Chapter 52

Literacy Research in the Next Millennium: From Paradigms to Pragmatism and Practicality written by Deborah R. Dillon, David G. O’Brien, and Elizabeth E. Heilman

What would it be like for researchers, educators, students, parents, and state, local and federal government if current literacy research was driven by a collaborative group of interested parties? Dillon, O’Brien and Heilman start to pave the road for a new direction for literacy research in the new millennium.

Dillon, O’Brein, and Heilman begin with addressing past trends in literacy research and how each particular group of researchers has their own ideas and theories that guide their research. The authors list three classes of scholars that participate in literacy research.

1. The first group tries to foresee the latest “buzz word” (topic), attitudes (methodology), and standards (paradigm). They pay little attention to what has been done in the past because researchers are generally rewarded for “new” ideas and are often labeled leaders in the field when “inventing” new genres, buzz words, directions and attitudes. The result is often more available grant money and articles for publishing based on the “new” ideas, as well as the enhancement of their reputation as a scholar.

2. The second group tries to use one “groundbreaking” idea as the foundation of their research. They investigate their idea from various angles over a long period of time.

3. The third group focuses on collaboratively identifying a problem with participants in a community and work together over time to generate theories and explanations that can be used in local settings. This group is often driven by one particular position or issue and is philosophically and ethically driven to find an answer to their identified problem.

The authors use Kuhn’s work to help define paradigm. A paradigm is defined as “a conceptual system, clearly separate from other conceptual systems, with a self-sustaining, internal logic, constituted as a set of epistemological rules directed as solving problems matched to the logic and rules (pg. 1532).” When looking up paradigm in the thesaurus for clarity, such words as example, model, pattern, standard, archetype, exemplar and prototype are found. So, to say it more succinctly, a paradigm is a new standard with its own rules. Paradigms often use politically visible national panels and policymakers to attempt to force compliance to a “party line”. In doing so, researchers are not always driven by systematic testing and rethinking of theoretical perspectives, but by political dominance and power of one group or community over another.


Paradigm shifts occur throughout research. These shifts often are driven by problems that cannot be solved within the constraint of a particular paradigm. Four layers of paradigms are listed within the article. They are:

Ontology: the nature of reality. Ontological assumptions get at what people believe and understand to be true. They address the nature of the social world or subject matter that drives the direction or focus of the research.

Epistemology: ways of knowing what is true. Epistemological assumptions are those that people hold about the basis of knowledge, the form it takes, and the way in which knowledge may be communicated to others. Assumptions often happen based on the social history of a specific group and are often biased (racially).

Axiology: basic beliefs that form the foundation of conceptual or theoretical systems; central beliefs that involve what is right and wrong or morality and values.

Methodology: ways of understanding research including positions, models, concepts, methods and ideas that form the selection of a particular set of data-collection techniques and analysis strategies.

M. Q. Patton: when one is looking at paradigms, it is important to note what a particular research group’s beliefs, values, assumptions and practices are in order to fully understand the direction or outcome of that particular research. One must work within a paradigm, but must also bring in new frameworks, methods, and tools to better address the research questions at hand; one must think outside of the box and be flexible.

D. Polkinhorne: one should work within an existing paradigm and adjust research questions within it; one must be less flexible and stay within the box.

Paradigm shifts in 1960’s occurred when scholars in other fields such as linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology and sociolinguistics began to show an interest in reading. Some other research in this century includes an early focus on perception in the 1910s; case studies of the 1920s; evaluation and behaviorism of the 1930s; reading comprehension defined by psychometrics and factor analysis of the 1940s; experimental research with accompanying hypothesis testing and statistical tests of the 1950s and 60s; to the most current work by scholars including psychology, linguistics, sociology, and medicine.

P. B. Mosenthal worked from T. Kuhn’s work on paradigms and explored three different approaches to defining progress in research and stresses that each group of researchers has their own agenda and beliefs that guide them.


