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Abstract

This year's conference theme was a collective invitation to face how we, as a literacy research collective, may have played a role in marginalization and disenfranchisement and the further promotion and perpetuation of conceptual and linguistic hierarchies. The conference theme also became an invitation to propose ways to counter these existing hierarchies and how we use research as part of that solution. That was the spirit behind this year's Integrative Research Review Panel. This panel brought together five scholars, encompassing four perspectives, to tackle this year's conference theme of “Interrogating Hierarchies.” The four papers approached the conversation about hierarchies from research on Black writing, English as a global affair, the science of reading, and social design-based experiments, not only outlining the pressing issues but also proposing solutions that our research community can embrace. As we read the four papers comprising this panel, it is worth pointing out how, despite the divergent departure points that each panelist's work represents, the four papers organically lay out a series of agreements about the need to rethink how we conceive English to avoid disenfranchisement, the importance of valuing minoritized and marginalized voices to rethink literacy, and the challenges to align our research with advocacy efforts.

Keywords

black writing hierarchies of English science of reading social design-based experiments

The 2023 conference theme was “Interrogating Hierarchies: Building a Humanitarian Literacy Research Architecture that Binds.” This theme invited the association to work on existing research that has yet to lead to the wanted, proposed, hypothesized, or imagined outcomes. As a research community, we also need to deal with the fact that past research has had unintended results and consequences that have erased cultural, disciplinary, economic, linguistic, political, and technological identities instead of giving everyone a chance to have better access to language(s), reading, writing, and knowledge(s). As a community, we must recognize the existence of these hierarchies as the first step to combating them. This year's Integrative Research Review Panel presenters provide four possible perspectives to begin building a “Humanitarian Literacy Research Architecture that Binds.” These perspectives were chosen by considering the current pressing questions in the field and the panelists’ expertise.

Johnson opens the panel by considering the role of researchers writing themselves into their research to understand how they may be implicated in perpetuating harmful hierarchies in literacy research. Johnson considered her role as a Black researcher writing alongside other Black writers who write and conduct research as part of a writing ecology that has the power to reshape the textual world of literacy research and, in time, dismantle the hierarchies that relegate particular perspectives to the margins.

Following Johnson, Mora introduced the “Hierarchies of [English]” concept to discuss language framing within the literacy community, emphasizing the need to challenge monolingualism and exclusive language standards. His paper outlined his transition from enforcing language hierarchies to advocate for their transgression, disruption, and dismantling. It calls for a collective effort to reshape literacy research to uphold linguistic equity, diversity, and justice.

In the third paper, Parsons addressed concerns within the Science of Reading (SOR) movement, emphasizing the need to examine hierarchical structures therein critically. He discussed hierarchies related to literacy, focusing on traditional text reading at the expense of other forms, and critiqued the narrow emphasis on the Five Pillars while neglecting influential factors such as culture, motivation, and early childhood education. Parsons highlighted hierarchies in research methodologies and voices, pointing out biases toward quantitative research and certain individuals within the SOR movement, ultimately advocating for a more comprehensive and equitable approach to literacy instruction.

In the final perspective, Garcia and Mirra challenged the predominant narrative of “learning loss” in U.S. K-12 education during and post-pandemic, arguing that it overlooks the collective forms of support, organizing, and experiences gained. The authors critiqued the individualized focus on social-emotional learning, twenty-first-century skills, and digital citizenship, which limit the full possibilities of learning and social interaction. They proposed an alternative approach through social design-based experiments (SDBEs), which emphasize historicity, systems-based remediation, a dynamic understanding of culture and diversity, and a purposeful focus on equity, offering a multiversal perspective on learning beyond traditional measures of progress and success.

Write the Power: How Writing Research Can Dismantle Hierarchies in Literacy Research Latrise P. Johnson

Within literacy research, particular languages and voices are upheld while others are silenced or revised to reflect what is constructed as academic discourse that positions white middle-class American English language users as superior and creates false racial hierarchies with material and discursive consequences for Black writers and research/ers. This paper illuminates the role of the researcher writing themselves into the research stories they tell might provide the space for dismantling hierarchies with/in literacy research. Using an ecology of writing framework in which “all characteristics of individual writers or a piece of writing both determine and are determined by the characteristics of all the other writers and writings in the systems” (Cooper, 1986, p. 368), this work posits that researchers are implicated in the ways hierarchies are maintained with/in literacy research. To dismantle such hierarchies, racial research stories written about and by Black people that illuminate meaningful and complex literate histories and realities are necessary.

Literacy Research: A Story of the “Other”

Lalik and Hinchman (2001) wrote that in their experience, “discussions of race in literacy research are typically met with resistant responses, including boredom, distraction, defensiveness, ridicule, and anger” (p. 530). However, such discussions are necessary as literacy researchers continue to conduct research that expands and re-operationalizes literacy learning to improve literacy education and access for our nation's most vulnerable populations. For Black people, “the social constructions of race with/in the study of literacy produce and sustain inequitable power relations and concomitant resource distribution patterns” (p. 531). As a result, the research stories about the literate lives of Black people, in particular, are wrought with turns toward racism to justify and normalize inequitable education, prevent full access to joyful literacy learning, and explain the need for interventions.

