Ecological approaches to literacy research

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7ECOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO

LITERACY RESEARCHSue Nichols (The University of South Australia)

Introduction

It is now nearly twenty years since literacy scholar David Barton (1994, 2007) first called for researchers in the field to adopt what he called the “ecological metaphor” to conceptualise literacy as “embedded in other human activity … in social life and thought and … history” (Barton 2007: 32). The term ‘ecology’ is now so commonplace in everyday, as well as scholarly, discourse that users often see no need to define it. It can stand for everything that is going on around an object of focus, such as a literacy practice, and generally signals an inclusive, holistic orientation to investigation and social action.

Ecological theory however is not a single entity. Theories that attempt to account for ‘everything that is going on’ differ in some important ways. Barton categorised ecological theories as either psychological or sociolinguistic and aimed to integrate these perspectives. I will distinguish between conceptualisations that are person-centred from those that are system-centred. I will also consider the issue of epistemology – or theory of knowledge – and how this can colour the ecological lens. That is, ecological theories can be mobilised from both positivist and postmodern perspectives. Following a discussion of the theoretical perspectives, I will survey a range of methodological approaches to ecological research in literacy. Finally, I will argue that four points are important to take into account when considering undertaking literacy research from an ecological perspective:

1 Ecological studies are trans-contextual; contexts are multiple.2 Ecological studies may be systematic or rhizomatic.3 Sustained engagement can bring new layers of insight into a literacy ecology.4 Research changes ecologies.

Ecological theories: historical perspectives and current contributions

The risk with labelling any perspective ‘historical’ is that bias toward the contemporary in research circles tends to relegate ‘historical perspectives’ to irrelevance. That is by no means the case in this field. Indeed as we shall see, it is always important to consider the temporal dimension of ecologies. From that perspective the ‘past’ is necessarily a part of our present focus. Readers

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should also be aware that theorists have long careers and are often revising and further developing concepts decades after originally formulating them. In the following section I review several approaches to theorising ecologies which have influenced research in the fields of literacy and linguistics. While some of these views have emerged more recently than others, all are currently being actively mobilised by researchers seeking to understand contemporary literacy ecologies.

The developing child’s ecological context: Bronfenbrenner’s model

Uri Bronfenbrenner made a lasting impact on the field of child development studies when during the 1970s he published several works conceptualising human development in ecological terms (Bronfenbrenner 1974, 1976, 1979). However, even before this, by advising on the establishment of the Head Start Program in the United States, he had significantly changed early childhood education provision, including in literacy. Indeed, fostering close connections between social policy and child development research was one of the main priorities of this highly active researcher.

While Bronfenbrenner’s model may be familiar to many readers, I will briefly describe it. This ecological model places the developing child at the centre of a nested set of systems from the most immediately present to the child (or proximal) progressively out to the broadest level of social organisation. The microsystem is the immediate setting in which the child develops and it is important to recognise that there is usually more than one microsystem in a child’s life. The family household, child-care centre and preschool can all be considered microsystems. A view of the “developing person … as an active agent, who inevitably plays some part in any developmental process taking place” was considered by Bronfenbrenner to be essential in studying the microsystem (2005: 160).

The mesosystem is produced through interactions between microsystems. The child’s transition to school is a situation that brings the mesosystem into focus since it requires the child to begin a life of travel back and forth between two important microsystems. Attempting to understand the effect of this transition on children has motivated many studies which take up Bronfenbrenner’s model (eg Dockett and Perry 2007; Fisher 2009; Lee 2010; McNaughton 2001).

The exosystem comes into being as a function of interaction between the microsystem and other settings that do not include the child directly (Bronfenbrenner 1993). Institutions that impact on children’s lives through the formation of policy or the provision of services are involved in the exosystem. Also included are contexts that parents and other family members inhabit such as workplaces.

The macrosystem is the level at which broad societal and cultural patterns are formed which Bronfenbrenner described as constituted of “developmentally instigative belief systems, resources, hazards, lifestyles, opportunity structures, life course options and patterns of social interchange” (2005: 149, original italics). Bronfenbrenner’s work at the policy level was a practical application of this model since he argued that actions in exo- and macro-settings can materially impact child development through resourcing actions at other levels of the ecology (Weisner 2010).

Bronfenbrenner intended this model to challenge scientific accounts of child development, particularly those derived from laboratory experiments, which he famously described as “strange” (1979: 513). However, while he championed naturalistic research and was strongly supportive of contextual accounts of children’s lives, research citing his theories has not always reflected this orientation. As the theorist himself pointed out when presenting a revision of the model, studies too often relied on “an operational definition based solely on a proxy variable (ie a social address)” (p. 151) to investigate complex phenomena.


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The at times reductive application of ecological systems theory has possibly contributed to its lack of popularity among literacy researchers, particularly in the New Literacy Studies camp. The second edition of Encyclopedia of Language and Education includes two chapters about ecological perspectives (Kramsch and Steffenson 2008; Pahl 2008) neither of which make any mention of Bronfenbrenner. Barton has criticised the model for treating contexts as “too static” (2007: 30). However, Bronfenbrenner has been more interested in permeability of boundaries than might be appreciated; he writes: “such interesting linkages take a number of forms, among them the participation of the same persons in more than one setting, communications between settings, and the availability of information in one setting about the other” (2005: 159).

All these forms of connection have been noted by literacy researchers studying the relationship between literacy practices in different but connected contexts.

Time and ecosocial systems

The final dimension of what its author called the “ecological paradigm” (Bronfenbrenner 1993: 37) is the dimension of time, or the chronosystem. As a theory of development, ecological theory is inherently concerned with change over time in the life of a developing individual. However, it departed from traditional developmental psychology by being unconcerned with normative sequences of assumed universal developmental milestones. Indeed, Bronfenbrenner reflected on his own shift from a traditional to an ecological perspective: “Seen in different contexts, human nature, which I had once thought of as a singular noun, turns out to be plural and pluralistic … The process and product of making human beings clearly varies in place and time” (Bronfenbrenner 1979: xiii).

