A Historical Analysis of Science, Equity, and Reading: The Summary of Investigations Relating to Reading

This historical analysis focuses on the 72‐year legacy of the Summary Investigations of Reading Research ( SIRR ) originally written by William S. Gray as a monograph in 1925, and continuing under the authorship of Helen Robinson and Samuel Weintraub until 1997. While publication venues changed, the intention remained the same: to provide reading scholars and educators with a comprehensive overview of reading research published each year. While many questions could be brought to this archive, we ask: What can we learn about how reading has developed as a science, and the role played by equity and diversity in reading scholarship by exploring the 72‐year history of the Summary of Reading Investigations?‐‐ To address these issues, we attend to intersections among discourses of place (e.g., venues, universities), interactional orders (e.g., collaborations, forms of communication), and foci (e.g., recurring themes) through a discourse‐historical approach. Our analysis reveals numerous historical points of tensions and suggests that increases in the use of scientific language in the Summary Investigations coincided with increased attention to student diversity and equitable schooling experiences. Notably, these advances revealed tensions between what science can and cannot reveal about how children become readers, especially when we ask who is well‐served. Representation of international scholarship is discussed.