Chapter 11: Reading, Understanding, and Evaluating Research

Researchers and practitioners, including those in the early childhood field, engage in reading research for a variety of purposes. Whether to learn more about a topic, explore innovative strategies for practice, or to conduct original research, becoming grounded in scholarly literature is an essential activity across disciplines. The process of reading and understanding scholarly literature can be challenging, however, because the language used in research writing is often technical, the jargon can be discipline specific, and the methods used to gather and analyze data can be complicated. The purpose of this chapter is to make the experience of reading research in the social sciences more manageable by delineating the sections of a typical research article and describing the purpose of each. This chapter also identifies and explains practical strategies for arriving at an accurate understanding of a research article so that the reader can evaluate its usefulness for their own work, whether practical or theoretical. Finally, this chapter will support readers as they become wise consumers of scholarly literature, preparing them to engage in basic evaluation by identifying important points and questions to consider while reading. Examples and topics are used to connect reading research to the field of early childhood.