. Within this theme, there were 21 messages related to teachers, 18 related to methods and materials, and nine related to students.
Power Structures and Policies Shape What Happens in Schools: Messages About Teachers
Scholars shared messages (n = 21) about teachers and the policies that influence school systems. In this theme, guests made connections between the political and personal nature of teaching (Panos, Episode 27). These scholars offered direct advice for teachers, with messages addressing teachers with the pronouns “you” (n = 8) or “we” (n = 5). For example, Noah Golden (Episode 28) told teachers, “This is not about me, this is not about you. This is about we, as educators, working with students and their families, what can we do together to transform systems. So we need a collective agency approach” (Golden, Episode 28). This is reiterated by Antonio Lopez (Episode 38) who said, “my belief is that we have to engage [and] we have to utilize the tools that are available to us, because otherwise, you’re not going to make any change.” The scholars advised teachers to create the space for advocacy within existing conditions.
Additionally, many of these researchers prompted teachers to ask questions in order to “push back” (Edwards, Episode 4) against the policies and power structures that impact their teaching (n = 5). They encouraged educators to question, organize their own communities of practice (Dennis, Episode 19), and create sites of resistance (Golden, Episode 28) where “they very often have more agency than they believe” (Dennis, Episode 19). Overall, guests see teachers as more than lesson planners (Comber, Episode 40) and script readers. They are the cultural workers (Golden, Episode 28) on the front lines of social Justice (Dunkerly-Bean, Episode 25) who have the power to “build the conditions for the kind of education that every young person deserves.” (Golden, Episode 28)
Power Structures and Policies Shape What Happens in Schools: Messages About Materials and Methods
We identified 19 messages about the power structures and policies within schools and their unidirectional relationship to materials and methods. Scholars suggested that the policies and power structures in school negatively influence pedagogical methods (Aguilera, Episode 26; Gabriel, Episode 50; Harris, Episode 51; Smith, Episode 33; Tatum, Episode 47). For example, Patriann Smith (Episode 33) commented on the unquestioned acceptance of curricular standards in education. She stated: If we are to truly level the playing field for all children, our work on equity, therefore, I believe, must really begin by returning to those literacy standards . . . as educators, and asking ourselves, who is this standard designed for? Whom does it naturally exclude? Whom does it naturally include? And whose reality does it really overlook?
Although many of the messages in this category focus on the governmental influence on teaching practice and materials, scholars also brought into focus the role that research has had in current debates about reading instruction, known as the Science of Reading (Graham, Episode 41; Pearson, Episode 29; Reinking, Episode 1; Shanahan, Episode 13). Alfred Tatum (Episode 47) discussed the complex relationship between research, public discourse, and teaching methods within classroom: It’s important to understand how we’ve all been positioned to authorize underperformance and failure. It has . . . been through an assessment lens. It has occurred through reckless research. It has been influenced by political naysayers or other naysayers. That just finds a way to imprison reading, writing and intellectual development by smallness. So what I’ve been trying to do over the last couple of years is really shaping the argument that we can move students toward advanced levels of reading, writing, and intellectual development, if we don’t get bogged down by some of the ongoing conversations . . . the science of reading conversation versus complex text or grade level texts. But nowhere in there do you hear the need to nurture intellectual development across the disciplines. (Tatum, Episode 47)
These excerpts exemplify guests’ critical perspectives toward the power structures and policies that influence materials and methods within schools.
Power Structures and Policies Shape What Happens in Schools: Messages About Learners
Scholars noted the influence that policies and power structures have on learners. These messages (n = 9) highlighted one of the biggest dangers in education: the “tendency to go to default deficit positions” (Comber, Episode 40). Researchers discussed how deficit perspectives of students are embedded in the ways that learners are positioned by policies and power structures in school. Often, as shared by Robert Petrone (Episode 57) these deficit positions are enacted through school sanctioned labels that decide who is “gifted and talented” and who is “at risk” (Petrone, Episode 57). He brought up these categories in discussing his ethnographic work on literacies in the skate park, with kids who are labelled with these markers. Either way, (Petrone, Episode 57) stated: These categories have real impact on kids, for better and worse, and, and so it’s a recalibration of how we’re making sense of these kinds of concepts. And so it’s really paying attention to our language, our discourse is that the sort of assumptions we’re bringing to bear stuff like that, and assumptions of school, not just us as individuals, but assumptions of schooling process of assessment, we can start to ask those same questions about all these levels that impact what can happen in classroom.
