Paradigmatic diversity within the reading research community

Diversity among research paradigms offer us alternative ways to think about and to act upon the apparent crisis in literacy learning and use in the United States. Accordingly, the articles from the Reading Research Quarterly and the Journal of Reading Behavior were classified as examples of Empirical/Analytic, Symbolic, or Critical Science in order to obtain a clearer picture of the types of assumptions which underlie the research most celebrated within the reading research community. Each paradigm includes different goals, different values and social interests, different conceptions of reading and writing, different understanding of causality, and different methods and forms of logic. Results demonstrate that nearly all of the articles employ the assumptions from natural and physical (Empirical/Analytic) science. Discussion centers on possible explanations for and the consequences of this lack of diversity.