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The "Special Call Issue" of the Journal of Literacy Research focuses on the intersection of religion and literacy, particularly in the context of prejudices against Muslim and Jewish communities. The issue highlights the importance of critical religious literacy in understanding and addressing discrimination and hate speech in educational settings. Scholars are encouraged to submit research that explores the role of religion in literacy education from diverse perspectives and contexts, emphasizing the need for accurate and credible understanding of religious traditions. The journal serves as a platform for innovative research and pedagogy that challenges traditional notions of literacy and literacy instruction. [Extracted from the article]

The editorial in the Journal of Literacy Research discusses the complexities and challenges faced by the literacy community in addressing the intersections of race, religion, ethnicity, and peoplehood, particularly in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The editorial highlights the need for a more robust discourse on critical religious literacy to navigate these complex realities. The special issue on Critical Religious Literacy includes autobiographical essays, essays on antisemitism and Islamophobia, and empirical studies that engage with questions of critical religious literacy from various perspectives and religious traditions. The goal of the issue is to facilitate a broader and deeper conversation among literacy scholars that transcends national, racial, and religious boundaries. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the evolving perspectives on literacy in the field of education, particularly in relation to student narratives. While there has been progress in recognizing the importance of student agency and authenticity in writing, the article highlights that reductive views of literacy still persist, especially when it comes to racially minoritized and neurodivergent populations. The studies presented in the article demonstrate the negative consequences of narrow views of writing and emphasize the need for teachers to expand their understanding of literacy by incorporating testimonial genres and digital literacy practices. The article also calls for curricular and instructional resources that support writing instruction aligned with Common Core standards. Additionally, the article explores the empowering effects of testimonial and narrative genres on student writers, particularly in terms of centering community narratives and challenging dominant narratives. The studies also shed light on the potential harm caused by deficit views of dyslexia and the importance of critical perspectives on neurodivergent learners. Finally, the article highlights the role of digital literacies in empowering immigrant youth to resist dominant raciolinguistic perspectives and develop affirming narratives of self. Overall, the studies presented in the article emphasize the importance of expanding teachers' views of literacy and embracing diverse literacy practices to promote meaningful storytelling and challenge hegemonic narratives. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the various formats and tools used in reading today, including print and digital texts, visual images, and multiple languages. It presents three studies that explore different aspects of reading. The first study focuses on the role of word reading skills and syntactic knowledge in reading prosody in Spanish-speaking students. The second study proposes the concept of "temporal seeing" as a mode of visual perception that can enhance visual literacy practices. The third study examines the need for new approaches to teaching digital reading and critical media literacy in the context of social media and algorithmically-targeted content. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of considering learners' multiple languages and literacies in fostering reading practices that support sensemaking in today's complex reading landscape. [Extracted from the article]

This document, titled "Science of Literacies: Meaning Making & Critical Pragmatism in the Postdigital Age," is an editorial from the Journal of Literacy Research. It emphasizes the need for literacy researchers to approach the current moment in nuanced ways and avoid reductive approaches that perpetuate deficit perspectives of historically non-dominant communities and their literacies. The document includes summaries of several articles that explore different aspects of literacy research, such as the impact of orthographic depth on reading, the relational function of literacy in postdigital conditions, the experiences of transnational mothers promoting bilingualism, and the intersections of science of reading research, media coverage, and state literacy policy. The articles collectively provide alternative perspectives to the current science of reading conversations and highlight the importance of scientifically rigorous, phenomenologically nuanced, and methodologically eclectic approaches to literacy research. [Extracted from the article]

In this chapter, I consider how research in the field of literacy illuminates convergences of understandings about how people learn culled from the fields of biology, psychology, and neuroscience. I further consider how research in the field of literacy could be enhanced by drawing more deeply on state-of-the-art findings about how human learning unfolds. To support this discussion, I examine emerging understandings about literacy learning and development in the areas of reading and multiliteracies and across transnational contexts. I conclude by suggesting an equity-oriented agenda for literacy research and practice that leverages and advances existing knowledge about how people learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of 237 Latine kindergarten students, Leyva et al. examined concurrent associations between these tasks and standardized language and literacy tests. The articles in this issue explore the affective nature of language and literacy practices and discuss how these practices, grounded as they are in cultural communities, inform standardized assessments, and other school- and extra-school learning activities. [Extracted from the article]

Emily Phillips Galloway and Heather Meston, in "Pedagogy of Possibility: Proleptic Teaching and Language Learning", also invoke the language of possibility - what becomes possible when teachers attend to the imagined future identities of their diverse students for literacy learning. The articles in this issue all invite us to consider the possibilities and realizations of powerful forms of literacy engagement and learning that are centered on the lived experiences and literacies of people of color (POC). Annie Daly, in "Race Talk Moves for Racial Literacy in the Elementary Classroom", illustrates the efforts of a white literacy teacher to develop her elementary-age students' racial literacy as a crucial part of their literacy development. [Extracted from the article]

