ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the logic of inquiry and affordances of syncretic approaches to the study of literacy. Syncretic approaches are defi ned here as the principled and strategic use of transdisciplinary perspectives for the theoretical and methodological treatment of the social practices of literacy learning (Gutiérrez & Stone, 2000). Of signifi cance, a syncretic approach is contingent upon an expansive theoretical network that materializes from the goodness of fi t between relevant theoretical constructs and the complexity of sociocultural phenomena. In our own work (Gutiérrez, 2008), it is the process of seeking a goodness of fi t that allows the researcher to draw, in a principled way, from expansive theories of learning and development (Cole, 1996; Engeström, 1987, 2001; Rogoff, 2003), critical social theories (Luke, 2003), sociocultural and social practices views of literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 1998), including New Literacy Studies (Gee, 1996, 2005; Street, 1984, 2003), and multi-literacies approaches (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) to link the particular to the larger social context of development.