The chronosystem encompasses continuities and changes over time in every level of a system: micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystemic. So, to fully incorporate a temporal dimension into an ecological investigation, it would be necessary to look at how time effects environments and not just how children change as they grow and mature.

Arguably consistent with this view is Lemke’s (2000) explanation of ecosocial systems in terms of intersecting timescales. Here the central focus is not the developing individual but the process. Lemke proposes two central analytic tasks: first to identify processes “characteristic of each relevant timescale” and, second, to establish how processes are “integrated across different timescales” (Lemke 2000: 275). Lemke’s theorisation assists us in understanding how an event in a single place or setting may simultaneously involve different timescales. He uses the mundane example of a high school chemistry lesson. A teacher’s question and the student’s response is in short timescale – it occurs in minute-by-minute interaction. However, when students consult their notebooks in order to check a possible answer, they may be looking at text they produced days or weeks ago. The textbook from which the teacher derives some of the content of the lesson and which may supply the question asked, was first produced years ago (particularly if it has run to several editions) while the formulas contained within it may have been in use for decades or hundreds of years.

If literacy is understood as social practice, then its study always involves a temporal dimension (Tusting 2000). A practice usually can only become entrenched into a society or a community over time and some of the timescales of literacy are particularly long. This point is powerfully made by Jimenez and Smith (2008) in their study of literacy practices in a Mexican city, San Andres Cholula. The researchers trace connections between ancient Mesoamerican writing systems and current local literacies. These scripts and associated practices were suppressed by European colonisation but, while unacknowledged, have not ceased to shape the semiotic



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practices of communities. The researchers argue for “the importance of historical antecedents to contemporary practices” (2008: 29).

This may be particularly vital when considering communities impacted by colonisation and repression whose languages and/or literacies may have been driven underground or into protected sub-cultural spaces (such as religious rituals). It is important to consider that time does not always preserve; it can also erase. An illustration of this is given by Connellan and Nichols (2011) in their discussion of a history project undertaken in a primary school. They describe how, each year, each teacher clears the walls of the graduating class’s work. On a different timescale, the school itself is built on land cleared from the bush, formerly home to the Kaurna, the local Indigenous people:

Each year, the group of children see reflected only their own productions, with no reference to those who went before. This is an erasure of history that, on a smaller timescale, echoes the school itself in its act(uality) of building over and effacing traces of the lives of those who preceded its arrival

(Connellan and Nichols 2011: 7)

I will return to the dimension of time when considering different approaches to designing research into literacy ecologies. First, however, we will consider perspectives that take up the challenge of building multilayered accounts of literate lives without embracing a systemic model.

Storied worlds

Literacy researchers tend to be particularly sensitive to the role of language, text and genre in social contexts. This orientation has influenced how the field generates explanations of happenings within and across the diverse situations in which individuals learn and grow. Language is inherently a shared and boundary-crossing resource which is changed by the circumstances in which it is used (Blommaert 2001). This may be why literacy researchers have been less inclined to categorise phenomena according to levels in a system and more inclined to pay close attention to the qualities of language and literacy interactions in every circumstance available for observation. Explanations tend to be more emergent and less governed by an a priori system framework (though, see examples of systems oriented literacy studies in the following section).

The concept of the ‘world’ is a flexible construct which recognises that certain contexts can have their own logics, landscapes and languages quite distinctive from other seemingly similar contexts. In their exploration of children’s learning across home and school environments, Huber and colleagues (2011: 108) refer to Lugones’ definition of a world as a “tiny portion of a particular society” (1987: 10). They take up the concept of “world travelling” (2011: 109) to interpret children’s experiences moving between what they describe as the two “curriculums” of home and school. The researchers argue that ‘world’ is a more appropriate concept than ‘site’ in evoking the way in which children as participants are required, not just to be in but, to live in these environments.

Depending on their focus, researchers have created different accounts of children’s worlds and how these are interrelated. Based on close sustained engagement with a group of child writers over three years, Dyson (1993, 1997, 2001) has highlighted three worlds and produced many case studies of how these are negotiated by individual children: “the imaginary worlds formed from varied symbolic media – drawing, talking, writing; the ongoing social world; and


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the wider experienced world of people, places, objects, and events” (Dyson 1988: 364, italics added).

Text-making is at the heart of this conceptualisation of multiple worlds. As Dyson puts it: “text worlds are suspended – embedded – within a web of multiple worlds” (1988: 387), In other words, it is through making connections – with other texts, with represented and experienced lives – that texts are able to mean.

Dyson (1988) offers as one of many examples of this interconnection in action, first grader “Mitzi” writing a piece which brings together a fairy-tale world with her family world. The story begins: “Once there was a witch. She is my mom” (Dyson 1988: 378). As Mitzi shares this with her friends, they express concern about the story’s tone, advising her not to read it to the class at sharing time. The following exchange takes place:

Mitzi: She’s a bad witch (pointing to her picture)Jenni: Then you’re a bad girlMitzi: No, I’m not. I might not even like my mom, or I love my mom.

Striking from this example is the simultaneity of activity across the story, peer, family and classroom worlds as Mitzi keeps in play daughter, creative writer, student and friend identities. With its deep resonances in mythology and popular culture, the character of the witch evokes the widest cultural frames (and longest timescales) while at the same time operating at the intimate level of Mitzi’s closest relationship – with her mother.

Essential to Dyson’s view of children’s worlds is the permeability of their boundaries, enabling cultural and linguistic material, as well as the children themselves, to cross between them. Dyson has adopted the concepts of ‘sampling’ and the ‘re-mix’ from contemporary music to refer to the ways in which materials from across children’s different worlds are combined to produce texts and other communication practices (2003: 103–104). This highlights the importance of finding ways to name the practices of working between and across contexts.

