DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-857296
title: Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education, 2022-2024

description: The Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education project (2022-2024) investigated the kinds of literacy research that teachers encounter and how literacy research moves to, among and around teachers. 

The project aimed to:
A. Explore ways in which research in primary literacy education (RPLE) moves, mapping against the dynamic background of contemporary public discourses of primary literacy education, taking account of both planned dissemination activities and the other unanticipated movements. 
B. Trace how human and digital actors combine to mobilise and mediate findings and interpretations. 
C. Support teachers and those involved in teachers’ professional development to engage with a wide range of RPLE in informed and critical ways, including through the development of new materials and events. 
D. Develop theoretical and methodological frameworks for understanding research mobilities that are applicable elsewhere in education and the social sciences more broadly. 
E. Demonstrate effective and innovate ways of sharing research using our immediate findings and data to model and explore different approaches as the project unfolds. 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. Which topics, approaches, methodologies and social actors are of particular significance in the RPLE landscape in England today, and which are relatively marginalised and how? 
2. Which circulation patterns can be discerned in the trajectories of RPLE evidence and interpretation and how are sociotechnical assemblages involved in these? 
3. How can informed, critical engagement with RPLE by teachers be more fruitfully developed? 
4. How can a creative, yet in broad terms replicable, methodology be developed for use by researchers to trace research mobilities across the social sciences?

OBJECTIVES

1.Identify and critically analyse the key discourses and social actors that influence movements of Research in Primary Literacy Education (RPLE) in England. 
2.Track how examples of RPLE move to teachers through dissemination and mediation, investigating the contribution of planned communication activities, identifying shifts in meaning in RPLE and exploring any unplanned and/or unanticipated mobilisations. 
3.Analyse the roles of individuals, organisations, texts and technologies in brokering research evidence linked to literacy in primary education. 
4.Identify and critically analyse the role of personal, school/Trust and wider policy contexts in shaping teachers' access to, engagement with and experiences of RPLE. 
5.Develop innovative models for engagement with RPLE, in partnership with teachers and educationalists. 
6.Generate recommendations on mediation and engagement with RPLE for: a. teachers; b. educational leaders seeking to enhance staff engagement with RPLE (e.g. head teachers, multi-academy trust executives); c. research producers and disseminators, e.g. researchers, funders, dissemination platforms; d. research brokers, e.g. teacher educators, consultants, literacy charities, research schools, professional organisations; e. policy makers. 
7.Create a replicable methodology for tracing how research discourses permeate into public and professional discourses in the social sciences.

Researchers used multiple methods including: interviews, focus groups and lifelogging with teachers, analyses of newspaper and social media and other approaches. These included: detailed interviews, lifelogging and focus groups involving 44 teachers working in a variety of settings; analysis of corpora including 426 newspaper articles and over 31600 twitter interactions; tracings of 9 examples of research/research related materials utilising a range of digital and qualitative methods.

Findings will be of interest to all those with an interest in strengthening relationships between research and education in including researchers within and outside universities, organisations that engage in research and research funding bodies. 
The project focused on teachers’ encounters with literacy research in the primary phase but the recommendations are also relevant to other phases, curricular subjects and aspects of teaching.
The project found that:
1. Research is encountered in many ways in a variety of physical and digital spaces, driven by national, school and/or trust priorities as well as by teachers’ own interests and concerns.
2. Research findings are frequently presented in ways that make critical evaluation difficult and credibility hard to judge.
3. Teachers experience the relationship between research and practice in different ways and have different priorities, interests and concerns when they engage with research.
4. Successful mobilisation of research does not always reflect research quality and valuable research findings do not always reach the public eye.
5. The research that teachers encounter tends to relate a narrow range of topics, missing many relevant opportunities to offer additional insights.