In order to shift educators away from these deficit labels, researchers noted that teachers can value learner strengths and identities. As Marjorie Faulstich Orellana (Episode 32) stated: It just requires that slight shift, instead of seeing what they did as wrong or misguided or [needing] to be corrected. Look for the things that can be leveraged, that can be bridged, that can be built upon. . . . So a lot of my work has been just showing the complexity of what kids do when they broker language. And then identifying ways that schools could better recognize, value, validate, and build on these practices, help . . . in a culturally sustaining way.
This is also shared by Lakeya Afolalu (Episode 53) who makes the connection between identity, language, and literacy practices.
To think . . . that it’s just objective and just an assignment, . . . that’s not true. And so what I found was that when youth are given the opportunity, the freedom, and especially given a diverse range of ways to communicate, it does impact the social and emotional aspects of our identities. (Afolalu, Episode 53)
Taken together, scholars emphasized the need for learners’ lives and viewpoints to be incorporated into the structures of school. They collectively stated that in order to create lifelong learners, education stakeholders must make the space for learners to initiate learning. In a poignant quote by Peter Johnston (Episode 21), if education seeks to shape generations of learners who are independent, critical thinkers who initiate change, but all learning is initiated by the teacher, then education is actually conveying the message that, “while you’re a kid, I want you to be passive, pliable and obedient” (Johnston, Episode 21).
Views of Education Must be Open and Adaptive
Finally, researchers focused on advocating for open and flexible perspectives in education. These messages emphasized the iterative and sometimes messy nature of teaching, learning, and research. Within this category, scholars took a different stance, speaking from a more general point of view than in other categories, reflecting on the field of education. Their messages often came across as an adage or proverb from Education. A total of 18 messages focused on teachers, 13 focused on materials and methods, and seven focused on learners. We created this category based on coded segments such as: the best and hardest part of teaching is always learning (Compton-Lily, Episode 58); old ideas are not bad ideas, they just need to be reconsidered (Johns, Episode 6); and learning is iterative (Brock, Episode 49).
Views of Education Must Be Open and Adaptive: Messages About Teachers
In this theme, scholars’ messages emphasized that teachers must be allowed the freedom to experiment and implement innovative practices in their classrooms (n = 18). For example, Rachael Gabriel (Episode 50) made a connection between intellectual humility and innovation. She noted that administrators and policy makers need to give space for teachers’ adaptations of curriculums and pedagogies: We want the full repertoire. We want all the colors in the crayon box. We want all the flavors in the spice cabinet. And anybody that wants to limit us to . . . eight colors, or two colors, anybody that says that these things are black and white is lying and or selling something or just confused. And the confusion often comes from oppression. You have not been invited to consider an alternative. It hasn’t been safe for you to consider an alternative. And as a result, you don’t have the intellectual humility to grow the ideas. And in a learning field and a learning profession, we have to always have room to grow. And if we don’t, we’re not going to, and it’s not going to feel right. (Gabriel, Episode 50)
Researchers said that teachers need space to innovate and adapt resources best suited for themselves and their students. This professionalism fosters a sense of trust that allows teachers to envision themselves as part of the future of education. This message is restated by Sarah McCarthey (Episode 46). In her episode, she shared a story about her involvement in an organization open to the perspectives and expertise of teachers, the National Writing Project. She stated: I learned so much from my colleagues, and so much from the teachers who are engaged in the summer Institutes. The prevailing theme is about teachers teaching teachers. And that was such an important lesson for all of us to move away from this idea of, you know, people at the university have all the ideas and let’s just disseminate it and see how teachers take that up. (McCarthey, Episode 46)
Her message, representative of the theme, shared how views of Education must be open and adaptive to teachers’ lives and experiences. Teachers’ experiences and lives influence their pedagogies, practices, and general wellbeing within the profession.