Decentred networked ecologies

Over the last two decades, the task of conceptualising social ecologies has been complicated by the set of issues encapsulated in the term ‘globalisation’. Coming to grips with trans-local aspects of contexts has become pressing with a range of social phenomenon associated with globalisation impacting on children’s lives and literacy learning environments. This has challenged child-centred perspectives with some commentators advocating intensified protection of children from global culture particularly associated with consumerism (Beder 2009), effectively policing the boundaries of local ecologies.

The 1990s saw significant intellectual activity aimed at analysing and conceptualising the world in conditions of globalisation. One of the key theorists of globalisation, Appadurai (1990, 1999) characterised the contemporary situation as “a new force field of social relations”, a “world of flows” in which all kinds of entities were in motion including people, resources, goods, ideas and practices (Appadurai 1999: 230). In practical terms, one consequence was increasing diversity in communities particularly challenging those that had previously been much more homogenous. Bronfenbrenner had characterised the macrosystem as composed of members sharing “similar belief systems, social and economic resources, hazards, lifestyles, etc.” (2005: 150). Assumptions about how much is shared are put under pressure in conditions of increased diversification which has is some places reached the status of “superdiversity” (Blommaert and Rampton 2012).



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At the same time, developments in digital technology were challenging previously clear boundaries between contexts such as the home and the workplace, formal and informal learning environments and the private and the public and between nation states (Lawn 2001). Such developments put the very idea of a macrosystem in question.

However, the need to understand “everything that is going on” has not diminished. Rather, different conceptualisations have emerged to analyse connections between contexts crossing local and trans-local, and material and virtual, settings. Actor-network theory and rhizome analysis can be described as new ways to investigate ecologies and equally as ways to understand new ecologies.

Decentring the subject

We have seen that ecological theories of child development put the child in the centre. While these models are theoretically relational and bidirectional they have in practice been primarily motivated by the drive to improve children, through implementing policies and practices at every level that will optimise development and learning. From this perspective the classical ecological approach can be considered modernist. Prout, a proponent of what has been called the New Sociology of Childhood, argues that studies of childhood need to “[move] beyond the grip of such modernist thinking” by “attending to the networks, flows and mediations” of contemporary children’s lives (Prout 2011: 4).

Network perspectives offer a flatter, decentred and multi-focused orientation to the world under study. Taguchi, writing about young children’s learning, describes it in this way “Learning can … be understood as emerging from what happens in distributed networks and assemblages consisting of both human and non-human matter and organisms that are in interaction” (Taguchi 2011: 38). Actor-Network Theory (ANT) conceptualises networks as “comprised of diverse materials” (Murdoch 1998) including the human and the nonhuman. This approach is interested in tracing movements and connections between all elements that make up networks (Law 2004 [1999]). Literacy researchers in the ethnographic tradition are used to paying close attention to people – their behaviour, interactions and expressed views. ANT encourages researchers to look also at the nonhuman elements in each situation and to ask what is being achieved by and through them.

This approach soon loses its initial strangeness when we consider a very familiar and conventional focus of literacy practice – the book. In a literacy event, the book can be considered part of an assemblage which also comprises human actors who select, carry, handle, process, talk about and otherwise interact with the book and with each other. Material and discursive qualities of the book promote and even compel particular activities on the part of the humans. Conventional book pages have to be caught between finger and thumb to be turned; on a digital tablet, pages must be swiped. They thus call on the body to respond in specific ways. Books may also attract other objects to the assemblage such as the easel on which a ‘big book’ is displayed. The assemblage of book, easel, teacher’s chair and teacher operates as an attractor to bring an assemblage of children into place on the floor. This illustrates the point made by ANT theorist Law that “materials (human, textual and technological or artefactual) define one another and hold one another in place” (2003: 8).

Taking a wider lens, a networking approach asks how the book came to be in a position to be utilised in this way. School-based resource funding and selection processes become relevant as are the actions of commercial entities networking into schools. The state literacy curriculum may well be an actor influencing both school resourcing priorities and commercial publishers’ strategies. Timeframes could also become salient. Perhaps the school in question has a very


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limited budget for new books and so the big book could be decades old, a vector for storylines and values of a previous time.

Rhizome theory offers an alternative approach to exploring assemblages – one that emphasises the emergent and non-hierarchical nature of connections (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). The concept of a rhizome is taken from botany, referring to the way in which some plants, rather than having root systems connected to a single stem or trunk, send out runners in every direction which can emerge as sprouts in ways that seem unconnected but which can be found by looking beneath the soil. “Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be … A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 7).

Rhizome theory is arguably a non-systemic way of conceptualising an ecology. Considering the categories of things connected rhizomatically – “semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances” – one can see how it might be possible to generate a picture or account of a literacy ecology.

The mobile nature of literacy has emerged as a focus owing in part to the impact of mobile devices (although the book is perhaps the original mobile literacy device). Literacies have been called “nomadic” (Masny 2013: 342); even those forms of practice that may seem most bonded to a context (such as those often referred to as school literacies) are travellers, appearing in many guises such in “edutainment” assemblages (Buckingham and Scanlon 2003). This focus on mobility and transformability has made rhizome theory particularly relevant to literacy research (Leander and Rowe 2006; Sellers and Honan 2007).

Designing the ecological study: main research methods

In the previous section, readers encountered a range of approaches to conceptualising social ecologies. These differ on a number of axes including whether the ecology is viewed as person-centred or decentred and whether it is considered to be a system composed of structural components or as a dynamic confluence. The tradition of ecological thinking that a researcher enters can have a significant impact on the kinds of questions that are asked and the designs of studies. In this section, I will introduce several methodological approaches, illustrating some of the options taken by researchers with specific examples. We will look at systematic and immersive studies, exploratory and activist orientations. An ecological approach can be shaped to researchers’ experience and resources, whether novice or veteran, whether well funded or running on time and energy alone.

