Research in the Teaching of English - Volume 46, Issue 2, 2011

In this article, we share findings from our process of “reading the past, writing the future” of elementary research in NCTE’s journals. Our analysis focused on major domains of the field, including literature, writing, reading, language, and multimodal literacies, and spanned Elementary English Review, which first appeared in 1924, was renamed Elementary English in 1947, and became Language Arts in 1975; Primary Voices, which ran from 1993 to 2002; and Research in the Teaching of English (RTE), which began in 1967. Findings revealed both surprising continuities across decades as well as clear and important social and cultural shifts that influenced theory, methods, and practice in the field, emphasizing the importance of 1) recognizing the level of historical and political influences in elementary literacy research, 2) paying explicit attention to how the cultural-historical zeitgeist shapes our work as scholars, and 3) interrogating how our representations of research problems may contribute to the continuance of social and cultural inequities.

Au comments on Elizabeth Dutro and Kathleen Collins's fascinating and broad-ranging review of perspectives and findings in elementary literacy research, based on an examination of roughly 7,700 titles published in NCTE journals.

This study identified historical continuities and discontinuities across a century of secondary research published in English Journal (1912–1966) and Research in the Teaching of English (1967–2011). It highlights considerable methodological continuity across six decades of English Journal and some shifts in research emphases that tended to echo changing emphases in psychological research, curriculum reforms, and critiques of traditional linguistics. The analysis of secondary research published in Research in the Teaching of English explores how RTE emerged in 1967 with a definition of empirical social science that both expanded and contracted practices of positivist research and also excluded traditions of practitioner research and humanities-based research that had been published for decades in EJ. Next, the study tracks patterns of continuity and change across RTE from the late 1960s to the present, including shifts in secondary research that seemed to echo shifts in behavioral science (1960s–1980s), cognitive psychology (1980s), and the onset of “sociocultural” research (early 1990s to present). The article concludes with a brief discussion of overarching impressions of continuity and change in secondary research, the place of “science” within the NCTE imprint, and a call for more historical research in English education.

Noted researcher George Hillicks comments on Jory Brass and Leslie David Burns's useful and informative review of research appearing in the English Journal and Research in the Teaching of English over the past 100 years.

This article reflects on where and how empirical research, focusing particularly on college/adult writing and literate practice, has appeared over the last century in the complete runs of English Journal, College English, College Composition and Communication, Research in the Teaching of English, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College. Recounting our story of the empirical scholarship published in NCTE’s journals, we first appraise what has been meant by empirical research over the century and clarify how we define it for this article. We then frame that definition by considering how alternative discourse has regularly offered a significant counterpoint to that research. We next turn to the central theme of our reflections, the expanding scene of writing that has developed across the century. Finally, we conclude by considering emergent interests in global scholarship on writing and literate practice.

Deborah Brandt coments on Kevin Roozen and Karen Lunsford's insightful examination of empirical studies of college and adult writing published in NCTE journals over the last 100 years.

This November issue of RTE once again contains the Annual Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English, available only here, on the NCTE website.