Literacy researchers are then implicated in the perpetuation of harmful stories and stereotypes about the literate lives of Black people. Specifically, ahistorical, quantitative, comparative, and culturally distant studies of the literate lives of Black youth report gaps in achievement (Alvermann, 2005), and the need for specialized instruction (Walker & Hutchison, 2021). In addition, notions of “normativity” within literacy discourses where racialized others are viewed as lacking are the result of such ingrained systems that position Black people in deficit terms. These racialized systems make it difficult for researchers to interpret and make sense of what happens outside of normalized systems of knowing and conducting research.

This scholarly inquiry aims to elucidate how writing research, encompassing both the process and the resultant texts, can serve as a space for addressing and responding to these entrenched hierarchies within literacy research.

Write Power

According to Royster (2002):
There is the language, the discourse of academe and there are other languages and discourses that are not academic…. Despite our occasional intent to suggest otherwise such habits of distillation have engendered in our field hierarchies of power, privilege, and value, and they have continually reified notions of insider/outsider, centre/margin, us/other, and also notions of good/suspect… Whether by intent or default, we have centralized in our conversation a default view of what can be sanctioned as good writing…. (pp. 24–25)

In academic discourse, Spence (2021) contends that the language dynamics employed by white speakers/listeners/readers tend to highlight specific linguistic attributes of racialized individuals, thereby marginalizing and neglecting the language of other social groups (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Similarly, Haberman asserts (2000), “Language is not an innocent reflection of how we think. The terms we use to control our perceptions, shape our understanding, and lead us to particular proposals for improvement” (p. 203). In his paper, Mora extends the discussion of limited views of language and how the focus on English as the only vehicle for academic discourse inhibits efforts toward equity. Researchers have used language to create and perpetuate a harmful representation of the literate lives of Black people. This selective acknowledgment in academic discourses perpetuates false racial hierarchies, exerting both material and discursive consequences as academic knowledge construction and deconstruction involves “interpretive lenses that may lead to biases inherent in the presentation of ideas, stories, philosophies, and experiences” (Milner, 2007, p. 396).

Luckily, researchers can address evidential truth with/in literacy research and undo harmful hierarchies that persist, when they consider the self with/in their research; when they value others and when they name and understand the self in relation to others (Milner, 2007). Such considerations are necessary for critical approaches to understanding literacy learning and doing for historically marginalized communities, but also for enacting epistemologies that invite researchers to include themselves in the stories of their scholarship.

In this context, “writing the power” conveys the notion of employing writing as a storied and personal response to discrimination within and of literacy research. I offer that literacy researchers write themselves into the stories of literacy research in an effort to dismantle social and scientific hierarchies that persist in the field.

An Ecology of (Black) Writing

An ecology of writing encompasses more than individual writers and their immediate context. It invites one to explore how writers interact to form systems. With/in writing ecologies “all characteristics of individual writers or a piece of writing both determine and are determined by the characteristics of all the other writers and writings in the systems” (Cooper, 1986, p. 369). Systems reflect “the various ways writers connect with one another through writing: through systems of ideas, of purposes, of interpersonal interactions, of cultural norms, of textual forms” (p. 369). Because of the racist and anti-Black practices and structures of academic writing discourses, Black writers face judgment against an academic discourse that privileges white voices and voices that mimic normalized discourses.

Examining Black writing ecologies can guide researchers and those that publish research toward more restorative relationships with/in the textual world that is literacy research and enable researchers to push back against myths that perpetuate literacy research about historically marginalized communities. As part of an ecology of Black writing, I have learned from Black writers and researchers—great and developing—how to use research storying and writing the self as methods for responding to a lifetime when their literacy learning and lives have been denied, delayed, disrupted, and diminished. My body of work and my act of writing the self is part of a system of Black writers writing with the purpose of rewriting the stories that have relegated Black academic-ness to the margins.

Storying: Writing Beyond Traditional Academic Boundaries

Drawing inspiration from an ecology of writing framework, all characteristics of individual writers and their compositions are mutually influential, forming an interconnected system (Cooper, 1986). This framework is utilized to explore how research conducted by and about Black literacy research/writers can disrupt prevailing hierarchical systems in literacy research. While I focus on Black writers and researchers to think beyond academic discursive boundaries and illustrate ways toward dismantling hierarchies with/in literacy research, it is important to note that all literacy researchers could benefit from writing the self into their literacy research.

