This text combines the research methodology chapters from the second edition of the Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (Flood, Lapp, Squire, & Jensen, 2003) to provide readers with a concise account of contemporary research methodologies in the English language arts (ELA). The volume begins with a general overview of ELA research for teachers before addressing more specific methodological topics, which include multiple literacies, empirical research, longitudinal studies and literacy development, case studies, ethnography, teacher research, synthesis research, and fictive representation. The volume concludes with a summary chapter that speculates on current methodological issues and future directions for researching the ELA.

The more effective chapters explore issues that have accompanied research conducted since the 1991 edition of the Handbook. Many ELA inquiries have shifted in the past 15 years toward sociocultural and critical perspectives that problematize earlier conceptions of literacy and research. These shifts foreground how both literacy practices and research methodologies are situated in social, political, and cultural contexts. Several chapters reflect these recent methodological developments. For example, Green, Dixon, and Zaharlic's chapter discusses how shifts to practice-based conceptions of language and culture have raised new debates surrounding ethnographic inquiry, including the politics of accessing the social processes of cultural groups and representing them in research. Tierney and Sheehy note how contemporary research methodologies cannot be understood outside the political discourses that constitute the various ways that research, language, or literacy become defined and practiced. These chapters, as well as the chapters on multiple literacies, teacher activist research, and alternative representations of research findings, manifest contemporary methodological attention to culture, power, and language. These factors not only impact how researchers might understand the teaching and learning of language and literacy but also how they might understand and practice research methodologies that are conceptually, politically, and ethically viable.

At many points, however, this edited collection does not read as a contemporary account of ELA research. This seems to be a function of at least two weaknesses. First, the volume as a whole draws disproportionately from studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s. Many older studies might be quite useful; however, the assumptions, methods, and status of different forms of research in the humanities and social sciences have shifted noticeably across the last two decades. Thus, several chapters offer methodological distinctions that lag behind current methodology texts and professional journals. Second, and related, the volume is not organized around major distinctions held in contemporary research. Each chapter is self-contained and not situated in relation to the other research traditions in the volume. Additionally, neither the editorial comments nor the framing chapters highlight key methodological debates, contradictions among chapters, or shifts within or across disciplinary inquiries into language and literacy. The concluding chapter is particularly disappointing because its commentary on so-called recent developments and future directions in ELA research does not make use of recent scholarship. As a result, readers might not come away with a useful sense of current trends in ELA research or its methodological disagreements.

In summary, this volume offers an uneven account of contemporary ELA research methodologies. Individual chapters contribute epistemological discussions pertinent to current research in the field. However, several chapters do not engage current methodological considerations, such as recognizing the value-ladenness of all research, which challenges traditional notions of objectivity, validity, reliability, and generalizability. I would consider using select chapters in a graduate-level research methodology course. However, the volume as a whole would need to be augmented by texts that help locate different research traditions and contemporary methodological arguments concerning the teaching and learning of language and literacy.