Cross currents: research frames and methodology
As the research lenses enlisted by researchers and theorists have shifted, so our understandings of literacy have changed. The waves of development in literacy education research represent shifts in the frames of reference that govern inquiry. These different frames of reference befit what some might consider theoretical constructs, paradigms, or shared orientations—acting like cross currents […]
Global wave
Amidst the global flow of people and goods and an increased appreciation of the importance of our diversity ecologically and epistemologically, global meaning-making that involves exploring our reading of the world and in the world including our reading of the systems that operate and provide affordances that shape our multiple identities as we traverse cultures and […]
Digital literacies
The nature of literacy has changed seismically as the digital wave moved us toward new forms of literacies including how readers negotiate their lives and literacies more in a fashion akin to digital readers living in the media.
The era of reform
In the last 25 years, in various countries, we have seen a rise wave in government reform of education where governments have inserted controls on what is taught and how under the banner of accountability And, to ensure compliance, schools are audited and students tested in terms of their mastery of the pre-set standards of […]
New assessment paradigms
The role of testing received intense scrutiny as its impacts upon teaching and learning were questioned. The interrogation of testing practices led to major shifts in what was assessed, why, how and by whom. It led to developments around authentic assessment and student-led assessment and readers involved in self-assessment at the same time as high stakes assessment achieved […]
The critical wave
Critical literacies bring to the study of literacy work in sociology especially by Marxist scholars and French sociologists examining how position and power are intertwined with our engagements with texts. The critical wave brings to literacy recognition of its interface with power and privilege equity and diversity along with activism challenging reproductive inequities. It brought to the […]
The social wave
The social turn shifts our views of reading and writing from “inside the head” to social processes involving acts, practices, people and events as integral to the meaning making that occurs and goals that are pursued. The reader was viewed as involved in a range of social negotiations with social systems, peers and authors.
Reading-writing relationships
Reading and writing development explores major changes in our thinking and practices as writing researchers and educators reconceptualized reading and writing as composing processes that worked together. These developments marked major changes in our thinking on the nature of reading development and its separation from writing and the beginnings of reading and writing intertwined as literacy. These […]
Learning to learn
Learning to learn and metacognition addresses a major vexing matter– the issue of whether or not comprehension and reading development can be enhanced and accelerated by teaching focused upon strategic learning and reader awareness. This wave explores what we learned from research on developing independent and strategic readers—especially comprehenders.
Cognitive turn
The first major wave discussed is related to the Constructivist reader and the Cognitive turn. The shift to cognition over behaviorism is viewed by many as the major zeitgeist of the last 100 hundred years and led to major shifts in our views of the mind and learning as well as reading. Spurred by studies of language […]