Systems design: working the levels

While not all ecological studies are systematic, one way to structure a study is through system categories. This means the researcher will ensure that the participants and data sources are reflective of at least some levels (micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystems) in a literacy or learning ecology. While it is often assumed in literacy research circles that ecological research must be qualitative and characterised by immersion in a community, that is not necessarily the case. Indeed ecological theories influenced by biological models of natural ecologies often appeal to researchers working within a positivist paradigm. Statistical and experimental methods have been taken up in attempts to produce knowledge about ecological dimensions of literacy development. In the interests of informing researchers about the full range of options, examples of quantitative approaches will be given.

Those working within interpretive and postmodern paradigms may be inclined to skip over the next section. However, concepts often become clarified by seeing how they are



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operationalized in research. Dialogue between literacy researchers with different backgrounds and perspectives may increase our capacity to promote a holistic view of literacy within complex interrelated contexts of acquisition and use.

Quantitative and experimental studies

The “linguistic landscapes” of bilingual youth were the focus of an investigation by Borrero and Yeh (2010). The researchers sought to gain a better understanding of the social contexts in which bilingual students learn and use English and which influence their identities as successful English users. The interrelation between these multiple contexts was conceptualised as the language learning ecology. The researchers’ selection of a quantitative design was motivated by a desire to establish patterns in relation to the linkages, both connections and disconnections, between these dimensions. Accordingly they identified a cohort of 269 bilingual high school students and administered a purpose-designed survey instrument.

The Ecological Language Learning and Academic Success (ELLAS) scale was developed through a process that was consistent with the researchers’ motivations. As well as reviewing literature to generate possible items, they talked with bilingual youth about their experiences with language use, and also sought the perspectives of teachers, school counsellors and other researchers. Based on this consultation, seven “ecological influences” were selected, including family, friends (both native and non-native English-speakers), classes, teachers and neighbourhood (Borrero and Yeh 2010: 573). Self was also included since personal reflection and independent strategizing also emerged from initial inquiry as an influence.

Statistical analysis was used to create clusters of items which helped to explain variance in influence over students’ language use decisions and sense of competence. These clusters mapped onto the four systems of school, peers, family and community. The researchers then employed a multidimensional scaling process to render in visual form the relationships between these “ecological spaces” in terms of “similarity, difference, and distance across and between each other” (2010: 576). In this manner they were able to see that the school cluster (a combination of class, teacher and self) was the most distant from the other three – family, friends and neighbourhood. This suggested the challenge that bilingual youth experience in bridging the school and non-school contexts in relation to their English learning, competency and identity as successful English speakers.

Experimental methods were combined with naturalistic field work by Pellegrini and Galda (2003 [1998]: 1) in their study of children’s literacy development in the early years of school. They conceptualised development as involving transactions between different settings in a child’s “social ecological niche” (p. 1) mediated by a child’s individual temperament. The researchers focused particularly on the use of “literate language” across settings arguing that this form of language is crucial to children’s success in school literacy (p. 11).

The researchers conducted telephone interviews, asked adults and children to keep literacy diaries and implemented the HOME inventory, a tool which documents a range of literacy resources and opportunities in homes, or to compile data about home literacy practices. In-class observations were conducted. The researchers also employed what they refer to as “contrived or analogue studies” in which children were asked to participate in tasks under conditions set by the researchers but where the design of these tasks was “informed by prior naturalistic observation” (p. 26).

These analogue tasks were designed to enable the researchers to investigate an aspect of the microsystem – children’s relationships with school peers – with a particular focus on the circumstances in which literate language would appear in interactions. Individual audio


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recorders were used to capture oral language in both naturalistic and contrived situations. The researchers anticipated that certain kinds of play as well as certain kinds of peer relationships would be conducive to the use of literate language.

Comparing the peer microsystem with the official classroom microsystem, the researchers noted that young children performed at a higher level of linguistic competence in pretend play than in formal school tasks. Their observations of children’s social interaction in analogue tasks which mimicked naturalistic play supported an interpretation that “play is characterised by negotiated rules and requires children to justify their decisions and actions” thus prompting more complex oral language use (p. 105). They also looked at children’s social networks across both home and school settings, identifying that more extensive social networks outside of school appeared to be correlated with more extensive peer networks, and thus more opportunities for play and language use, in school.

Qualitative ecological systems designs

Within a qualitative approach, ecological systems theory can inform the conceptualisation of literacy learning contexts. Some researchers have drawn on this theory to make conscious selections of contexts representing various sub-systems of an ecology. In analysis, this approach can sensitise researchers to how different contexts come into relation and how these relationships impact on what can be practised as literacy. An ethnographic orientation is compatible with this approach as it involves the researcher(s) visiting and revisiting settings, gathering insights from participants and using multiple kinds of documentation strategies to track and map activities.

The place of the library in children’s literacy learning was the subject of Sensenig’s (2012) research. He conceptualised the library as a microsystem in interaction with the family microsystem, creating a mesosystem, which was also in interaction with its broader social context. Using ethnographic methods, the researcher drew on Bronfenbrenner’s model to focus his observations and analysis. Sensenig acknowledges the critique of this model from within the literacy research community, engaging specifically with Barton’s comment that the model is “too static … making different contexts and environments seem very fixed” (2007: 30). He responds:

the simpler model pays off precisely because social contexts are complex and dynamic. The distinct systems of the model provided a means to grasp and sort specific details in the dense mix of people and ideas that characterized even the shortest library programs.

(Sensenig 2012: 241)

It is the principled attention to particular activities and their connections, both proximal and distal, that enables the researcher to create a multilayered account with explanatory force.

This can be seen in two aspects of the analysis. First, we see how the child is located in relation to two co-present microsystems, the family and the library, when participating in storybook sessions. Second, we see how the library is related to other institutions in the exosystem which, though not immediately apparent in social interactions in the library, are impacting on how librarians understand and carry out their literacy work.