The global pandemic has dramatically flipped the script on many aspects of our lives. Segel shows through these narratives how parents negotiated entangled identities as caregivers and teachers during the pandemic. Finally, in "Nurturing the Literacy Lives of Boys of Color During COVID-19", Marisa Segel shows through her yearlong case study that when schools closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the imagined divide between home and school was fundamentally altered. [Extracted from the article]

This article undertakes a textual analysis of an autobiographically informed novel, American Street, to analyze the process of identity formation of a Black Haitian immigrant youth in the United States. Black immigrant youth remain an understudied demographic in literacy research compared with their Latinx and Asian immigrant counterparts. The goal of this analysis is to provide insights into the role of languages and literacies for Black immigrant youth in (re)constructing their identities in nations like the United States. Analysis revealed the significance of one youth's resistance to raciolinguistic ideologies, reliance on her Haitian faith literacies, and deployment of multiliteracy practices in (re)constructing her identity. We call for increased research that illuminates the complexity of the language and literacy processes involved in Black immigrant youth's negotiations with identity in new homelands, and offer textual analysis as an underutilized but promising inquiry method for generating such knowledge. The article also offers pedagogical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By talking about their translation strategies with their peers and teachers, students not only develop metalinguistic knowledge about their translanguaging practices, but also see their linguistic repertoire and creativity as valued within a broader, dominant monoglossic society. These studies collectively help us better understand the micro and macro dynamics of centering student voice and reimagining teacher-student relationships. Each of these studies aims to show how teachers can center student voices to better leverage their linguistic repertoires, implement their theorizing and translanguaging practices, and further develop their metalinguistic knowledge. [Extracted from the article]

The Journal of Literacy Research's volume titled "Critically Engaging 'the Other': Mediating Relationships through Narrative" explores the connections between written narratives and reader/writer identities, particularly in educational contexts. The studies in this volume highlight the importance of critically and empirically engaging with marginalized perspectives to foster transformative solidarity and an egalitarian ethos. The articles discuss various topics such as rural women's creative writing as a form of resistance, the role of identity creation in youth horror stories, the influence of dominant deficit narratives on rural young adults, the need for a hospitable literacy framework in canonical text selection, and the ethical dilemmas presented in narrative form. The authors emphasize the power dynamics at play in these interactions and advocate for empowering readers and writers through critical engagement with texts. [Extracted from the article]

Background/Context: Immigrants are described as somewhat fixed in their geographical locations and activities in the world, having made a permanent move from their nation of origin to a new homeland. In contrast, transnational people are defined as those who live their lives across two or more nations and hold strong, multiple attachments to their nation-states. Frameworks of race are often centered in studies of the language and literacy practices of immigrant youth while transnational theories are typically prioritized in studies of transnational youths' language and literacy practices. Research Questions/Participants: This article explores extant research on the language and literacy practices and experiences of Black immigrant and Black transnational youth of Caribbean origin for whom the U.S. is a home. The purpose is to uncover similarities, differences, and nuances that may exist between the language and literacy practices and experiences of these populations. Research Design: The extant research was analyzed through theoretical concepts such as micro-cultures, ethnoracial assignment and ethnoracial identity, raciolinguistics, and language and literacy as social practices. Findings: Literacies prominent for both Black immigrant and Black transnational youth include reading, writing, the performing arts, and digital literacies. Analysis found that Black immigrant and Black transnational youth, through their language and literacy practices, undertake significant work in deconstructing Blackness as a monolithic racial category. The youths' motivations for language and literacy use and transformation are conceptualized as efforts to make visible multiple ethnoracial identities and microcultural practices within an overarching racial category of Blackness. Analysis further found that Black immigrant and Black transnational youths' experiences with racial, cultural, and linguistic discrimination lead many to subsume their original linguistic and literacy practices beneath the language and literacy practices of dominant ethnoracial groups in their new nations. In the case of Black transnationals, analysis found that they hold thick bonds to their countries of origin and new nations. Further, some transnationals have opportunities to spend extended time and employ their culturally influenced languages and literacies to a fuller degree in nations that hold appreciative perspectives on these repertoires. Such circumstances appear to promote Black transnationals' abilities to continue developing and valuing their unique ethnoracial identities and ethnoculturally diverse language and literacy practices. Analysis further found that the multiple language and literacy practices of many Black immigrant youth are motivated by their longings to belong to diverse communities and connect to multicultural groups. However, these desires of youths' were not oriented solely toward their new nation-states. Rather many Black immigrant youth actively seek out connection and consolidation of their homelands of origin and their new nations through language, literacy, and cultural practices. Analysis confirmed that this is a primary motivation for language and literacy development and use in transnational youth. Conclusion: This article challenges the binary categories of immigrant and transnational using the cases of Black youth of Caribbean origin and their language and literacy practices. Its findings call for a more dynamic reconceptualization of the relationships among racial, immigrant, and transnational youth identities, literacies, and languages. Given the similarity of goals in the identity, language, and literacy practices of Black immigrant and Black transnational youth, this analysis argues that literacy research knowledge about Black immigrant youth can be enhanced by applying transnational as well as racial frameworks. Likewise, the article proposes that given the similarities of language and literacy goals, practices, and experiences, including racial and ethnic discrimination, shared by Black immigrant and Black transnational youth, future literacy research can undertake more explicit investigations of transnational youth's experiences through racial frameworks. The article suggests that knowledge of this kind can support scholars and educators in theorizing and designing educational spaces and curricula that enable all youth, notwithstanding their self- or other-assigned racial or sociopolitical categorization as native-born, immigrant, or transnational, to actualize while critically analyzing, the full range and diversity of their identities, languages, and literacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Their study reveals an emphasis on teacher-centered instruction that does indeed lead to students learning word meanings (vocabulary) for scientific purposes. It explores data practices among teachers who work in early childhood education. The preparedness of teachers to work with DHH students as compared to hearing students was found to affect both writing instruction (for teachers) and writing outcomes (for students). [Extracted from the article]