Views of education Must Be Open and Adaptive: Messages About Materials and Methods
Scholars noted how perspectives of teachers need to be open and adaptive, as do perspectives of what is taught and how. Within this theme, scholars’ messages focused on adapting materials and methods to local contexts (n = 13). For Jessica Pandya (Episode 23), this required integrating the materials of students’ everyday literacy practices into school curricula: I think this is all around issues of technology. Because we can share things more broadly, like kids can make podcasts and share them. So for me, as a teacher educator and a former teacher, it boggles the mind a little bit, . . . all the possibilities. So I think it’s a time for teachers to be really intentional and to say, you know, I want the kids to learn about this, or . . . we’re approaching these language arts standards. So how can they [the standards] be shown in this project? And then what is the purpose of showing something to a larger audience? (Pandya, Episode 23)
Many of the researchers, including the one above, provided reflective questions for teachers as they prepare their materials and methods (Aguilera, Episode 26; Lopez, Episode 38; Massey, Episode 34; Pandya, Episode 23; Reinking, Episode 1; Tierney, Episode 36). Their statements help teachers reflect on their methods and materials for instruction. For example, Earl Aguilera, (Episode 26) shared a reflective story about his own assumptions within teaching and provides to the audience the questions that allowed him to reflect on his own perspective within higher education: I [teach] courses in educational technology, and in multicultural education, and just having the space to step back and . . . reflect on—what do we do? Why do we do it? What are the assumptions that are there? Whose interests are we serving? Who are we accountable to? Who are we in relationship with? What are those relationships like?
Scholars’ rhetorical questions emphasized an assumption that teachers have or should have the power to make adaptations to curricula by observing and questioning. By aligning teaching methods to student and school contexts, teachers are set up to critically reflect on the ideologies embedded within curricula (Lopez, Episode 38; Reinking, Episode 1; Tierney, Episode 26).
Furthermore, scholars shared that when teachers are positioned to adapt teaching methods and materials, they are more likely to incorporate teaching methods that are responsive to student learning. As Tim Rasinski (Episode 10) noted, the delivery of instruction then becomes “engaging, fun, and enjoyable,” as teachers can be “an artist as well as a scientist” (Rasinski, Episode 10). In this way, scholars emphasized materials and methods must be adapted to best fit the needs of their students through observation and reflection. This allows for school stakeholders to facilitate more creative and responsive instructional practices.
Views of Education Must Be Open and adaptive: Messages About Learners
We identified seven messages about the importance of education as open and adaptive for learners. Here, researchers situated learners as experts in their instruction (Harste, Episode 52; Johnston, Episode 21; Pacheco, Episode 22; Risko, Episode 16; Smith, Episode 24). One scholar (Smith, Episode 24) described her study about multimodal student composing and shared that educators will not know how to use every single digital tool. We can lean on student digital expertise and that is okay. In fact, she stated that leaning on learner expertise presents a great opportunity: Let those students shine as an expert in the class and maybe give a little mini lesson on how to edit sound with this podcasting software, or how to create a collage in PowerPoint. And so I really welcome those opportunities to let students come forward as the experts when using digital tools. (Smith, Episode 24)
Scholars noted how centering student knowledge opens a pathway to personalized instruction relevant to learners’ interests, passions, and lives (Gee, Episode 39; Lapp, Episode 9; Tatum, Episode 47). From this perspective, researchers stated how approaches to learning must come from an open vision of who students are and what they bring to their education. As James Gee (Episode 39) noted: I’m absolutely convinced that kids will have to . . . have developed passions for something that require really going into depth to something collaborative: people getting real knowledge and being able to share it and teach it and then collaborate with people with different passions together to do something even bigger.
Here, scholars stated that space for authentic learning and the iterative process of incorporating student voice in instruction facilitates an open view of educating youth for the future instead of the past.
Taken together, these themes may suggest a shift in how a variety of stakeholders perceive and promote literacy learning processes and outcomes. For those who make and interpret education policy, these findings may suggest that tighter control on what literacy instruction entails and how it is delivered may not offer the strongest levers for student achievement. For families, these findings may offer additional insights into what kind of practices “count” as literacies for students, and how those literacies may develop through human connection. For teachers, these findings may offer encouragement and reinforcement for long-held beliefs and professional dispositions about how relationships matter in achieving positive educational outcomes. For all stakeholders, these findings may open new doors or complexify conversations about what literacy is and how it works in our lives.
Limitations
We acknowledge several limitations of our data set and our interpretations of these data. While there may not yet be precedent for the use of scholarly podcast transcripts for content analysis, we believe there is value in the selectivity of spoken language, offering opportunity to highlight ideas and stories that appear differently in guests’ body of written work. We utilized transcripts from academically-oriented yet friendly conversations for deep analysis, a purpose podcast guests may not have had in mind when the conversations were recorded. However, these podcast guests, as scholars and educators, have significant experience sharing their ideas and their work with external audiences in this mode through venues like college teaching, conference presentations, and professional development delivery.