Sensenig’s overall conclusions show the importance of working across more than one level of a system. He observed that there was a high level of complementarity between the actions and beliefs of adults in both microsystems regarding the value of reading and the most effective ways to engage young children as literacy apprentices. However, access to this beneficial



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mesosystem was not assured. This access was highly dependent on libraries’ connections with other institutions in the exosystem. In particular, the permeation of standards-based accountability models in education systems was beginning to change the nature of library management: “Many of the librarians I interviewed talked about ‘incorporating standards’ into their story times … Libraries that followed these guidelines were eligible for best practice awards, and as one administrator noted, ‘The money follows the measurement.’ ” (Sensenig 2012: 198).

In contrast, he describes one library which developed connections with a very different element in its external environment, drawing on what librarians perceived about children’s interests in that community (Sensenig n.d.). This library hosted a ‘Wrestling Club’ which was presented by a professional wrestler and where storylines, characters, history and technicalities of wrestling were the material of literacy and language interactions.

Sensenig’s conclusion critiques a common assumption about the importance of consistency across different learning contexts in a child’s life. Quoting Bronfenbrenner on the “formation and maintenance of transcontextual dyads across a variety of settings” (1979: 214), he argues “[t]his element of variety is crucial” (Sensenig 2012: 233). Homogeneity of provision, with an emphasis on consistency between institutions and only one kind of family microsystem (Western middle class) denies children from diverse family contexts opportunities to realise their potential.

An example of a smaller scale ecological study is Lee’s (2010) investigation of shared book reading practices in a single preschool over nearly a year. He describes his research focus in terms of “two different settings in the Microsystem … the home (parents) and early education (teachers) contexts, not as separate contexts, but interacting ones” (Lee 2010: 213–214). In the literature there are divergences in the application of system categories; Bronfenbrenner (1979) referred to the home and the education setting as microsystems rather than as settings. In Lee’s research, the interaction between these two settings (or systems) prompted the selection of the morning transition as the focus of observations. This was the period in which parents were present in the preschool and thus the two microsystems were in direct interaction. Video was used to capture instances of book sharing between parents and children, teachers and children and children and peers in over a hundred sessions.

Through careful analysis of video data, including looking at what preceded and followed each book-sharing instance, Lee was able to come to some conclusions about how relationships between these systems fostered or impeded young children’s participation in reading. For instance, he found a pattern in which book sharing between a child and parent was often followed by the child approaching the teacher to read the same book, often immediately after the parent had left the premises. Looking closer, he noticed that teachers unobtrusively observed parents’ reading strategies and at times incorporated these into their own interactions with the child. Also, following book sharing with parents at morning transitions, children were inclined to continue reading in the free play time which followed, often finding a peer to share a book with.

These examples demonstrate that literacy researchers in the ethnographic tradition can find ecological systems theory useful in designing their studies and analysing literacy ecologies. More commonly we find that literacy researchers build their picture of an ecology without adopting a system framework of the kind that Bronfenbrenner advocated.

Immersive non-systematic approach

In an immersive approach, the researcher aims to get to know the literacy or learning ecology of a place through exploring as many aspects as possible in a sustained manner over time. Rather than beginning with established system categories to direct attention at elements of the


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environment, researchers aim to build a rich multilayered account of the diverse literacy and language practices of participants in the focus community. They employ a range of metaphors and interpretive devices to express their understanding of the meaning of aspects such as reading, text and communication to members.

The nature of such engagements is such that researchers generally become to some extent incorporated into these ecologies, for instance by providing resources which are deployed in local activities. Indeed, this may be a motivation for engaging with the community; studies of this kind often target disadvantaged or marginalised locations. Here I will discuss studies which involve a significant exploratory dimension. Later in the chapter I will look at studies which are primarily activist in nature.

The first example is not a literacy-focused project but one which exemplifies many of the elements of an immersive approach and which has inspired some literacy researchers (eg Nichols et al. 2012). A team of eight researchers led by Good (1997) set out to learn why residents living in an impoverished neighbourhood were not more involved in their children’s school. The study began with what they describe as an “ecological assessment”. This process was not guided by any formal checklist. Rather, it took the form of exploring and engaging with the neighbourhood and its residents. Methods employed included:

• immersion in school life• attendance at school and school district events• monitoring of media commentary on and representations of the school• walking streets• drawing detailed maps• ‘cold calls’ on parents• identification of key group of involved parents (Good et al. 1997)

It will be evident to literacy researchers that this is a multimodal approach to exploration. Visual documentation, textual analysis, talk and embodied experience of places were all utilised with the overall goal of understanding what it means to be a member of this community and of this school and why these two identities may be in conflict.

UK literacy researcher Kate Pahl embodies the immersive approach. Her projects have involved sustained engagement with communities and families and iterative processes of coming to understand multiple dimensions of their lives and the role of literacy in their lives. One project has involved a family that Pahl first encountered as a literacy tutor and who became participants in an initial study of the “diverse communicative landscape in which literacy practices are embedded” (2001: 146). The families were purposively selected on the basis that one of the children was experiencing a “disruption with school”. The study was designed from the outset to explore this relationship but with a focus on developing a deep understanding of the home as a rich landscape, rather than just a unitary context to be compared with school.

The iterative process of deepening understandings can be seen in a series of writings Pahl has produced over time as she has continued her engagement and reflection. It was only after a year of fortnightly visits to the family, in which the researcher built up a picture of the many kinds and uses of texts, that in-depth interviews were carried out. Thus Pahl was able to draw on a foundation of shared experiences and understandings in a process of co-constructing meanings with the participants.

In an early paper, she focused on the flux of literacy practices in homes as participants moved in and out of family contexts, including play, education, religion, cultural participation and



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household work (Pahl 2001). At this point the concept of the “ephemeral text” emerged as a way to name the sometimes fleeting nature of literacy and communication practices. An example is when a child’s play space (and its associated texts) has to be tidied away in order to make room for other domestic activities: “meaning-making exists in a constantly moving, oscillating space, between a making moment, a tidying-up moment and a remaking moment, as objects are shifted and re-contextualized” (Pahl 2001: 148).

