What counts as ‘evidence’ in literacy education?
Date
2024
Authors
Derewianka, B.
Harper, H.
Parkin, B.
Acevedo, C.
Rose, D.
Dare, B.
Brisk, M.E.
Jones, P.
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Journal article
Citation
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 2024; 47(3):299-316
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Beverly Derewianka, Helen Harper, Bronwyn Parkin, Claire Acevedo, David Rose, Brian Dare, Maria Estela Brisk, Pauline Jones
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Abstract
A recent issue of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy included an article reporting on a systematic narrative review of the research literature that indicated that there was insufficient evidence to conclude whether genre theory and systemic functional linguistics either ‘worked’ or ‘did not work’. The criteria used to evaluate these studies excluded any study that did not conform to the ‘gold standard’ associated with experimental research such as randomised controlled trials. In response to this provocative finding, a group of SFL researchers decided to examine just what counts as evidence of quality literacy research these days. In this paper, we question the overreliance on experimental research at the expense of other methods. We illustrate this with a sample of notable studies that do not meet experimental criteria, but which nevertheless have made a significant contribution to school literacy outcomes in Australia and elsewhere.
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© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.