Many Black writers have responded to racial discrimination and educational injustice in and through writing. They have storied their lived experiences to shed light on the ways they have been positioned as the marginalized other. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison have used autobiographical and autoethnographic tools and methods to compose stories as political testimony about the racial struggles of Black women in America. Their story “takes into account the positions and positionings of its narrator within systems of inequality” (Reed-Danahay, 2017, p. 149). In addition, their writing provides a framework for understanding how the act of writing oneself as a researcher highlights Black experiences from the past to provide present tools for how Black literacy researchers and writers might re-write the harmful stories of Black literacy underachievement and to tell meaningful and complex literate histories and realities. For example, Woodruffe (2021), a Black, Trinidadian-American critical auto-ethnographer, understands the significance of recognizing one's position within an ecological system, drawing on the experiences and stories of James Baldwin to inform her research. Woodruffe also recognizes the power of the act of writing. She asserts:
I write to escape the margins—the margins of single stories, the margins of Blackness, the margins of institutional forms of power and oppression. I write with purpose, using my stories to highlight those with transnational identities as outsiders—within, to relocate and center us. (p. 457)

With the self in mind, Black researchers who write themselves into their research, seek to question, challenge, extend, and disrupt dominant and hegemonic discourses about their being and doing. Literacy research and writing that reaches inward and beyond traditional academic boundaries has the power to change the literacy landscape that positions Black people on the margins of achievement and success.

Writing Racial Research Stories

Elsewhere (Johnson, 2017), I have written about my positionality as “not only a researcher in the [research] space but a person who is also becoming through writing” (p. 22). As a researcher writing while Black, I have found it necessary to expose how my identities impact the construction of knowledge with/in and about Black communities and how the stories I tell about the literate lives of Black youth, in particular, reauthor the ways that they have been presented in literacy research (Nasir et al., 2013). As a part of a Black Writing Ecology, I have considered the being, becoming, and writing of participants, myself, and other Black writers/researchers together to understand myself and being in relation to the communities I am a member of and those I study.

Writing the self as a researcher requires a consistent and varied writing practice that includes thinking about the self with/in the contexts we study and in the worlds we live (and hopefully write ourselves in). What I have learned from Black writers’ writing is that I can use my research and writing to: (1) respond to the harmful narratives that position Black literate lives at the margins (see Hughes, 1994); (2) share the myriad ways of the being and becoming of Black people through literacy practice (Johnson & Sullivan, 2020); (3) document the everydayness of Black living, doing, and being (see Hurston, 2018; Johnson & Johnson, 2020); (4) write with/in and for multiple audiences; (5) be a worthy witness (Winn & Ubiles, 2011); (6) add to the spaces I conduct research; (7) and love (see Morrison, 2007).

Disrupting the Hierarchies of [English] in Literacy Research: A Call to Rebuild our Research Architecture

Raúl Alberto Mora

In the first paper, Johnson started a conversation around language and voice, which my work profoundly resonates with. I intend to approach this discussion from a different angle but with the same intent: to propose a roadmap to help us rebuild our research architecture from more equitable perspectives. This idea also resonates with the two following papers. This paper will expand the conversation to explore how we frame our literacy community's language(s). To do so, I propose a framework labeled “Hierarchies of [English].” I will develop my argument in four moments: First, I briefly describe where I come from to discuss why we must have this conversation. I will later elaborate on what I mean by Hierarchies of [English], followed by some principles toward transgressing, disrupting, and dismantling said hierarchy. Finally, I will send our readers an invitation based on these ideas.

My Identity and the Hierarchies of [English]

This reflexivity about these Hierarchies of [English] is part of a journey comprising 41 years as a language learner and 31 years as a teacher. During that time, I went from compliance to defiance: I stopped being the person who enforced the hierarchies and became someone who wanted to defy and dismantle them. My role has changed from language speaker to language user to language co-creator. I write my pronouns (él/he/han/ele/il/on) to reclaim my language rights. I am not claiming that I am equally fluent in Spanish, English, Norwegian, Portuguese, French, and Polish. I am saying that those six languages are part of my life, and I claim them as mine.

Why Talk About the Hierarchies of [English] Now … At LRA

I reviewed the 2022–2023 LRA Board of Directors for this presentation. Six of nine board members speak English as a second language this term, and two reside outside the United States. These literacy debates are also happening in other languages, so I think we should have this conversation now. We must be aware of these debates and not assume, as Kress (2003) may have implied, that scholars in other languages are just translating “literacy” from English into their languages.

Here is an essential caveat about placing the word [English] in brackets to discuss the Hierarchies of [English]. Due to our location in Atlanta and the primary language of this year's conference, we are having this conversation in English. But the brackets also mean that other majority languages should be held accountable. Different languages have similar hierarchies, complicity, and colonialism; we will discuss them eventually. In that sense, think of this essay as a point of convergence where our research comes together. Also, think of this as a manifesto, a roadmap for the work ahead of us, and an invitation to join in.