In a later paper, Pahl re-explored her accumulated data and analyses to develop new insights. Reflecting her extended engagement with one family over time, she focused on the temporal dimension (Pahl 2007). Adapting Lemke’s categories (Lemke 2000), she analysed family literacy practices in terms of micro, meso and macro timescales. Macro timescales were seen in the way that some family cultural practices were seasonal, such as in reflecting the Islamic calendar. This scale also connected the histories of older family members with current ways of knowing. Meso timescales were associated with the divisions of a school year into terms, and the week into school time and home time whereas micro timescales reflected the moment by moment interactions.

It can be seen that this analysis works across contexts as well as between times. Pahl’s ecological orientation is family centred (also community centred – see below) but links the family to other domains of practice and knowledge. She writes about coming to understand the many meanings of “bird”, a figure that appeared in a child’s text and talk at home and at school: “It took me a while to realise that Fatih’s bird was an artefact that held multiple meanings and could be identified with different meanings in different sites and across domains” (Pahl 2007: 188).

This process involves tracking semiotic material through many contexts and learning about it from various participants whose views may change over time. As the researcher revisits aspects of the ecology, she layers her understanding.

Multiple case design

Regardless of whether a systematic or an immersive approach is taken, designing a project around several sites or cases can have advantages for ecological literacy research. The specificities of the cases, when contrasted, can shed light on the diverse ways in which broader social movements are mobilised in local contexts. When this approach is taken, site selection and case identification are important in the design and evolution of literacy research projects (Abu-Lughod 2007). While site selection needs to be considered early in the design process, case identification may be emergent, as the exploration of an ecology unfolds.

In an oft-cited example, Neuman and Celano (2001) specifically chose four contrasting neighbourhoods for their ‘ecological survey’ of affordances and resources for literacy learning and participation. Literacy, in this study, was defined inclusive of practices taking place in community contexts and included activities such as purchasing or borrowing reading materials, reading signs and posters, and finding safe and comfortable places to sit and read. To ascertain neighbourhood literacy affordances the researchers systematically documented specific aspects of these environments including shops where reading material was available, quality of signage, seating and lighting.

Site selection is based on perceived qualities of places and researchers’ access to these perceived qualities is through their interpretive resources. Therefore, one of the first decisions comparative case study researchers have to make is how to describe sites. Neuman and Celano chose two low-income and two middle-income neighbourhoods for their study. They describe the low-income neighbourhoods as follows:


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Kensington is a dense, multiethnic community consisting of Puerto Rican, Black, Vietnamese, Eastern European, and Caucasian family sections, all of which are highly segregated. Although the community has areas of urban decay, it is lively and dynamic with beautiful urban gardens hidden throughout the area. Kingsessing is a more socially isolated community, contained by physical and natural boundaries. Largely African American, it has many local businesses, shops, and carryout food stores, some of which are well maintained, others in disrepair. Although the signs of poverty are throughout, there is a Rockwellian ethos in the community with children playing double dutch in the streets, walking their dogs, and bike riding around the playgrounds.

(Neuman and Celano 2001: 12)

It is evident that demographic characteristics have contributed to the selection of these communities, both categorised as low income but with contrasting cultural mixes – one multi-ethnic and the other African American. The descriptions also signal the researchers’ intentions to recognise and name both flaws (“urban decay”, “disrepair”) and high points (“beautiful urban gardens”, “well maintained” shops) of communities. The term ‘Rockwellian’ is interesting in pointing to a larger cultural lens through which the Kingsessing neighbourhood may be viewed. For this author, not a citizen of the United States, this necessitated some quick internet research on the reputation of this iconic American artist, a search with yielded descriptors like “optimistic”, “family oriented”, “idealistic”, “small town” and “sentimental”. It is a reminder that descriptions are always interpretive, challenging any assumption that literacy ecologies exist ‘out there’ waiting to be documented.

Multiple-site studies are necessarily trans-local. Localities may be in different neighbourhoods, different regions or even different countries. An example of a trans-national comparative case study is Eady and Reedy’s (2011) collaboration. This team looked at learning ecologies in Indigenous communities in Canada and Australia. This contrastive case design created opportunities for better understanding the impact of a range of contextual factors on the Indigenous communities’ resources for learning. Both communities were located in areas geographically remote from urbanised centres and were infrequently serviced with deliveries of goods owing not only to remoteness but to extreme climatic conditions. They sought out instances of technology use across community life including in homes, schools, sporting facilities, libraries and other settings.

When working across multiple sites, researchers need to have some common foci or categories to direct their attention. While Neuman and Celano focused on access to print, Eady and Reedy focused on access to technology. Nichols and colleagues (see below) looked at resources for early learning across four sites in two countries (Nichols et al. 2012). All these researchers defined their subject inclusively, recognising many different manifestations of the category and being guided by members’ definitions and patterns of participation. In each case, the researchers viewed a site as a collection of settings (e.g. streets, shops, clinics) each of which required to be explored and analysed.

Building learning ecologies

Understanding the importance of ecologies in fostering and supporting literacy and language learning can prompt a more activist approach. Some researchers design projects with the express intention of strengthening existing ecologies or even building new ecologies. Others begin with the intention of simply studying a particular community before coming to the realisation that they have become agents of change.



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An example of this realisation in process is Goodridge and McNaughton’s (1994) study of family literacy in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood in New Zealand. In this study, families of two different ethnic affiliations (Anglo European and Maori) were interviewed regarding home literacy practices. The researchers took an ecological perspective, following Bronfenbrenner, and set out to better understand differences in the family microsystem which may impinge on children’s transitions to school.