This article examines an adolescent’s music literacy education across Caribbean and U.S. schools using qualitative research methods and theories of multimodality, transnationalism, and global cultural flows. Findings include that the youth’s music literacy practices continuously shifted in response to the cultural practices and values of the physical geographies in which he alternatively lived; however, transnational movements combined with extended physical sojourning contributed to the youth’s development of progressively generative perspectives about the potential of U.S. contexts for building his music literacies and a correspondent constraining view on Caribbean geographies for his music literacy development. Amid an abundance of research on the significance of online worlds to transnational youths’ identity and literacy development, this article contributes insights into how formal literacy education physically experienced within and across nations shapes the nature of literacy learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on longitudinal data from a study of language socialization in an orphanage in New Delhi, Bhattacharya shows how reductive literacy ideologies are discursively resisted in everyday practice. One of the great challenges in literacy research has been moving away from autonomous, individualist, and decontextualized views of language, literacy, and learning toward more situated, social, and ideological approaches to literacy research. First, Usree Bhattacharya in "'I Am a Parrot': Literacy Ideologies and Rote Learning" examines the dominance of rote learning practices in India. [Extracted from the article]

This article uses case study methods and theories of literacy as social practice to explore how an adolescent developed her religious identity and religious literacies in relationship with more secular identities and literacy practices across multiple social contexts. It further examines how the youth engaged her religious identity and religious literacies concomitantly with other identities and literacy practices for developing and displaying academic identity and academic literacies in school. In so doing, the article offers important theoretical understandings and pedagogical implications relative to the potential of religious identity and religious literacies in the education of increasingly diverse urban school populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the efforts of educational researchers to work with a reading teacher and her students to link their out-of-school literacy skills with curriculum requirements. Topics covered include the challenges faced by the teacher in the study, and the need to work alongside teachers and students as they recycle their practices of multiliteracies. Also mentioned are the difficulties of research work with vulnerable populations, and the need to conduct such outside classrooms.

Transnational youth represent an increasing demographic in societies around the world. This circumstance has amplified the need to understand how youths’ language and literacy repertoires are shaped by transnational life. In response, this article presents a case study of a Mexican adolescent girl who immigrated to the United States and continued to participate in life in Mexico. It examines shifts in her multiple language and literacy practices that she attributed to transnational life and the knowledge she acquired from transnational engagements with languages and literacies. Data include interviews of the young woman, observations of her in a variety of social contexts, and literacy artifacts that she produced. Research on transnational youths’ language and literacy practices and theories of multiliteracies and border crossing facilitate analysis. Findings include that language and multiliteracy practices shift in interconnected ways in response to transnational life and engagements with multiple languages and literacies foster transnational understandings. Accordingly, attending to transnational youths’ multilingual as well as multiliterate practices can deepen understandings of how people recruit multiple languages, literacies, and lifeworlds for meaning making. Implications of this work are offered concerning the features of a transnational curriculum that can both draw from and build up the language and literacy reservoirs of transnational youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how a teacher drew on her urban students’ outside-school literacies to inform teaching and learning in a reading/language arts classroom. The following findings are discussed: curricular invitations the teacher offered to students; the teacher’s curriculum development process; the relationships between the genres of students’ outside-school literacies and those of the school; and the subject positionings taken up by the students and the teacher in the classroom. The article demonstrates how teachers may affirm the out-of-school literacies of urban students and connect these literacies to the formal curriculum, thereby enhancing students’ in-school literacy engagement and success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes three decades of educational reform strategies pertaining to ethnocultural diversity in the United States and Canada and how they affect the efforts of four secondary schools, two in each context, to respond to increasing student diversity. Data include 186 teacher interviews drawn from a large ethnographic study. The article describes the current effects of increasing standardization on racially diverse schools and concludes with recommendations for policy reform that embrace poststandardization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]