Tracing literacy research Networks, controversies and movements

• Published in: Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education Vol. 1; pp. 137 - 157
• Main Authors: Burnett, Cathy, Adams, Gill, Gillen, Julia, Thompson, Terrie Lynn, Cermakova, Anna, Shannon, David Ben, Shetty, Parinita
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2025; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• ISBN: 9781032544106; 9781032550930; 1032544104; 1032550937
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003428985-9

This chapter explores the many ways actors combine to mobilise literacy research: the work and labour that goes into how research moves; who-what is doing this work; and how the research may shape-shift and do different things as it moves. It employs a multi-faceted sociomaterial ethnographic methodology incorporating network ethnography, controversy mapping and object interviews to examine three cases, drawing in data from other cases to tease out nuances. Actors are followed who/which actively or more passively do something to move or respond to movements of research. Adapting Callon's concept of translation, specific mediations, transformations and displacements are studied to understand how research becomes differently in ways that are far from linear and predictable and are instead, diffuse, complex, tangled and multiple.