Abstract
As we publish the last issue in our anniversary volume, we pause to reflect on the vast amount of knowledge about literacy, literacy education, and literacy research that is represented across the 200 issues that are in the Journal of Literacy Research (JLR). As we read (and reread) the statements written by earlier editors and editorial teams, we remained humble to serve as the current editorial team. We have worked hard this year not only to re-present the work of the journal over the past 50 volumes but also to make sure JLR readers have access to literacy research that moves our field forward. We thank our authors, our current editorial review board, and ad hoc reviewers for supporting us in our efforts with JLR.
We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome the newest members on our editorial team. Dr. Fenice Boyd is now serving as a coeditor. Dr. Boyd is a professor and department chair at the University of South Carolina. She brings to our team expertise in literacy learning opportunities for adolescents who struggle with reading, writing, and traditional schooling practices; responses and reactions to multiethnic and multicultural literature; and principled practices of literacy instruction. We also welcome Dr. Pelusa Orellana. Dr. Orellana is a professor and associate dean for research at the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile. Her expertise in early literacy, motivation, and literacy assessment (in both English and Spanish) completes our team. We are excited both have agreed to work with us as coeditors of JLR.
We are excited about the studies that appear in this issue. Individually and collectively, they contribute important findings that can inform the field of literacy, literacy education, and literacy research. Take, for example, Tierney’s anniversary article. In this interdisciplinary essay, Tierney proposes a model of cross-cultural meaning-making as a foundation for what he terms “global epistemological eclecticism” in our scholarly pursuits, including our research and teaching. He calls for scholarly pursuits that are cooperative, collaborative, contrastive, and always respectful and reciprocal. It is through his work that we can see beyond policies and practices that propagate insularity and divisiveness.
Mirra, Coffey, and Englander used a sociocritical approach to explore the ways in which two high school English teachers leveraged disciplinary literacy practices in a high school classroom. Using a figured worlds framework, the team documented the ways in which teachers engaged youth in what the authors call “civic literacy learning.” This study has implications for how our field considers the intersection of race, literacy, and citizenship in order to disrupt social inequities.
In their study, Frankel, Fields, Kimball, and Murphy applied positioning theory in their collaboration with 12th-grade literacy mentors to reimagine literacy teaching and learning with their 10th-grade mentees. Using social design methodologies, the team documented the various ways the positioning of mentors as collaborators was taken up, sometimes in unexpected ways. The team argues that such collaborations with youth should account for the rights and duties of all members of a classroom community and should include how the rights and duties intersect and merge within and across practices.
Zapata, Kuby, and Thiel integrate three different data sources to demonstrate the ways in which diffractively reading data using a posthuman lens affords our field opportunities to (re)think writing research and teaching. The data–theory encounters that are described in their article highlight the tensions and insights produced as part of such an analysis and create what they call an “ethico-onto-epistemological shift” in writing studies and classroom pedagogies.
Wargo draws upon sound studies, posthuman literacies, and new materialism to demonstrate how writing for young learners is a more-than-human assemblage. Using a research method that allowed him to think with his data, Wargo demonstrates how more-than-human ecologies of literacy amplify composition as a practice not of being but of becoming.
Finally, in the Insights essay, Patel addresses a recent example of the ways in which schools in the United States present themselves as safe spaces for children and youth, but (in fact) are not. Patel demonstrates how Indigenous people (and groups who have been marginalized in the United States) created sanctuary for themselves; she discusses the role of literacy in that sanctuary. She encourages teachers and administrators to engage in schools as sites of sanctuary through recognizing that schools have (historically) been a place where minds and bodies are colonized.
As editors, we stand with our authors in their quest to disrupt the traditional through rethinking our daily practices as literacy educators, educational researchers, and people. In short, we are honored to offer this issue. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed working with the authors and our reviewers to prepare it for you. And if you are not following us on social media, please consider doing so. You can find JLR on Facebook and Twitter (both @JLiteracyRes), and you can find our video abstracts on the Literacy Research Association’s YouTube channel (LiteracyResearch).
Here’s to 50 more volumes of literacy research!