Framing the Hierarchies of [English]

Now, I want to frame those Hierarchies of [English]. These hierarchies have two main issues. On the one hand, monolingualism prescribes speaking only English. There is also a monoglossic understanding that we should only speak in particular dialects or registers, excluding other dialects from other countries and regions within English-speaking countries (Baker-Bell, 2020; Smith, 2023). As Mora and Chiquito-Gómez (in press) argued, this monolithic view of English has consequences regarding publication acceptances and presence in academic outlets, as anything that does not resemble the so-called “standards” of what English should look like may not even be afforded a forum to begin with.

Grounding the Hierarchies of [English] in Research: An Incomplete, Evolving List

Three moments illustrate my idea of Hierarchies of [English]. The first moment involves some foundational research. Examples include Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas’s (1996) work on linguistic imperialism, Kubota’s (2020) work on linguistic racism, and Bourdieu's (1991) work on language and power. I also reference Pennycook’s (2021) critical applied linguistics, Luke’s (2004) links between critical literacy and English, Janks’ (2010) literacy and power, and Lo Bianco’s (2000) multilingualism and multiliteracies. A second moment revisits various emerging research expanding these discussions, including Rosa and Flores’ (2017) work on raciolinguistic ideologies, Flores’ (2020) discussion of language architecture, Dovchin’s (2022) ideas on linguistic racism, and Ramjattan's (2022) accent research. I have also drawn inspiration from Smith’s (2023) immigrant literacies, Baker-Bell's (2020) linguistic justice, and Johnson's (2021) Critical Race English Education. Other works, such as Ortega's (2023) Death Triumviratus framework as a critique of geopolitical and economic forces affecting languages, and Chang-Bacon's (2021) critique of the “idealized speaker,” have also influenced these recent frameworks. This is an incomplete list, as I am still looking to engage more deeply with this and other emerging research studies. Lastly, my 20-year research on English (e.g., Mora, 2004, 2013, 2022) highlights and advances these conversations.

Transgressing → Disrupting → Dismantling: A First Look at Some Challenges and Principles

We should consider some challenges and principles as we transgress, disrupt, and dismantle the Hierarchies of [English]. As I also argued in some of my most recent work with Chiquito-Gómez (Mora & Chiquito-Gómez, in press), this process requires supporting academic work in multiple languages while not ostracizing those who choose to write in English as their second language.

Transgressing

Transgressing the Hierarchies of [English] means acknowledging that current frameworks and conceptualizations disenfranchise many people and that inaction is no longer an option. Knowing English as a broker is also important. But it must come from stronger ecological positions that stop limiting what English should look and sound like for most of us. It also means we must use our conceptualization of literacies to inform, support, and collaborate with sociolinguistics and applied linguistics efforts around English. Literacy(ies) research can help people discussing World English and English as a Lingua Franca conceptualize these ideas in more robust social justice frameworks.

Disrupting

Disrupting the Hierarchies of [English] allows literacy debates to be decentralized and global (Mora et al., 2020). It means acknowledging Latin American scholars developing the concepts of literacidad in Spanish and letramento in Portuguese (Mora, 2016). It also means paying more attention to Africa beyond South Africa. It requires a deeper look at Europe, beyond U.K. traditions, and Asia and Oceania beyond Australian scholarship. For 2 years, I have been tracking down debates on literacy in Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, where I also see the common denominator of seeing “literacy” as polysemic (as we do in English) and remixing, rewriting, and recreating the multiple meanings of literacy, as in Latin America, better to reflect our social, political, and socio-economic realities.

Disrupting the Hierarchies of [English] requires global awareness of conceptual and methodological choices. We need to question whose works we “cite” and from what regions of the world, as well as the traditions and sources of knowledge we use, whether ancestral or other languages. We must also consider how we will use what other scholars write in non-traditional English and other languages in our scholarship.

Dismantling the Hierarchies of [English]

Dismantling has two phases. First, it requires reassessing the burdens we place on minority English and non-Anglo scholars, which mainstream Anglo scholars are often unaware of or subject to. Our role as gatekeepers must change to that of gate-openers and bridge-builders, as Golovátina-Mora (personal communication, 2023) helped me conceptualize. Dismantling literacy research requires breaking the cycles of monolingualism and subtractive bilingualism, which acknowledge only one language and specific registers. This challenges those of us in leadership positions in journals, conferences, and other academic spaces to accommodate more voices in the near future.

A Call to [Gradually] Rebuild our Research Architecture: “It All Begins with a Tweak”

I conclude this paper with a call to action. As I tell my students, many educational changes start with a tweak. Let me offer you two provocations. The first one is another thing I say to my students, “Every 180-degree turn inevitably becomes a 360-degree turn.” Transgressing, disrupting, and dismantling the Hierarchies of [English] is about the long road, not sharp turns. The second provocation is a quote by Jackson (1988),
I'm starting with the [one] in the mirror

I'm asking [them] to change [their] ways

And no message could have been any clearer

If you wanna make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and then make a change.