Another potential limitation of this analysis relates to participant selection. Participation in Classroom Caffeine is typically by invitation and voluntary, which may shape the perspectives represented in the dataset. Guests who agree to participate are often familiar with the podcast, connected to prior guests within their professional networks, and inclined toward public-facing scholarship. From a qualitative perspective, this does not undermine the credibility of the findings; rather, it situates them within a particular community of literacy researchers. Accordingly, the findings may be best understood as offering transferable insights into how scholars who value public engagement make meaning of their work through podcasting.
Additionally, and inherent in qualitative analysis, the messages and themes we identified are our own interpretations, and we may have misunderstood a guest’s words or read too deeply into their stories. To temper this limitation, we referred to the source text often as we cited our interpretations. Our use of convenience sampling to gather data for this study could also be viewed as a limitation. However, the podcast’s roster of guests was built with intentionality, capturing a diverse range of voices and experiences, and it has had significant reach (with nearly 40,000 downloads in over 125 countries).
Discussion
As we analyzed the data for this study, we identified threads of ideas that hold together categorically. We communicate these themes with the aim of supporting educators to name and describe evidence-based challenges as well as solutions in their own specific education contexts. What these messages offer are not just thoughts and impressions; they are ideas supported by the collective centuries of research and professional experiences conveyed through conversational stories. Stories shape who we are as humans and support cognitive processing through meaning-making, emotional connection, and identity formation (e.g., Gottschall, 2012). Telling stories of research conveys complexities and explains nuances that can be lost in the formalized processes and structures of writing about research.
As we sorted our data, we were struck by the sheer number of messages scholars provide to teachers. In connecting the current political state of teaching, these messages may or may not be helpful in discerning what works best for teaching and learning. At present, in Florida, the state where we teach, work, and live, legislative mandates and localized translation of legislative intent have centered phonics and decoding sometimes to the exclusion of other meaning-making strategies (i.e., FL House Bill 7039 (2024)). There is also a prevalence of misinformation and misguided interpretations of literacies on the internet and sometimes popularized by mainstream media (e.g., the Sold a Story podcast). Simultaneously, in Florida, Iowa, and many other states, parents, community members, and special interest groups continue pushing for bans of children’s books, particularly written for or about traditionally marginalized groups (PEN America, 2024). At the national level, educators are also faced with the dissolution of the federal Department of Education, while, in the meantime, President Trump has appointed former World Wrestling Entertainment’s key figure Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education (Turner, 2025). The interplay of these multiple factors and voices influences the interpretation of policy messages and cultural climate, which has a direct impact on teachers (e.g., Muthanna & Sang, 2023).
During our analysis, we recounted our experiences with the sometimes overwhelming nature of being a classroom teacher, receiving messaging and directives from numerous sources including federal, state, and local policy, district and school leaders, administrative mandates, community members, families, and, importantly, students. Our role as Sponsors of Literacy becomes even more apparent as we navigate the voices to collectively identify “evidence-based solutions to complex problems” (Chapman & Greenhow, 2019, p. 7) in education.
We found that our process of analyzing the podcast content validated many of our experiences and emotions as teacher educators. As Alexandra Panos (Episode 27) states, “Teaching is political and the political is personal.” It helped us to link our own stories to a collective of narratives that, while all unique in their context and situatedness, share many of the same sentiments. As stated by our scholarly guests, we too have tried to hold on to the social, intimate, and action-oriented nature of literacy while teaching discrete skills with the sometimes soulless texts delivered to teachers in shiny boxes of the newest district curriculum purchase. We have been frustrated by the heavy focus on instructional surveillance using decontextualized curricular materials, which often excludes vulnerable learners from the possibility of success by devaluing their own life experiences, interests, and strengths. Over the years, we have felt “disrespected, unappreciated and under attack” by power structures and political agendas that would “[chip] away at how people view us as educators” (Greenhouse, 2023, para 5, 11). We have seen first-hand the brilliant young people in classrooms whose literacies far exceed what could be measured on high-stakes, standardized assessments. We recognize that while these sentiments echo our experiences, they come from the data.
Through this analysis, we find scholarly guests’ messages indicate that teachers are often mandated to enact narrow versions of learning while attempting to leverage the social, intimate, and action-oriented nature of literacy. The stories shared across these podcast episodes help us to articulate that if teachers are not seen as humans, valued for their work and regarded for their expertise in the present, they are not likely to see themselves with a future in teaching. A 2022 Gallup poll indicates that K–12 teachers have the highest rate of burnout of any professional group (Marken & Agrawal, 2022) with K–12 teachers exiting the field at a rate of about 8% per year (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). The collective research indicates that power structures and politics profoundly impact education. Podcast guest Rachael Gabriel (Episode 50) says it best: If teachers are treated as if they don’t know anything, or if they’re treated as if they don’t make good decisions, then, even unconsciously, we often let that kind of trickle down into our understanding, and our interactions with other teachers and with other students.
