ABSTRACT
The main title of this chapter refers to a ‘future synthesis’. However, as the rest of this book has made clear, actually, it is a ‘present’ synthesis. The contributors to it have already begun to combine New Literacy Studies and Bourdieusian social theory to create a framework delineating a methodological space, which we have referred to as classroom language ethnography. Chapter 9 looked at issues relating to the relationship between theory and practice, and the scope that the type of synthesis we have been advocating opened up for research into literacy presented in a series of practical case examples. Furthermore, it considered the usefulness of this approach for our conceptualisation of the literacy curriculum and, ultimately, a range of literacy events between teachers and students within the classroom. The present chapter takes these accounts as a starting point for a more formal statement on what this synthesis looks like in terms of principles of research practice. At the core of the chapter is an account of the elements involved in such an approach: the construction of the research object; conceptualisation of the research field and what constituents it is necessary to include in such an analysis; and the centrality of reflexivity. These are offered as guiding principles of research practice. However, we begin with a reconsideration of the underlying perspective which has guided the approaches used in the research in this book – Ethnographic – and further explore what ‘theory of practice’ signifies in this context.