With these two provocations in mind, I invite all the readers to look at the principles and challenges I outlined here and savor the ideas that Latrise, Seth, and Antero and Nicole shared. Consider these lines the beginning of an extended conversation, and let us think collectively about the commitments we are ready to make as scholars, advocates, mentors, a collective, and a community in two moments: (a) when you read this paper and (b) on the road to our next LRA conference. Let us revisit these challenges and tweaks you can make to defy the Hierarchies of [English] next time we meet to build a literacy research field that upholds linguistic equity, diversity, and justice.

Interrogating Hierarchies Within the Science of Reading Movement

Seth A. Parsons

In his 2023 conference theme, Dr. Alfred Tatum invited us to interrogate hierarchies to “work on existing research that has yet to lead to the wanted, proposed, hypothesized, or imagined outcomes.” He continued, “As a research community, we also need to deal with the fact that past research has had unintended results and consequences.” As an elementary education literacy professor who is actively engaged with teachers and schools, I immediately thought of the topic du jour for elementary education: the science of reading. In this section, I heed Dr. Tatum's call to interrogate hierarchies, and I do so within the science of reading.

Abbreviated Context

In 2018, journalist Emily Hanford released the podcast, Hard Words: Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read? This podcast oversimplified how children learn to read (phonics) and overgeneralized examples of poor reading instruction to all U.S. schools (no one is teaching phonics, and the focus of reading instruction nationwide is guessing). Moreover, Hanford blames teacher educators for not preparing teachers to teach reading correctly and for holding onto outdated and ineffective approaches to reading instruction, which are also false (e.g., Litt et al., 2015). Despite the distorted and misleading presentation, the podcast went viral, being picked up by reputable outlets such as National Public Radio and Forbes.

Shortly afterward, we experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in drastic declines in reading achievement on standardized assessments of reading, such as National Assessment of Educational Progress (2022). This confluence of shifts in public opinion and severe declines in reading performance led many states to pass legislation, mandating SOR curricula and specific instructional approaches. According to Education Week (Schwartz, 2023), 32 states and the District of Columbia have passed SOR legislation. Most of the laws emphasize training for teachers, curricula that are aligned with SOR, ongoing progress monitoring, intervention for students who do not make progress, and requirements for teacher preparation programs.

The Problem

I understand the spirit of these laws. Yes, reading instruction should be informed by high-quality research, guided by ongoing assessment, and modified for students not advancing. Difficulties emerge when we dig into the details and unpack what knowledge, ideas, outcomes, and voices are privileged. Several hierarchies are embedded within the SOR movement. In the following sections, I explore several of these hierarchies.

Literacy Hierarchies—What Counts as Literacy?

Over the last several decades, we have seen an expansion of the conceptualization of literacy to include multimodal, digital, coding, gaming, video, art, and more (Alvermann et al., 2019). Yet, the SOR prioritizes traditional text reading—a vital skill—over all other forms of literacy. Policies associated with SOR are forcing out the recent emergence of expanded views of literacies in schools. Writing, already underemphasized in schools, is rarely mentioned in SOR. Graham (2020), for example, makes a clear case that SOR has not capitalized on the research showing the positive impact of writing on reading outcomes. Digital literacies and multimodal literacies are ignored, yet,
More and more, contemporary texts draw on a number of modes: speech, image (still or moving), writing, music, and action. More and more, the dominant site of appearance for texts is the screen, or rather, screens of all kinds. These factors are giving rise to a pronounced difference in kinds of text linked to generations. (Rowsell et al., 2019, p. 517)

Such a narrow focus undermines robust literacy learning for students entering an ever-changing world that is increasingly digital and multimodal (Colwell et al., 2020).

Focus Hierarchies—What Influences Reading?

The current SOR movement often focuses on the Five Pillars from the National Reading Panel (2000): phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These are essential skills for learning to read, and they have a strong research base. Yet, there are numerous factors that influence learning to read that also have a strong research base, but are not getting press or legislation: What about the role of culture, motivation, identity, economic status, access to libraries, interests, and early childhood education (Lee, 2020; Li, 2011; Neuman, 1999; Parsons & Erickson, 2024; Yoshikawa et al., 2016)? What about research on how people learn? How People Learn II (National Academies of Science, 2018), informed by multiple disciplines, highlighted the following: background knowledge, culture, language abilities, motivation, interests, and self-regulation. These aspects of learning are not emphasized in the current SOR movement, which is more focused on the foundational skills that are being taught in rote ways, ignoring much of what we know about how people learn (Vaughn et al., 2020, 2022).

Research Hierarchies—What Research Counts?

Perhaps a remnant of NCLB, which codified scientifically based reading research as experimental or quasi-experimental research, quantitative research is privileged over qualitative research in SOR. Embedded within this hierarchy are epistemological assumptions about what counts as science—including the assumption that science is the only way to create knowledge. In this hierarchy, we lose out on nuance and explanation that often emerges in qualitative data (Almasi et al., 2006; Pressley, 2001). Moreover, SOR advocates often draw instructional conclusions from basic research, skipping a major step—application—in the research-to-practice paradigm (Shanahan, 2020). SOR scholars acknowledge this shortcoming, describing the importance of translational research to build a science of teaching reading to complement SOR (Seidenberg et al., 2020; Solari et al., 2020). Here is an opportunity to merge research on effectively teaching a diverse range of students with SOR.