While Pakeha (Anglo European) parents were keen to show examples of their preschool children’s writing and drawing, Maori parents stated that their children did not do any writing at home. However, when the researchers specified joint writing activities (e.g. card making) and children’s unconventional script (“scribbles”), the Maori parents found many more artefacts and examples. Reflecting on this study at a later time, McNaughton writes:

Our intention was to collect naturalistic descriptive data over the months before school, but the process of asking was highly ‘reactive’, at least in a methodological sense. That is, [as a result] the families viewed these forms of emergent writing in a very different light

(McNaughton 2001: 49)

Some researchers deliberately set out to develop community resources and activities with the research element a means of interpreting literacy and language practices and how these are transformed (Pahl and Allan 2011). Kris Gutiérrez and colleagues, for example, have established what they describe as a learning ecology in the form of Las Redes, a “technology-mediated after-school club” in a Latino neighbourhood in Los Angeles (Gutiérrez et al. 2011: 236).

A main aim of this endeavour was to create a space where bilingual children’s home languages and cultural ways of knowing were legitimated and “comingled with school-based discourses” (Gutiérrez et al. 2011: 240). Exploiting the affordances of the internet, the researchers designed this activity space as a network including materially and virtually present members. They also incorporated an element of the imaginary in the character of El Maga, a bilingual magician with whom children communicate via the computers. The role of El Maga was taken by university students, extending the ecology into the realm of teacher education. The researchers argue that the hybridity of this ecology – a feature which was designed into the intervention – worked to “extend children’s repertoires of practice, while leveraging their expertise” (Gutiérrez et al. 2011: 259).

Another team to deploy the after-school computer club strategy, Zhao and colleagues have drawn explicitly on ecological theory to analyse the process of implementing educational innovation (Zhao et al. 2006). In the case of this team, they also established in-school projects with varying degrees of success. Although not specifically focused on literacy, their insights have resonance. First, they view network building as crucial: “Technology uses in schools are not independent and isolated events or artefacts, but are situated in complex relations within the school ecosystem” (p. 146). Second, they caution against impatience since change causes disruption, meaning that the system needs time to “achieve new equilibrium” (ibid.). They also recommend encouraging play and connecting to prior knowledge. Finally, the innovator should look for “the right niche”, one in which the technology finds its “natural” place; when this is the case, new technologies “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life” (ibid.). Given that new technologies are so often associated with new forms of literacy practice, these suggestions have considerable relevance.

Both time and space dimensions of children’s ecologies were designed into Connellan and Nichols’ (2011) participatory research project Changing Lives. One dimension of the project


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involved the researchers examining school activities and routine in relation to theories of time including Lemke’s timescales (see above) and narrative time. The participatory element involved children in researching their personal history through working with tangible and intangible ‘treasures’ in the form of objects, memories, stories, images etc. Children then worked with these materials in ways that extended and transferred their meanings through the use of different media. For instance, a ceramicist showed students how to make tiles by impressing objects into clay.

In one activity, a photo studio was set up in a classroom so that children could pose and take photographs of their significant objects and later add text to these images. The researchers comment:

In the process of transformation, the meaning of the object in the child’s life became interwoven with the meaning of the object in institutional space. … For instance, when the Year 1 children added captions to their digital photographs, these often commented on the new and unfamiliar spatial circumstances of the object. Objects were attributed with subjectivity and made to speak of this strangeness: ‘Where am I?’; ‘What am I doing here?’

(Connellan and Nichols 2011: 10)

This project operated at multiple levels of children’s ecologies, both creating new connections between contexts of their lives and enabling researchers to build their knowledge about the relationship between these contexts (see also Nichols and Snowden forthcoming).

Networking and rhizomatic designs

Network and rhizome theories have had a significant impact on literacy research methodologies. One of the main shifts has been from a person-centred to a decentred focus – or perhaps more accurately to a decentred, defocused view. These impacts are seen in the kinds of questions asked, the view of the site, and the researcher’s orientation to the subject.

A networked view of literacy encourages researchers to look for “network effects” in local spaces (Clarke 2002: 112). It can also mean that, rather than going into pre-selected sites, researchers attempt to map the connections through texts, practices or discourses in the virtual and textual domains. Song and Miskel (2005) are interested in the political context within which school literacies, and particular approaches to teaching reading, are debated. They focused one study on what they call “policy actors”, a category which is inclusive of government, professional and corporate organisations seeking to influence and form reading policy. Data for the study took the form of interviews with individuals representing these actors drawn from eight of the United States, thus the study looks across a number of levels of a policy system: local and trans-local. As well as interviews, the researchers collected and analysed policy documentation.

To trace lines of influence in the formation of reading policy, the researchers looked to establish the central or most prominent actors. First, it was necessary to identify all actors mentioned across the data and then to ascertain which organisations or individuals were mentioned by the greatest number of actors. When a policy actor specified an individual in an interview, or when a document produced by a particular actor made reference to another actor, this was counted as a network connection. Based on the connections found in the data, the researchers produced network diagrams which depicted the web of ties and made visible those actors with the greatest number of connections (as nodes in the network).



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It is important to note that the researchers did not reduce the data in advance by administering a survey, which is a common approach to social network analysis. They were as inclusive as possible regarding the range of actors that might be considered to have an interest in reading policy. Semi-structured interviews allowed informants to raise any actors that they consider salient, including those of whom the researchers may not have been aware. The specificities of the informants’ expressed views helped to shed light on how some actors had achieved centrality and influence over reading policy while others had not.

