ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on teacher interviews, focus groups and lifelogging to explore how teachers discover and share literacy research, the barriers they face as well as their motivations for moving beyond state-mandated research and the possibilities that open out for alternative engagements. It explores the ways that research travels to, from and between teachers, tracing connections and examining blockages. Extracts from stories of teachers’ encounters with literacy research, together with visualisations of research movements, provide rich insights into common themes and variation in teachers’ lived experiences. They show that teachers’ encounters with research take place across a variety of physical and digital spaces, driven by national and school priorities as well as by individuals’ interests. Research and research-like materials appear in a variety of formats that often make critical engagement difficult. Spaces and time to engage with/in research are frequently pushed out of school, dependent on teachers using their own time. Support for engagement varies across settings.
