Pluralism

Dear JAAL Readers, Many pleasures and challenges come with editing the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy that make the job well worth doing. Pleasures include the discovery of new ideas about literacy that spark joy, as organizational expert Marie Kondo (2014) would say, in reviewers and us. They include satisfaction when authors’ multiple drafts reach fruition in solid contributions to the journal. They include learning from the discomfort that comes when authors challenge our beliefs with new ways of thinking about old ideas. They abound when insightful department editors curate edifying, inspiring new material. Additionally, they proliferate when a completed issue includes an array of authentically innovative ideas about fostering adolescent and adult literacy. This array of ideas within and across issues has taught us to value diverse perspectives as contributions to our understandings. Reading across ideas intended for more specific adolescent and adult literacy audiences gives us new ways of looking at our own teaching and research, regardless of how article specifics align with our work. This theme, what can be learned by reading across the journal's contributions, is the reason why we chose Pluralism as the theme for this issue. However, JAAL's pluralism brings challenges. The array of ideas, including literacies, instructional approaches, contexts, learners, and perspectives, also makes JAAL a challenging editing assignment. The journal's title means we have articles meant to impact literacy practices and instruction of people across a wide age span. The term literacy embraces reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing across the grades 6–12 curriculum and in communities and contexts beyond school. This means, in turn, that some readers might access a particular issue and find no articles that seem to apply to their practice, at least initially. In addition, one author's lenses for looking at literacy may cause others who see things differently to be uncomfortable. We encourage you to scan each issue, even if it seems like a collection of articles does not directly apply to your work or contains stances that seem to compete with your worldview. We urge you to engage in the perspective taking and willingness to learn from others that we expect from our students and colleagues. You, like us, will be pleased when you encounter interesting ideas that may apply to your work in indirect, perhaps unexpected, ways. (We also want to remind you that your JAAL subscription brings the ability to search a wide range of other issues by topic in case you are interested in a specific aspect of practice that is not featured in a given issue or that you would like to extend from a particular article.) With articles on disciplinary, workplace, and critical media literacy, this issue, the first of Volume 63, reflects the pluralism that is JAAL's hallmark. The issue begins with a commentary by science education researcher Mark Windschitl called “Disciplinary Literacy Versus Doing School.” In it, Windschitl calls for teachers to counter unproductive “doing school” rituals by developing conversational infrastructures that help learners explore how claims are made, what counts as evidence, and how both are communicated within disciplines. The first four feature articles present various approaches to instructional design intended to foster disciplinary literacies in middle and high school. The first article, by Linda Kucan, Emily Rainey, and Byeong-Young Cho, describes design research focused on “Engaging Middle School Students in Disciplinary Literacy Through Culturally Relevant Historical Inquiry.” In “Middle School Students’ Analysis of Political Memes to Support Critical Media Literacy,” Patricia G. Elmore and Julianne M. Coleman describe a clever instructional use of a very popular contemporary media tool. “Popular Psychology Myths as a Frame for Character Analysis in High School English,” by Alison Heron-Hruby and Lindsay Ellis Johnson, puts a new spin on a common theme in literary analysis that is sure to spark discussion in high school classrooms that feature their approach. Hiller A. Spires, Marie P. Himes, Casey Medlock Paul, and Shea N. Kerkhoff describe a novel instructional framework in “Going Global With Project-Based Inquiry: Cosmopolitan Literacies in Practice.” Note. © Caftor/Shutterstock.com. The color figure can be viewed in the online version of this article at http://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com. Our departments, too, acknowledge the awesome pluralism inherent in adolescent and adult literacy instruction and practice inside and outside school, a variety of practices that enrich our understandings of literacy. In the Critical Perspectives on Literacy Policy and Practice department that he coedits with Hilary Janks and Barbara Comber, George G. Hruby offers “The Apple and the Acorn: Generating Adolescent Literacy Learners” to explore the benefits of literacy educators’ using bioecological metaphors more intentionally to understand their work. In their department, Sustaining Multilingual Literacies, Limarys Caraballo and Danny C. Martinez describe how acknowledging the complexities in multilingual students’ gradual English-language learning can help literacy teachers with “Leveraging Language(s): Reframing Rhetorics of Fear With Narratives of Agency and Hope.” Anne Alkema delineates how New Zealand is addressing workers’ functional literacy in “The Workplace as a Context for Adult Literacy and Numeracy Learning,” a contribution to Cynthia Greenleaf, Mira-Lisa Katz, and Aaron Wilson's Leading Literacy Change department. Katherine K. Frankel and Maneka Deanna Brooks's department, Beyond Struggling: Transforming Literacy Teaching, offers an entry by Tiffany M. Nyachae that shares students’ perspectives toward after-school and in-school English language arts instruction in “Social Justice Literacy Workshop for Critical Dialogue." Our Text & Resource Review Forum editors suggest texts and resources that will enrich the community of educators who read JAAL, as well as the communities of learners they serve. In “Incarcerated Youths, Adults, and Texts: The Ambivalent Literate Identity,” Texts and Identities department editor Alfred W. Tatum offers a searingly personal take on the relation between incarceration and what he calls “reading violence.” In this issue's Research department reviews, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey examine research articles exploring “The Links Between Social and Emotional Learning and Literacy.” M. Kristiina Montero reviews a text whose author finds new value in youths’ self-expression, in “Toward Rehumanization: A Review of Feeding the Roots of Self-Expression and Freedom” for this issue's Professional Resources department. As you explore this issue—or access the rich archive of previously published work from JAAL—we hope you will let us know what sparks joy or addresses challenges for you. Best, Kelly and Kathy