ABSTRACT
Perhaps no other research approach has more potential to answer the complex development questions that should undergird curriculum. Indeed, longitudinal studies have illuminated our thinking about literacy development in ways that have startled theorists and often challenged key assumptions of touted approaches. Amidst a flurry of political polemics and pronouncements about literacy development, longitudinal research oftentimes yields surprises and unmasks presuppositions-especially a review of such research. And, especially, if such research is examined in terms of the assumptions about literacy and society including the sociopolitical nature of what counts as research or, within a research study, what counts as data/evidence or the lens that might be used to illuminate development.
