Joining the Conversation: Practitioner Researchers’ Contributions to Literacy Scholarship

Practitioner research is highly responsive to the challenges and needs that teachers encounter in their classrooms and, particularly in literacy, applies humanizing research practices including research with, not on, students. Despite these advantages, practitioner research remains underexamined and not frequently included in scholarly discourse. This content analysis of eightytwo accounts of practitioner research examines the literacy topics and theories practitioner researchers investigate and use while bringing them into conversation with other research. We also describe the characteristics of practitioner researchers and the contexts in which they work. Our findings reveal areas of congruency between the literacy topics practitioner researchers study, those studied by other researchers, and the issues literacy educators consider important. Further, while critical perspectives are frequently used by practitioner researchers and other researchers as theoretical grounding, overall practitioner researchers seem to prioritize critical approaches more so than other literacy researchers. Finally, practitioner researchers appear to use theoretical frameworks in ways similar to earlier research that reflect a commitment to addressing social problems related to literacy. We argue these findings amplify the importance of including practitioner research in scholarly discourse related to literacy instruction and urge other researchers to engage with this work: to read it and to put it in dialogue with their work.