Voice Hierarchies—Whose Voice Counts?

In the SOR movement, certain voices are privileged above others. Particular individuals who are associated with particular organizations, curricula, research paradigms, or instructional approaches are either elevated or dismissed. In my professional development work, for instance, I have had state Department of Education folks change citations in my presentations to make sure I am citing the “right” people—they are fine with the content, but they want me to cite someone more aligned with the SOR movement for the claim. In the panel presentation, I invited audience members to complete a word sort, delineating whether an individual is elevated or discounted. I list the names here for readers to ponder as well: Calkins, Hanford, Allington, Moats, Clay, Ehri. Consider whether each individual's work is elevated or dismissed in the current SOR environment.

Language Hierarchies—What Language is Valued?

An assumption of the SOR movement is the supremacy of English, generally, and White Mainstream English, specifically. This assumption marginalizes multilingual learners and students who speak other dialects (Kohli et al., 2017). Such deficit views undermine students’ identity and miss opportunities for capitalizing on what students know to help them grow (Pimentel, 2011). Also, let us remember that SOR is often presented as the way to remedy the underperformance of students of color (King & Davis, 2022)—instead of rethinking what “performance” actually entails. Paris and Alim (2014) illustrate this point: “For too long, scholarship on ‘access’ and ‘equity’ has centered implicitly or explicitly around the question of how to get working-class students of color to speak or write more like middle-class White ones” (p. 87). And as we promote more humanizing literacy instruction, Jon Henner (2024) provides a beautiful quote as a reminder for us: “How you language is beautiful. Don’t let anyone tell you your languaging is wrong. Your languaging is the story of your life” (p. 20).

Conclusion

These hierarchies move us away from more equitable, engaging, multimodal, culturally sustaining, and humanizing literacy instruction. I encourage LRA members to be publicly engaged scholars who advocate for approaches to teaching literacy that are genuinely informed by a comprehensive research base. I encourage LRA members to work closely with schools, school systems, state education departments, and school boards. To engage with the public through social media, op-eds, and other opportunities. As we support educators in teaching all children to read, let us bring to the fore the centrality of cultural responsiveness, motivation, and positive identity development to complement foundational reading and writing skills.

Multiversal Learning Possibilities: Speculative Pedagogies Through Social Design

Antero Garcia and Nicole Mirra

By myriad measures, the years during and beyond the global pandemic have led to substantial declines in learning opportunities and growth for students in U.S. K-12 contexts (Mervosh, 2022). This emphasis on learning loss often overlooks the collective forms of support, organizing, and experience gained during these trying moments.

While we do not disregard the growing empirical work that describes post-pandemic learning loss, we situate this ongoing emphasis within a broader sociocultural and sociohistorical context. That is, prior to the pandemic, the language of “learning loss” focused on the differentiated opportunities for learning during the summer period when most students were not enrolled in traditional K-12 schooling. Further, this present emphasis on limited definitions of learning, progress, and growth is not new. Rather, it continues a national focus on educational progress that narrows our field's gaze to limited forms of assessment; from A Nation at Risk to a focus on NAEP scores to the very title of legislation like Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind, the sequencing of students ahead of or behind others reinforces a focus on individualized forms of learning that overlook collective possibilities. Recognizing the overlapping complexities of local and global sociopolitical strife, and the needs of all learners within classrooms, such fundamental measures of individual growth and thriving have stunted our field.

In the remainder of this section, we argue that there are multiversal possibilities that exist beyond the current focus on learning loss. However, based on a recent review of educational research (Mirra & Garcia, 2023), we first briefly name three of the current forms of individualized forms of educational support presently shaping youth experiences in schools. First, social-emotional learning approaches learning by asking, “What if education fully supported the social, emotional, and academic development of all children?” (CASEL, n.d.). Though its spirit may center on the varied needs of developing young people, the focus on measurable accountability limits the possibilities of SEL. Like the ongoing focus on learning loss, traditional models of SEL focus on individual models of regulation and control. Youth emotions are, through this logic, meant to be measured and managed to adhere to the social mores of acceptable behavior.

Next, despite writing this chapter two and a half decades into the twenty-first century, the focus on “twenty-first-century” skills (e.g., Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2016) is often diluted to an emphasis on technology as a placeholder or band-aid for equity-driven needs in schools. Finally, like the broad language of twenty-first-century learning and skills, “digital citizenship” functions as a catch-all term, though it broadly encompasses an emphasis on safety, information interpretation, and—sometimes—youth civic engagement (Garcia et al., 2021). In primarily prioritizing individual interpretation and safety in digital contexts, this emphasis reduces the notion of citizenship to individual modes of protection and passive engagement with the world.