Literal approaches- when researchers work really hard within a chosen paradigm to tweak existing theories, find new features and discover glitches within the paradigm and come up with new concepts. They combine these new concepts to be more comprehensive than was originally developed.

Interpretive approaches-when researchers abandon the experimental definitions and reality in favor of the belief that reality is constructed; they change their minds based on what they have found.

Evaluative approaches- ideological implications of inquiry for society are central to the researcher’s work.


Some paradigms are not embraced by the research community because they do not abide by current trends or beliefs. In fact, some paradigms have been scorned by the research community, only to be “rediscovered” at a later date.

Ray McDermott was a scholar before his time. McDermott began looking at anthropological theories and methods to investigate the social reproduction of minority-community pariah (outsider) status among poor children in school and how this pariah/hose relationship plays out in the social organization of reading instruction.

Based on the above, this article points to the deficiencies of only using paradigms to shape the direction of research. Pragmatism is a viable alternative. Pragmatism is a branch of philosophy and a new way of approaching old problems in several diverse fields (e.g., law, social thought, and literary theory). The term pragmatism has been avoided by many educational philosophers and researchers due to negative undertones. Dillon, O’Brien and Heilman are advocating for the spirit of the pragmatic tradition which emphasizes that conducting inquiry to useful ends takes precedence over finding ways to defend one’s epistemology. Researchers are often more worried about their theoretical positions than about answering important questions. The pragmatic methods are not a way to get certain results, but rather, an “attitude of orientation” that looks beyond principles toward consequences and facts. The investigation process suggested by a pragmatic stance is quite different from traditional investigation in which a researcher comes up with a questions or problem and proceeds without the integration of nonexpert opinion. When researchers use interpretive methods to understand how a particular teacher and student work together to support learning, they are viewed as less scientific and less credible in the terms of their processes and results.

Pragmatics avoids the use of political entities in government and elsewhere; the struggle for grant monies and jobs; the human need to feel that one has made a mark in the field; and paradigm debates resulting in literacy research that has not made the difference it could in practice. Pragmatism feels the research community needs to regroup and consider pooling their considerable intellectual resources to better serve the greater community.

Positive pragmatism changes that need to be made by the research community for the future include:

Dimension #1: Building Communities of Inquiry

*The creation of partnerships with university staff, K-12 teachers and administrators, parents, students, and members of the community would glean valuable information for specified purposed through collaboration. Seven key elements are responsiveness, respect for partners, academic neutrality, accessibility, integration, coordination and resources partnership.
*Partners as advocates for learners-using the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) as role models to assist with making positive, collaborative changes in literacy research.

Dimension #2: Moral Obligation in the Selection of Research Problems
*The formulation of research problems should take more time. Problems should be carefully outlined and the actual problem and its dimensions need to be identified and then addressed.
*Developing multiple, connected research initiatives through developing a set of critical problems, generated by a diverse group of stakeholders, that are foundational to large-scale research projects with multiple sites and community inquiry teams; developing a set of critical problems generated at the local level by community inquiry teams; and collectively identifying problems that interest individual researchers and that can be parsed into various facets to be addressed by individual expertise.
*Keeping the end in view when designing research by asking questions. What do we hope to achieve at the end of the study? Why is this end important to learners?

Dimension #3: Reconsidering Traditions, Methodologies, and How We Communicate Findings.
*The use of multiple traditions within a study to solve problems.
*The purity of traditions and methodologies vs. quality of use.
*Considering new traditions and methodologies.
*Communicating the findings of research.

Overall, Dillon, O’Brien and Heilman start to pave the road for a new direction for literacy research in the new millennium. They challenge the literacy community by promoting the idea of adopting pragmatism with regard to new literacy research. The authors point out past practices in selecting questions, and formulating inquiry approaches need to be adapted for future research. The authors propose a revolutionary break in our thinking and practice relating to inquire. They point to pragmatic research for the new millennium and suggest that this new collaborative way for literacy research may glean positive, significant results.