Abstract
This issue of the Journal of Literacy Research (JLR) brings our editorship to a close. In our first editorial statement, we invoked Horton and Freire’s (1990) notion of “making the road by walking” in framing the path for our work as editors as we were not sure how the field would frame our editorship nor how our editorship would frame the field. We trusted the process of review that included our editorial review board and ad hoc reviewers to help us “make the road” that would define our contribution. We also knew that the authors who published in JLR would guide us toward what it means to disrupt; we thank them for entrusting their work with us.
Editing JLR has been a rewarding experience for us. We had the privilege of reading 498 original submissions. Of these, we published 56 research studies, 4 anniversary articles, and 13 Insight articles. On average, our time to a first decision was 38 days and 77 days to a final decision. We introduced video abstracts to the dissemination process, expanded the presence of JLR on social media, increased the “click count” on the JLR website, and watched the Impact Factor of JLR continue to rise.
The articles in this issue represent the final set of studies published under our editorship. Like the articles in other issues, they are diverse in theoretical frames and methodologies. We see them as the kind of spaces that the field has been holding for critical interruptions to traditional notions of literacy, literacy instruction, and literacy research. Individually and collectively, they contribute important findings that can inform our field.
For example, Willis uses critical race theory to highlight the role of race in response to intervention. Willis charges the field to acknowledge the contributions of reading research to the reproduction of racial discrimination and to actively speak back to such studies (and ensuing policies) that continue to disenfranchise Black children and youth from quality educations.
In their study, Kalir and Garcia explore the ways in which critical literacy was developed through open web annotation (OWA) in a Marginal Syllabus conversation. In this use of “text-turned-discursive context,” the authors emphasize the possibilities of civic writing fostered through collaborative annotation. This study is important to the field as it demonstrates the affordances of OWA for educator dialogue, collective authorship, and critical civic learning outside formal settings.
Beucher, Handsfield, and Hunt consider how new materialist theories might be used for literacy research as motivated by an antiracist ethos. The authors explored the ethical and moral implications of using new materialist frames in literacy research involving racialized youth through a multitheoretical analysis of a digital autobiography of one such youth. In this piece, the authors raise ethical concerns regarding post-humanist work that does not also take into consideration the discourses of race and racism. They also offer guiding principles for socially just and antiracist new materialist literacy research.
In their study, Machado and Hartman drew on theories of translingualism and emergent biliteracy to examine children’s translingual writing in a linguistically diverse second-grade classroom. Their findings suggest that children in these spaces repurposed English sound–symbol correspondences in developmental spelling, composed strings of non-Roman symbols, and remixed multilingual environmental print. The children also engaged in translingual writing for a range of purposes. The authors’ findings stand to inform instruction in linguistically diverse classrooms across the world.
In his conceptual article, Collin examines the role of ethics in literacy research. In this piece, he argues that literacy researchers rarely theorize ethics overtly. Collin calls for a clearer concept of the ethical dimension of literacy and shows how his inattention to ethics in his own work was limiting. He concludes with suggestions for ways in which literacy researchers might incorporate theories of ethics in their work.
Finally, in the Insights essay, Hinchman and O’Brien challenge the field to rethink the way it works inside disciplinary literacy spaces. They discuss the use of traditional infusion approaches to disciplinary literacy versus what they call a hybrid approach. They draw from and call for the use of third-space pedagogy to further develop the field of disciplinary literacy. This insight column stands to inform the study of disciplinary literacy for years to follow.
With these pieces, we end our editorship of JLR. We are hereby handing the journal to Drs. Eurydice Bauer, Catherine Compton-Lilly, Aria Razfar, and Guofang Li. We are excited to see the road they will make as they walk this path of editorship of JLR.
Thank you to the Literacy Research Association for entrusting the editorship of JLR in our care; we found this collaborative endeavor to be one of the highlights of our careers. We now join a long line of editors of JLR who hope their contributions and service to the field leaves a lasting impact.