Abstract
In the picture book Last Stop on Market Street (de la Peña, 2015), the protagonist, CJ, is upset that he and his grandmother must take their regular Sunday bus ride through the city. Along the way, though, CJ sees friends, meets new people, and interrogates the world around him, under the guidance of his grandmother, who helps him become a “better witness for what’s beautiful” in his world (de la Peña, 2015). In many ways, not only does CJ’s world expand in the book, but the book itself also expands beyond traditional boundaries. It is a notable example of children’s literature that portrays experiences beyond majoritarian narratives of Whiteness and class privilege. It also received the Caldecott Honor (for best illustrations) and the Newbery Medal (an award given almost exclusively to chapter books).
There are many ways to interpret this book, but for us, it is a journey through a sociospatial landscape. CJ’s landscape is not just a backdrop for his experiences. It is a dynamic part of his meaning making, “an arena of possibility for creating something new” (Mills & Comber, 2015, p. 94). In his Newbery acceptance speech, author Matt de la Peña (2016) reflected on his ongoing reinterpretation of his own literacy journey. He explained,
Growing up, I never could’ve imagined anything like this. Me and books? Reading? Nah, man, I was a working class kid. A half-Mexican hoop head . . . Turns out I was wrong. Turns out I’ve been a reader all along. Maybe I didn’t have my nose in a novel, but I read my old man’s long silences when the two of us sat in freeway traffic in his beat-up old VW bug. I read the way he pulled himself out of bed at 3:30 every morning to get ready for work. How he never took a sick day. I read my mom’s endless worry about the bills. About the empty fridge. But I also read the way she looked at me and my two sisters. Like we were special. Like we could make something of our lives.
CJ’s expanding way of reading the sights and sounds of his geography parallels the expansions of our field’s understanding of literacy/ies over the 50-year history of the Journal of Literacy Research (JLR). Both CJ’s journey and de la Peña’s acceptance speech remind us of the expanding notions of what it means to be literate and to study literacies. With this theme of “expanding landscapes,” we re-turn (see our editorial statement in Volume 50, Number 1) and examine editorial statements written by our predecessors to help us understand how literacy has been defined and conceptualized since the inception of our journal in 1969.
A Few Stops Along the Journey
Below we highlight several of the “stops” the field of literacy research has made along the 50-volume history of JLR. The “stops” that we describe here show the expanding landscape of literacy research as reflected through JLR’s editorial statements. These stops begin with (a) expanded notions of what “counts” as literacy research, then move toward (b) an understanding of the contexts that inform literacy research, followed by (c) the engagement with broader cultural and social influences on literacy practices, and more recently to (d) the disruption of dominant narratives by perspectives that emphasize the liberatory potential of literacy research.
Expanding Notions of What “Counts” as Literacy Research
As reflected in early editorial statements, the focus of “what counts as literacy” was often defined in ways that might be considered limited landscape compared to current understandings. In the first issue of the Journal of Reading Behavior (JRB), Hafner (1969) explained that the journal would be devoted to “the need for a viable theory of the nature of reading and how such a theory might evolve” (p. 1). In JLR’s next 49 volumes, the theories used to explain literacy would evolve beyond just a theory of reading processes toward theories of sociocultural and critical understandings of literacy practices. This expansion took many years, but the roots of this expansion were evident early in JLR’s history. For example, in an editorial statement in 1971, Hafner offered a listing of “thou shalts,” one of which was “Thou shalt know what reading is” (p. iii). The ensuing explanation reflected the following view of what counted, with a (cautious) call for expansion beyond printed words:
A basic task is to teach the student to decode printed words—to look at printed words and pronounce them . . . But those responsible for developing the decoding, meaning, and organizational skills must have the more comprehensive view of reading—reading as decoding, meaning development and so forth. (Hafner, 1971, p. iii)
In subsequent years of the JRB,cognitive portrayals of reading were reinterpreted using new theories and perspectives. For example, in his editorial statement, Ritter (1972) posed the question, “Would it be possible for the scholars associated with the Journal of Reading Behavior to focus upon studies of reading behaviors with equal attention given to the affective as well as the cognitive?” (p. iv). Yet, it would be many years later before the field attended to the “affective realm.”
Nonetheless, even in the early years of JRB, we found examples in the editorial statements that the field’s landscape was beginning to be influenced by other perspectives. In an editorial statement in 1975 (the year that marked the 25th anniversary of the then National Reading Conference), guest editor Albert Kingston (1975) recognized that some members were still “interested in methods, materials, and procedures which work well in teaching students and adults to read more effectively” (p. 221). Yet, he noted an important shift that had occurred over the organization’s first quarter century: “The organization has attracted a number of educational psychologists, linguists, psycholinguists, and others whose primary concern is an exploration of the reading process and the development of a psychology of reading” (p. 221). Growing perspectives in the field of literacy research continue to shift the landscape in what “counts” as literacy research.
Increased Attention to Context
The changing membership described by Kingston signaled important alterations in the landscape of literacy research. Namely, JRB/JLR editorial statements indicated that there was an increased attention to context in literacy research. Over time, interest in factors outside the reading process gained value in the field. For example, in 1987, the editorial team of Barr and colleagues acknowledged a tension between research that adopted a naturalistic perspective to understand reading development and research that examined instructional influences on learning. Their proposed solution was to heed the guidance of Vygotsky, as his work “offers a persuasive conceptualization of the way in which curriculum, teaching, and learning are—indeed, must be—related to the development of thought and language” (Barr et al., 1987, p. 3). Barr’s team suggested that Vygotsky’s social constructivist framework could advance the field’s ability to form connections between developmental and instructional theories of literacy.