In looking broadly at these three modes of learning shaping schools during and beyond the global pandemic, we recognize a continued trend of focusing on youth beyond their participation in broader collective organizations and the publics. Managing one's emotions, safety, and academic skills reduces the full possibilities of learning and social interaction. Further, despite being more than a century old, the quests and aspirations of these movements reflect aspirational calls for the kinds of “progressive education” spoken about at the turn of the twentieth century (Dewey, 1916).

Though not fully comprehensive of the kinds of instructional interventions shaping schools in this moment, these three examples illuminate how individual logics limit the collective possibilities of young people today. They are representative of hierarchies that center adult expertise in learning environments and overlook the brilliance and possibilities for social transformation seeded in every classroom today. However, we do not detail these to identify an intractable problem or insurmountable barrier. Rather, the individualist logic we describe lives side by side with myriad ways of living, interacting, and thriving in schools today.

Collective Forms of Equity Through Social Design-Based Experiments

Building on the Zapatista notion of “a world where many worlds fit” (EZLN, 1996), we believe that there are multiversal models of designing for collective liberation. These speculative possibilities recognize that our field of education broadly and of literacies, in particular, can substantially teach, design for, and research alternative models of learning and engagement that elide the individual logic noted above (e.g., Garcia & Mirra, 2023). Recognizing these myriad possibilities for organizing our learning ecosystems, we turn to one methodological practice that might shape alternative models of engagement, social design-based experiments (SDBEs). As articulated by Gutiérrez (2016), SDBEs “…demand radical shifts in our views of learning and in our perceptions of youth from nondominant communities so that they can become agents of newly imagined futures” (Gutiérrez, 2016). These utopian (Levitas, 2013) models for design intentionally build on participatory approaches that engage intergenerational learning. Further, SDBEs, rather than being mired in presentism, take a lengthy and proleptic view of inequities, opportunities, and systemic barriers within a given learning context. In this way, SDBEs have been rooted around four kinds of methodological commitments (Gutiérrez et al., 2020):
Focus on historicity as related to sustainability and resilience;

Systems-based remediation in contrast to an emphasis on individuals;

A dynamic understanding of culture and diversity as fundamentally a part of long-term sustainability; and

Purposeful focus on equity.
These commitments reflect and build from well-established models of participatory design in the field of literacy, including participatory action research, community-based research, and design-based research. Further, SDBEs intentionally center on cultural-historical conceptions of equity, which differentiates this methodology. Given the potential of SDBEs as a kind of alternative to a myopic focus on individual gains and losses mired in a broader system of interlinked inequities, we engaged in a meta-synthesis (Lachal et al., 2017) of SDBE scholarship from 2010 to 2023 (Mirra & Garcia, 2023).

In looking across the themes that emerged from this meta-synthesis, our review described the “tangled roots” (e.g., Packer, 2010) that bring the concerns of SDBEs into contact with the ingenuity of the young people at the center of these learning systems. These roots of intermingled challenges around formal schooling systems, social policies, and sociopolitical pressures yielded four consistent kinds of approaches SDBEs utilized in their pursuit of equity:
A remediation of social problems—Rather than tackling existing inequities, these studies worked to unearth overarching perceptions that framed particular issues from deficit lenses and disparities.

Flexible and resilient models of collaboration—The majority of SDBEs relied on models of interaction that included individuals from across learning ecosystems, often in ways that brought together intergenerational expertise and capital.

Redefined outcomes—Eliding traditional measures of progress and success, these studies push beyond the limiting measures of myriad educational contexts.

Expansive perspectives of impact—Encompassing a synthesis of the above points SDBEs embrace alternative visions of organizing, learning, and thriving collectively.

SDBEs and Multiversal Speculation

Taken as a whole, the breadth of SDBEs hints at alternative universes and ecosystems of learning that thrive not beyond the present systems of schooling but alongside, within, and contrary to the inequities that are here. These multiple ways of living and interpreting the world point to speculative possibilities of the present and future of literacies research (Garcia & Mirra, 2023). Too, they speak to the multiversal interpretations of our world depicted in comic books and Hollywood blockbusters in recent years. However, whereas movie protagonists might need advanced and extraterrestrial tools to hop from one lived reality or multiverse to another, learners and researchers need only each other and our collective ingenuity.

Dominant models of schooling might narrowly limit how we measure youth progress to individual measures of management and adequacy. These, in turn, lead to stale forms of pedagogy that isolate learning to individual bodies and, often, to individual parts of bodies— hands, eyes, ears, etc. And yet, our lived experiences are full of otherwises, radical alternatives that we might toggle into as part of our regular participation in the world. These glimpses of our multiversal living are a reminder that methods for researching and learning can and must be designed for ever-expansive definitions of equity.

