When “Research-Based” Isn’t Enough: Developmental Underpinnings and the Matter of Interpretation

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Problematizing the Evidence Base

Abstract

This case study reports on a training program, in which developing educators were taught to assess whether children’s texts—half of which were “expert-recommended” by policy-endorsed sources—foster the interpretive reasoning beneficial to learning. Drawing on Literacy, Cultural Representation, Theory of Mind, and Distributed Cognition frameworks, it was revealed that the Research Assistants struggled to identify narrative assumptions, multiple perspectives, or ideological framings. While responses to more static features like author acclaim showed convergence, interpretive judgments of content varied widely. This is not viewed as participant failure but as a useful reminder that background knowledge shapes interpretive inference. Thereby underscoring the scholarship which problematizes the field-of-view of “research-based” educational approaches; as educators, too, meet curricula with pre-existing frames—not as blank slates.

Author

• Laronnda V. Thompson, University of Pennsylvania