In a trans-national study, Nichols and colleagues investigated the circulation of knowledge, practice and resources related to early learning (Nichols et al. 2012; Nichols 2011; Nichols and Rainbird 2013; Nixon 2011; Rainbird and Rowsell 2011). Their approach involved a combination of systematic documentation and analysis, inspired by the ‘ecological survey’ approach of Neuman and Celano (see above), with a more fluid, rhizomatic exploration of connections. The researchers drew on the concept of the “activity space” taken from Massey (2000) to look for “the spatial network of links and activities, of spatial connections and of locations, within which a particular agent operates” (Nichols et al. 2012: 18)

The researchers explain that network tracing can begin from different kinds of points, such as an individual, a locale, a practice or an artefact. An example of networking beginning with the individual is the case of “Kimberley”, one of the parent participants who spoke of the importance of her Christian beliefs in decision making related to her children. The researchers visited her home and photographed the books she shared with her children, most of which had religious themes. Kimberley also provided a copy of her church’s magazine for mothers which included an article she had written. The researchers describe how they moved from Kimberley’s account and her artefacts to tracing the networks through which circulated texts, resources and discourses:

We visited the book shop in the capital city, took notes of titles in the parenting and children’s sections, and looked at covers and contents. We went to its online catalogue, noted titles and descriptions of products and the names of main publishers; we went to these publishers’ websites. … We considered all this in relation to an advertisement for a church-run mothers’ group seen on the library noticeboard in Midborough, not far from where Kimberley lived. This notice had led us to a website which detailed the curriculum organizing all such groups’ activities and described the movement’s spread from the US to many other countries. Through these rhizomatic moves, we could identify a globally circulating discourse of Christian motherhood, materialized in multiple local places through texts and practices. The children’s books in Kimberley’s home were instances of a large market of Christian materials with which parents were encouraged to orient their children to faith and, simultaneously to literacy, numeracy, and other school subjects.

(Nichols et al. 2012: 30–31)

The researchers describe cases as “dynamic relations between multiple actor-networks” and their approach as networking cases with other cases (Nichols et al. 2012: 45). Masny (2013), whose research is informed by rhizome theory, describes her work as forming assemblages. When considered as a form of ecological research, this approach draws attention to the researcher as a part of the ecology and co-producing it in association with other human and nonhuman actors. The account of an ecology which ensues is always provisional and dynamic since there is “no a priori or pre-given relationship among the elements in the assemblage” (p. 341).


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Critical issues

Emerging from this review of theories and designs are some significant overarching issues. Consideration of these will assist literacy researchers to determine whether the research question or problem they are investigating can be fruitfully approached with an ecological perspective and to consider how to orient to the ecology under investigation.

Ecological studies are trans-contextual; contexts are multiple

This means that even when a study centralises a particular context, such as the home or the classroom, this is always understood as related to other contexts. In an ecological study relatedness is understood, not within a system of abstract binaries (eg “in-school” vs “out-of-school”), but as dynamically occurring through multiple processes involving human and nonhuman participants, some of which are mobile and others fixed in place. To design an ecological study, the researcher first needs to conceptualise the ecology. The plurality of levels and settings is important. Even if a single site, such as a classroom, is selected it will be conceptualised as complex and multiple. There must be some conscious attempt to think about and investigate the relationships between parts of the literacy ecology whether these are understood as ‘settings’, ‘niches’ or ‘worlds’.

Ecological studies may be systematic or rhizomatic

Literacy researchers who want to understand ‘everything that is going on’ may be drawn to more systematic or more fluid approaches to researching ecologies. The field of literacy research includes individuals from a range of different academic and professional backgrounds and with different ontologies – orientations to being in the world. In research collaborations on substantial projects, where the team includes researchers from a range of academic backgrounds, it may be possible to incorporate phases of more exploratory and more systematic investigation. Lemke has written that “ ‘It takes a village’ to study a village” (2000: 275). If we consider the range of skilled specialists in any village, we may be encouraged to diversify our skill and knowledge base. Pragmatically, literacy researchers also need support for their work from funding bodies and may find, particularly in early career stages, that more systematic approaches are better appreciated by those making funding decisions. However, the increasing mobility and hybridity of literacies is breaking down previous distinctions between production and consumption, individual and collective and formal and informal, making it important to continue to develop fluid and emergent approaches (Syverson 2008).

Sustained engagement can bring new layers of insight into a literacy ecology

Engagement with an ecology – whether it be a family, classroom, church or town – always has a degree of extension over time. Even the second day of field work, a researcher feels a little more acclimatised and less of a stranger. However, for some literacy researchers this experience of getting to know people in their context is a long-term project. It involves many returns, not just physically, but in terms of revising and reinterpreting insights gained at earlier times. Even for those who lack the resources for a lengthy engagement, it is valuable to develop an appreciation for the histories of practice in a particular community, whether this be a family, classroom or shopping mall. Deliberately seeking out historical artefacts, consulting senior members or those who have previously passed through the setting, and



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reading any available histories or memoirs can be a means of layering one’s knowledge of a literacy ecology.

Research changes ecologies

The concept of the observer effect is well known in social research but it is a reductive view of the relationship between a researcher and an ecology. If we take a systems approach, then research should be considered a system which is brought into engagement with the system which we are investigating. From a networking perspective, the researcher can be considered as contributing to the production of the network through making connections between parts of the ecology whether these be texts, places, people, objects or ideas . Even something as simple as describing a site implicates the researcher by drawing on her interpretive repertoire. Despite the challenges of researchers being always already implicated, ecological approaches offer many rewards in both understanding and strengthening literacy ecologies.

Related topics

Time, Ecological approaches, Networks, Storied worlds, Rhizomatic theory

Further readingBarton, D. (2007) Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language, 2nd edition, Malden, MA:

Blackwell.Dyson, A.H. (1993) Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School, New York, NY:

Teachers College Press.Kramsch, C. and Steffenson, S. (2008) Ecological perspectives on second language acquisition and

socialization, in P.A. Duff and N.H. Hornberger (eds), Language Socialization Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Vol. 8, 2nd edition, New York, NY: Springer, pp. 17–28.

Nichols, S., Rowsell, J., Nixon, H. and Rainbird, S. (2012) Resourcing Early Learners: New Networks, New Players, New York, NY: Routledge.

Pahl, K. (2007) Timescales and ethnography: Understanding a child’s meaning making across three sites, a home, a classroom and a family literacy class, Ethnography and Education, 2(2): 175–190.

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Educational Researcher, 39(8): 571–581.Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974) Developmental research, public policy, and the ecology of childhood, Child

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Ecological approaches to literacy research