{"id":1671,"date":"2020-11-27T14:59:15","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T14:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/?p=1671"},"modified":"2020-11-27T14:59:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T14:59:15","slug":"the-research-gap-why-does-some-evidence-gain-influence-in-education-while-some-disappears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/2020\/11\/27\/the-research-gap-why-does-some-evidence-gain-influence-in-education-while-some-disappears\/","title":{"rendered":"The research gap- why does some evidence gain influence in education while some disappears?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some ideas that seem to catch alight as they move around the education profession and the wider public.\u00a0 One of these is \u2018the word gap\u2019.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hart and Risley used the term \u2018the word gap\u2019 to summarise findings from their 1995 study of the words heard by 42 children in the USA. Extrapolating from the numbers of words that researchers heard spoken to the children during 1 hour monthly visits over about 2 \u00bd years, they famously estimated that \u2013 by age 4 \u2013 children in the wealthiest homes will have heard over 30 million more words than children from the lowest-income families.<\/p>\n

The idea of the \u2018word gap\u2019 has attracted considerable critique from researchers who have challenged the premise, methodology and reliability of the underpinning research some of which is explored in a 2015 piece by Molly McManus in, The Conversation<\/em><\/a> in which she argued that too much focus on \u2018the word gap\u2019 distracts from more pressing issues linked to inequality in education.<\/p>\n

Central to the problem is that \u2018the word gap\u2019 is a deficit concept. Other researchers have found more positive ways to describe young children\u2019s language. Shirley Brice Heath\u2019s seminal study of three communities in the US in the 1980s, for example, found that children learned to use language in different ways as they socialised with those around them. The ones most successful at school were those whose language fitted easily to how language was used there. The point here is not that children have limited language but that their language use may differ from what\u2019s valued in schools, and indeed many have shown that building positively on children\u2019s diverse language resources can be a more productive- and equitable- starting point for language and literacy learning \u2013 Barbara Comber\u2019s work in Australia, for example, and Mariana Souto-Manning\u2019s in the USA.<\/p>\n

If this is the case then why has the \u2018word gap\u2019 gained such traction? In a way this is obvious \u2013 it\u2019s a catchy phrase, easily tweeted, and\u00a0 linked to a mind-boggling (if overly extrapolated) statistic \u2013 \u2018Did you know that children in low socio-economic groups hear 3 million (yes, 3 million!!) fewer words than the children of professional parents?\u2019 \u00a0As this happens, the nuances of the underpinning research get lost, along with researchers\u2019 caveats about their methodologies, and the idea can start to accrue new meanings.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, Julia conducted a Corpus Linguistics study to investigate recent appearances and treatment of the \u2018word gap\u2019 in UK newspapers.\u00a0 Using the Nexus database for all UK newspapers she investigated the \u2018word gap\u2019 from 1st<\/sup> January 2010 to the present.\u00a0 This yielded 63 individual relevant stories, having eliminated other uses of the term and duplicates, stories which peaked in 2018.<\/p>\n

In these stories, the \u2018word gap\u2019 is overwhelmingly represented as a problem that exists in society, without any dispute.\u00a0 Just one story referred to \u2018the so-called \u201cword gap\u201d\u2019 thus with a double hedge but then continued to discuss it as if unproblematic.\u00a0 The overwhelming majority of articles, 78%, refer to \u2018research\u2019 as the source; 14% refer to the ‘original\u2019 Hart and Risley study.\u00a0 Many do not explain the source of research referred to. The \u2018word gap\u2019 is generally explained as a phenomenon that characterises disadvantaged children from their better-off peers. 16% of the stories describe the word gap as being of the size of 30 million, and several of these further associate this with children being three years of age. Precise numbers are an indication of facticity as a news value and are therefore prized by news journalists (Bednarek & Caple, 2012).<\/p>\n

Children are divided by these stories into two groups: those who \u2018suffer\u2019 or are \u2018disadvantaged\u2019 by the word gap and those who don\u2019t. The unfortunate group are represented as being from \u2018lower-income\u2019 \u2018disadvantaged\u2019 or \u2018working class\u2019 households.\u00a0 They are characterised as arriving at school \u2018with low literacy skills\u2019 \u2018low vocabulary\u2019 or even \u2018unable to speak or read\u2019.\u00a0 They are contrasted, but usually implicitly, with another group of children, \u2018their peers\u2019 without these disadvantages, who are sometimes described in other simplistic ways such as \u2018affluent\u2019.\u00a0 The disadvantaged group are then held to suffer from a persistent deficit, through education and into adulthood.\u00a0 Occasionally dire glimpses of their future are predicted such as unemployment \u201cat age 34\u201d or even imprisonment.<\/p>\n

You can read more here about this analysis and how teachers and parents were positioned through these stories here<\/a>. Our point is that given this repeated attention in the media \u2013 attention that magnifies across social media and other sites\u2013 the idea of \u2018the word gap\u2019 starts to feel rather indisputable. This matters if other research-informed ways of thinking about children\u2019s language become sidelined, particularly if they are ways that could provide more productive \u2013 and equitable \u2013starting points for language and literacy learning at school.<\/p>\n

So why does some research gain greater influence than other research in education? What happens as a phrase such as \u2018word gap\u2019 circulates among educators and the wider public? Which assumptions are associated with as it is tweeted and retweeted by teachers, academics, consultants and other educators? What meanings does it gather as it gains momentum? And what does this mean for how we understand children\u2019s language and literacy learning and what we decide to do about it?<\/p>\n

These are questions which, together with Bronwen Maxwell and Ian Guest from Sheffield Hallam University and Terrie Lynn Thompson from Stirling University, we intend to explore in further research. We plan to investigate more widely how discourses relating to primary school literacy education move in society and to consider the kinds of research evidence that move to teachers, as well as those that do not.<\/p>\n

Written by:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Cathy Burnett, Sheffield Hallam University<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Julia Gillen, Lancaster University<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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