Future Research
As this data set seemed to affirm many of our own experiences and observations as educators and teacher educators, we wondered how the data might be leveraged to promote public understandings of literacy teaching, texts, and learners. Next steps in this research may include creating and sharing social media assets or one-page flyers, through our podcast platform, to feature talking points about what literacy research indicates.
The future of this work may also include a return to the full data set of the podcast episodes to analyze guests’ responses to the first and third questions in each podcast conversation. By expanding the data set, we are interested in systematically understanding other insights scholarly guests have offered.
Relatedly, as we analyzed our data set, we noticed that scholars who have studied or worked together sometimes contain similar ideas or lines of inquiry. Further analysis of interview data may reveal new pathways to exploring interconnected ideas in a generational manner, as veteran scholars and their former students appear to share like ideas. We see this taking shape as a scholarly family tree, wherein we may trace developments in ideas that are closely related to or inspired by the work of one’s mentor. For instance, guests in some podcast episodes name the work of other scholars who have been influential in their thinking, similar to citations in traditional publications. However, the podcast format provides space for guests to share the story of how the scholarly work of others impacts their own work, centering the storyteller and their experiences. These human experiences—and specifically guests who cite the work of scholars they have studied and published with—led us to connect these ideas based on generational threads of thinking through academic lineage, with some knowledge of who studied with who and at what institutions. For example, in his episode, scholar Earl Aguilera (Episode 26) mentions the work of James Gee (Episode 39).
Additionally, analyzing the content of other education and literacy podcasts may produce themes that confirm, contradict, or enrich the findings of the current study. Through this future work, we aim to mobilize education research in part by distilling research to its critical messages.
Conclusion
Podcasts can offer ideas as highly situated stories of research. This study sheds light on messages from experts in the field of literacy education, who share deep knowledge and connections via a scholarly podcast. Their shared stories suggest that the research community does coalesce around particular ideas—an alignment that can help scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and the public collectively reconsider what we value in literacy.
In fact, one goal of our podcast is to support teachers to gain access to literacy research and utilize it in their specific contexts, our effort to be citizen-scholars (Chapman & Greenhow, 2019). Chapman and Greenhow (2019) describe citizen-scholars as having “a civic responsibility to work toward the generation of accessible, shareable, usable scholarship that informs the public and helps address pressing societal problems” (p. 7). We began the podcast to help teachers navigate the proliferation of (mis)information available as one way to connect knowledge-sharing systems that are not yet well-connected.
In this study, we analyzed scholarly guests’ episodes from the podcast Classroom Caffeine in order to identify “what literacy researchers narrate across their work when addressing public audiences on a podcast.” Our conversations throughout this research led us to consider another question, “Why is teaching often so hard?” We believe these findings point to the inherent tensions created around the work teachers do every day. In a political environment wherein education policy is increasingly narrowly defined and focused on decontextualized solutions, our work points to the educational environment as broadly defined and dependent upon individualized solutions. In short, many policies and laws stand in direct opposition to what education research tells us about good literacy teaching practice and authentic achievement in literacy learning. Through this analysis process, we realize the storied nature of the podcast exceeds our initial purposes, reflecting tensions in the field and collectively sharing a vision for education that centers authentic literacies, teachers as experts, and learners as individuals.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-ero-10.1177_23328584261441213 – Supplemental material for What Are Literacy Researchers Telling Public Audiences? An Analysis of Researcher Interviews Via a Scholarly Podcast
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ero-10.1177_23328584261441213 for What Are Literacy Researchers Telling Public Audiences? An Analysis of Researcher Interviews Via a Scholarly Podcast by Leah Burger and Lindsay Persohn in AERA Open
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Authors
LEAH BURGER is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Florida pursuing her Ph.D. in the College of Education, Department of Literacy. Her research interests center on the youth’s literacies in virtual reality and generative artificial intelligence platforms through the lens of raciolinguistics and play.
LINDSAY PERSOHN, PhD, is an assistant professor of literacy studies in the College of Education at the University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee campus. Lindsay’s current research focuses on storytelling to connect educational research with practical implications.
References
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