Conclusion

In the description of the 2023 conference theme “Interrogating Hierarchies,” Dr. Alfred Tatum stated that “we must recognize the existence of these hierarchies as the first step to combating them.” The panelists in the integrative review session represent diverse epistemologies, contexts, and areas of expertise, and each identified multiple hierarchies that undermine our efforts to enhance literacy learning and advance a more just society. Each panelist demonstrated that literacy learning is social, cultural, complex, multilingual, and multiversal. Yet, current policy and existing structures present literacy learning as individual, static, straightforward, monolingual, and universal. It is this tension between complexity and simplicity, diversity and uniformity, multiversality and universality that makes change hard. Those with the most expert knowledge (i.e., literacy scholars, such as LRA members) understand the multidimensionality and nuance of teaching and learning literacy. However, those in power do not want to hear that it is complex and hard and will take time. Rather, they like reformers who position literacy teaching and learning as simple, easy, and quick. It is much more difficult to “sell” complex and multifaceted. In the remainder of the conclusion, we propose ideas for advancing the field to improve the literacy learning and literate lives of our world's most vulnerable populations.

All panelists agree from their diverse yet interconnected vantage points that the first step toward disrupting these hierarchies is looking at the terms we use as a collective. We have long taken discussions about the meaning of words such as “literacy,” “language/languages/languaging,” and “English” at face value, leaving some of the conversations as a matter of semantics. This panel reminds us that if not held accountable, this face value becomes a hegemonic tool easily weaponizable as a source of marginalization and disenfranchisement, an issue that other LRA scholars have already raised (Toliver et al., 2019) and that this panel wants us to revisit: Whose voices and presence are missing? Whose languages are missing from the forum, and how do we welcome them into our spaces? What new alliances and coalitions do we need to propose so that our research, as the four roadmaps posed here, can become spaces for advocacy and work with present and future generations?

This is the challenge that this year's panel faced in light of this year's theme. In anticipation of the incoming LRA conference, we also want to open the invitation, from the different positions of research, teaching, leadership, and advocacy that we hold, to continue getting into “good trouble.” After all, interrogating these hierarchies is the fuel for the good trouble needed to turn literacy into a tool for equity and to make those spaces where we meet and discuss literacy matters into safe and equitable spaces for all of us who have a voice in these conversations.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Latrise P. Johnson

Raúl Alberto Mora

Seth A. Parsons

Antero Godina Garcia

Author Biographies

Latrise P. Johnson works as an associate professor at the University of Alabama, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Secondary English Language Arts and Literacy. Her work focuses on writing and educational experiences of students placed at the margins.

Raúl Alberto Mora is an associate professor at the School of Education and Pedagogy at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Colombia), where he chairs the Literacies in Second Languages Project research lab. His research focuses on the exploration of second-language literacy theories in city, gaming, and school settings.

Seth A. Parsons is a professor in the Sturtevant Center for Literacy in the School of Education at George Mason University. His research focuses on student motivation and engagement, teacher instructional adaptations, and teacher education and development.

Antero Godina Garcia is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His research explores the possibilities of speculative imagination and healing in educational research.

Nicole Mirra is an Associate Professor of Urban Teacher Education in the Department of Learning and Teaching at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research explores the intersections of critical literacy and civic engagement with youth and teachers across classroom, community, and digital learning environments.

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Interrogating Hierarchies to Build a Humanitarian Literacy Research Architecture: Multiple Perspectives

Abstract

Keywords

Write the Power: How Writing Research Can Dismantle Hierarchies in Literacy Research Latrise P. Johnson

Literacy Research: A Story of the “Other”

Write Power

An Ecology of (Black) Writing

Storying: Writing Beyond Traditional Academic Boundaries

Writing Racial Research Stories

Disrupting the Hierarchies of [English] in Literacy Research: A Call to Rebuild our Research Architecture

Raúl Alberto Mora

My Identity and the Hierarchies of [English]

Why Talk About the Hierarchies of [English] Now … At LRA

Framing the Hierarchies of [English]

Grounding the Hierarchies of [English] in Research: An Incomplete, Evolving List

Transgressing → Disrupting → Dismantling: A First Look at Some Challenges and Principles

Transgressing

Disrupting

Dismantling the Hierarchies of [English]

A Call to [Gradually] Rebuild our Research Architecture: “It All Begins with a Tweak”

Interrogating Hierarchies Within the Science of Reading Movement

Seth A. Parsons

Abbreviated Context

The Problem

Literacy Hierarchies—What Counts as Literacy?

Focus Hierarchies—What Influences Reading?

Research Hierarchies—What Research Counts?

Voice Hierarchies—Whose Voice Counts?

Language Hierarchies—What Language is Valued?

Conclusion

Multiversal Learning Possibilities: Speculative Pedagogies Through Social Design

Antero Garcia and Nicole Mirra

Collective Forms of Equity Through Social Design-Based Experiments

SDBEs and Multiversal Speculation

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Author Biographies

References