Data Analysis, Interpretation, and Theory in Literacy Studies Research: A How-To Guide

Novice and early career researchers often have difficulty with understanding how theory, data analysis and interpretation of findings “hang together” in a well-designed and theorized qualitative research investigation and with learning how to draw on such understanding to conduct rigorous data analysis and interpretation of their analytic results.

Data Analysis, Interpretation, and Theory in Literacy Studies Research demonstrates how to design, conduct and analyze a well put together qualitative research project. Using their own successful studies, chapter authors spell out a problem area, research question, and theoretical framing, carefully explaining their choices and decisions. They then show in detail how they analyzed their data, and why they took this approach. Finally, they demonstrate how they interpreted the results of their analysis, to make them meaningful in research terms.

Approaches include interactional sociolinguistics, microethnographic discourse analysis, multimodal analysis, iterative coding, conversation analysis, and multimediated discourse analysis, among others. This book will appeal to beginning researchers and to literacy researchers responsible for teaching qualitative literacy studies research design at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Perfect for courses such as: Literacy Research Seminar | Introduction to Qualitative Research | Advanced Research Methods | Studying New Literacies and Media | Research Perspectives in Literacy | Discourse Analysis | Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis | Sociolinguistic Analysis | Classroom Language Research

Michele Knobel is a Professor of Education at Montclair State University (USA). Her work has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Chinese, Danish and Estonian. Publications include New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (with Colin Lankshear, 2011) and New Literacies and Teacher Learning: Professional Development and the Digital Turn (edited with Judy Kalman, 2016).

Judy Kalman is a professor at the Department of Educational Research within the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the IPN. She currently directs the Laboratory of Education, Technology and Society, a space for reflection, the exchange of ideas, design and research. Her recent books include Leer y Escribir en el Mundo Social [Reading and Writing in the Social World] (2018) and Literacy and Numeracy in Latin America (co-edited with Brian Street, 2013).

Colin Lankshear is an independent educational researcher, writer, and teacher based in Mexico, where he has lived primarily since 1999. He is currently an adjunct professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada. Lankshear worked in the Education Department of the Faculty of Arts at Auckland University, New Zealand between 1976 and 1991, where he first became interested in literacy and found a research ‘home’ in the new literacy studies. From 1993 to 1998, Lankshear was a professor and research director at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He was a Heritage Fellow of the Mexican Council of Sciences and Technologies during 2000 and 2001, and subsequently held part-time visiting scholar and professorial research fellow positions in Australian and Canadian universities.

He has published works individually and collaboratively on wide ranging aspects of literacies as social practices within school, communities, workplaces, and online environments. For over 20 years, Lankshear researched and published with Michele Knobel in the area of new literacies. He continues to teach on a contract-by-contract basis in a masters of education literacy specialism at Mount Saint Vincent University. In his spare time, he enjoys riding motorcycles and producing coffee by hand from beans grown on an acre of land on the outskirts of Coatepec, Veracruz, the “coffee capital” of Mexico.

His books include Literacy, Schooling and Revolution; Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis and the Postmodern (edited with Peter McLaren); The New Work Order; Behind the Language of the New Capitalism (with James Paul Gee and Glynda Hull); Changing Literacies; Teachers and Technoliteracy (with Ilana Snyder and Bill Green); A Handbook for Teacher Research (with Michele Knobel); New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (with Michele Knobel); and Data Analysis, Interpretation and Theory in Literacy Studies Research (edited with Michele Knobel and Judy Kalman).