Trends

Dear JAAL Readers, As longtime International Literacy Association (ILA) members, we always look forward to the release of the Association’s newest What’s Hot in Literacy Report, which takes the pulse of the field. This year’s report, published in January, was informed by two phases of inquiry. First, a panel of 16 literacy experts (including, in the interest of full disclosure, Kathy) participated in several online focus groups to determine the topics for inclusion in a survey. That survey was subsequently taken over a monthlong period by 1,443 individuals from 44 countries and territories. The 2020 report shares a number of topics relevant to JAAL’s purview that respondents believed should receive more attention in the upcoming year and beyond, including “determining effective instructional strategies for struggling readers,” “increasing equity and opportunities for all learners,” and “increasing professional learning and development opportunities for practicing educators” (ILA, 2020, p. 6). As we perused this year’s report together during one of our weekly editorial meetings, we made a number of connections between the findings and the contents of this issue of the journal that led us to select Trends as the theme. If you havn’t seen the report yet, we urge you to read it on ILA’s website at https://literacyworldwide.org/get-resources/whats-hot-report. This issue’s invited commentary, “Syllabic Versus Morphemic Analyses: Teaching Multisyllabic Word Reading to Older Struggling Readers” by Alpana Bhattacharya, directly addresses one hot topic, determining effective instructional strategies for struggling readers. We are grateful to Bhattacharya, whose work we have long admired, for accepting our invitation to write for the journal. We don’t get many manuscript submissions addressing word-level concerns (we’d like to have more), so we are excited to showcase this commentary. Our lead feature article, “‘Reading Is Important,’ but ‘I Don't Read’: Undergraduates’ Experiences With Academic Reading” by Meg Gorzycki, Geoffrey Desa, Pamela J. Howard, and Diane D. Allen, addresses a related issue. Some older learners choose not to read, regardless of how well they are able to. Such a choice can result in struggles due to these older learners’ lack of practice in disciplinary contexts. The second article, “Interactive Picture Book Read-Alouds to the Rescue: Developing Emerging College EFL Learners’ Word Inference Ability” by Chia-Ho Sun, describes teachers using picture books to foster English learners’ ability to discern the meanings of unknown words. In “Reframing and Repositioning College Readers’ Assumptions About Reading Through Eye Movement Miscue Analysis,” Heather D. Porter, Koomi Kim, Judith K. Franzak, and Katherine MacDonald explore strategies for inviting older youth to address their misconceptions about their own reading and roles as meaning makers. We see these three articles as offering intriguing instructional approaches that could be worthwhile reading for all literacy educators who are looking for ways to engage and reposition reluctant readers for more success. The next two articles speak to another of the report’s hot topics, increasing equity and opportunities for all learners. Andrea Vaughan offers a useful synthesis in “Conceptualizing Scholarship on Adolescent Out-of-School Writing Toward More Equitable Teaching and Learning: A Literature Review.” Katalin Wargo’s article, “A Conceptual Framework for Authentic Writing Assignments: Academic and Everyday Meet,” has the potential to aid readers in connecting Vaughan’s conclusions to work in school contexts. The two articles in combination remind us that we are always pleased to receive well-organized critical reviews distilling key findings from bodies of literature of interest to our readers. The next two articles extend the equity theme. Rachael Gruen and Virginia Killian Lund report on original research designed to disrupt dominant narratives about adult literacy, in “Memory Quilts and Hope Chests: Adult Learners Craft Counterstories in Their Community Museum.” In “‘To Be, or Not to Be’: Modernizing Shakespeare With Multimodal Learning Stations,” Miles Harvey, Adrianna Deuel, and Rick Marlatt document the benefits of contemporary media and technology, such as virtual reality headsets, in democratizing the reading of challenging texts for heterogeneous classes of eighth graders. Both author teams demonstrate the power of multiple representations to support literacy development for learners with varied strengths, needs, and interests. The invited content for this issue also addresses equity, providing new insights about learners’ possible agentive responses to the various ways that they are positioned in society. In the Critical Perspectives on Literacy Policy and Practice department that she coedits with Barbara Comber and George G. Hruby, Hilary Janks gives us “Critical Literacy in Action: Difference as a Force for Positive Change,” offering a rich illustration of critical literacy in action, with a focus on the interdependence of power, diversity, access, and redesign. For Limarys Carabello and Danny C. Martinez’s Sustaining Multilingual Literacies department, Betina Hsieh, Jung Kim, and Nate Protzel penned “Feeling Not Asian Enough: Issues of Heritage-Language Loss, Development, and Identity” to critique overgeneralized stereotypes about Asians. In Cynthia Greenleaf, Mira-Lisa Katz, and Aaron Wilson’s Leading Literacy Change department, Aída Walqui and George C. Bunch provide “Reenvisioning Literacy Development for English Learners: Amplifying the Curriculum, Amplifying Leadership.” Finally, Earl Aguilera and Geraldine Lopez authored “Centering First-Generation College Students’ Lived Experiences Through Critical Digital Storytelling” as a contribution to Katherine K. Frankel and Maneka Deanna Brooks’s Beyond Struggling: Transforming Literacy Teaching department. The editors associated with this issue’s Text & Resource Review Forum offer columns with clear potential, in our view, to support the ILA report’s call for increasing professional learning and development opportunities for practicing educators. Sara Rezvi, Ahreum Han, and Gregory V. Larnell contribute “Mathematical Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors: Young Adult Texts as Sites for Identifying With Mathematics” to the Texts and Identities department edited by Alfred W. Tatum. In addition to helping teachers consider how young adult texts might inform their own conceptions of their disciplines, this column also speaks to another of the report’s hot topics, providing access to high-quality diverse books and content for students. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey’s column for the Research department, which they alternate editing with Josephine Peyton Marsh and Deborah Gonzalez, makes an empirically informed argument for how literacy teachers can “Make Deliberate Practice Part of Your Classroom Routine.” Finally, Jennifer C. Theriault contributes “Call for Collaboration: A Review of the Handbook of College Reading and Study Strategy Research” to the Professional Resources department edited by M. Kristiina Montero. All three columns can support literacy educators in enhancing their own professional learning and expertise. In our everyday lives, we are most aware of trends expressed in our favorite forms of social media. Many of those topics are ephemeral—present in the collective consciousness for a few days but soon to be replaced by something else. In contrast, the trends we see in both the ILA report and this issue of JAAL are focused on more enduring concerns. We expect our field to be wrestling with these concerns in both the near and distant future, and we hope these articles will help you do that important work. Best, Note. © patpitchaya/Shutterstock.com. The color figure can be viewed in the online version of this article at https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/.