A shift toward interest in classroom contexts related to literacy learning was also an important expansion of the view of literacy. In 1988, the Barr editorial team (Barr et al., 1988) explained this expansion as a shift “toward more detailed description of the ‘ground,’ the conditions beyond particular instructional strategies that influence literacy” (p. 282). Similarly, Readance, Konopak, Lomax, and McGee (1990) also called for research that addressed the complex nature of classrooms and the sociopolitical factors that impact literacy teaching and learning.
Intersections of Literacy and Culture
In addition to this broadening view of literacy based on context, the landscape of literacy research (over time) expanded to encompass the intersections between social factors, cultural norms/values, and literacy practices. For example, in their final editorial statement, Gambrell, Morrow, Neuman, and Pressley (1995)called for the inclusion of more diverse approaches to research and practice, “touching upon cultural and social issues facing our country” (p. 466). Change in this area was slow, as evident in the statement issued by guest editors Garcia, Willis, and Harris (1998),
although the number of articles devoted to multicultural issues increased from a low of 2 articles (out of 21) in 1992 to a high of 6 articles (out of 27) in 1995, these numbers still do not reflect the increased presence of students from diverse backgrounds in the United States. (p. 182)
In the first issue to carry the new name Journal of Literacy Research, Reinking, Hynd, and Oldfather (1996) wrote about the importance of changing the name of the journal to better align with the sociocultural and critical perspectives that had replaced the earlier (and dominant) psychological viewpoints of the field. Explaining that the name Journal of Reading Behavior had become an anachronism, they wrote, “For more than a decade, researchers and educators have been broadening their conceptions of literacy, acknowledging the interrelationships among various language processes, developing interdisciplinary research emphases, and exploring new research methodologies” (p. 1). The name change reflected an important milestone in the expansion of literacy research to include more nuanced understandings of the role of literacy practices in everyday lives.
Countering Dominant Narratives
In recent years, the landscape of literacy research as reflected in the editorial statements has widened with the onset of critical consciousness and disruption of dominant narratives. The expertise and experiences that are valued as legitimate and important in the study of literacies have changed, allowing for important reinterpretations of the field’s ways of knowing. The Sturtevant, Padak, Rasinski, and Linek (2005) editorial team called for an international focus on literacy. The editors talked about possible foci of such research, including “how and why reading and writing processes and development differ (or do not differ) among different language groups or cultures, ways policies and governmental actions affect schooling, or ways schools reflect (or affect) the culture of the society” (p. xvi). Anders, Yaden, Da Silva Iddings, Katz, and Rogers (2015) observed that the articles appearing in Volume 46, Issue 4 “remind us of what seems to have been absent in the literature, lost in the shuffle of standardization and accountability reforms—the humanizing and liberating potential of literacy” (p. 419). This call for humanizing and liberating research was echoed throughout our 49th volume, including the guest-edited, themed fourth issue. This work centered on the experiences of scholars of colors as they navigate the academy. Their stories represent the systemic issues relative to race, class, nationality, language, and gender that literacy scholars of color face daily.
New Stops on the Journey
The articles in this issue exemplify the complex ways in which literacy is examined in the field today. In this issue’s anniversary article, Keehne, Sarsona, Karwakami, and Au provide a historical overview of Kamameha Elementary Education Program (KEEP) and the influential approach to culturally responsive teaching that emerged from that work. Grounded in a rich historical understanding of language, literacy, and education in Hawai’i, the authors describe how a current network of KEEP schoolscontinue to embrace an indigenous framework of culturally responsive instruction.
Dutro and Haberl analyzed the writing of seven children who narrated their experiences with national borders, immigration, and systems of police authority. Using methods influenced by literary criticism, the authors attended to the children’s uses of imagery, temporality, symbolism, and metaphor. The interpretations of the writings reveal the complex ways in which the children used their writing to blur borders and speak back to the material and symbolic violence often inflicted on people of color with transnational ties in historical-political moments.
Learned presents a case of three high school students and a ninth-grade history teacher using a case study approach. The author examined the potential of disciplinary literacy to disrupt deficit positioning and create transformative learning opportunities for youth. The findings show how the teacher and students collectively constructed a context that afforded opportunities for the youth to engage in historical inquiry practices and to position themselves as learners who “do” history.
Hikida analyzed classroom discourse during text-based discussions in a fifth-grade classroom, focusing on the participation patterns of three students of color who were institutionally identified as “struggling.” The author foregrounds a recurring interactional pattern in which the teacher, a White male, stopped the discussion to “hold space” for the focal students so that their contributions could be heard. Drawing on scholarship in critical disability studies, the author highlights this interactional pattern as an example of how teachers and students can co-construct discursive arrangements that disrupt and reconstruct students’ literacy identities.
Finally, using ethnographic case study methods, Dyches examined how Geneva, an African American teacher of British literature, negotiated the discoursal tensions between her identity as a Black woman and the White male canon she was required to teach to her high school students. Geneva described how these tensions complicated her ability to enact culturally sustaining instruction in her classroom as she found subversive ways to foster students’ sociopolitical consciousness through her teaching.
In the insights essay, Gabriel discusses the current discourse related to dyslexia and growing pressures for states and schools to engage in dyslexia diagnoses and programs. She describes the challenges of preparing literacy professionals amid this policy landscape and proposes a set of goals for discursive bridges to ensure that students have access to high-quality instruction and responsive teachers.
We hope these articles, like the many before them, push the field to become “a better witness” to the complex landscapes of literacy research, education, and advocacy for expanding views of literacy.