Call for Papers

Issue #55: Lessons From the Field on the Science of Reading: School and Classroom Stories Across Contexts

In Issue 55 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we explore school-based reading instruction following the implementation of “Science of Reading” (SoR)  policies across different contexts. Our goal is to highlight powerful practices for teaching reading, with an emphasis on how educators can draw on a wide range of research-informed strategies to support all students in becoming avid, engaged, and accomplished readers. 

While the SoR movement has brought significant renewed attention to the role of phonics in decoding, it has also raised concerns that too narrow a focus on phonics can marginalize other vital aspects of reading instruction.

Research tells us that phonics plays a role in students learning to read, but policy makers, teachers, and parents need to ask how phonics fit into a broader conception of reading instruction that also includes effective and efficient uses of multiple strategies at the word level, including semantic and syntactic knowledge, and classrooms that support reading comprehension and connection through teacher read-aloud, literature study, independent and interdisciplinary reading, diverse classroom libraries, and pleasure and purpose in reading. 

Across the large and varied American educational landscape—and in many other countries as well—the teaching of reading has been shaped in different ways by SoR. In some contexts, policy makers, teacher educators, and K-12 educators are working together to support reading practices that tap into the research and professional knowledge of teachers to support reading instruction that provides students with phonics in conjunction with other strategies and practices that foster fluency, comprehension, and an enjoyment of reading.

In other contexts, researchers and teachers have raised concerns that local, state, or regional implementation of SoR policies requires a one-size-fits-all approach that does not address the multiple needs of developing readers and prevents teachers from applying their deep knowledge of the complexities of teaching reading. And in some of these settings, adoption of SoR has been accompanied by growing surveillance of teachers and punishments for a lack of fidelity to new curricular mandates. Such attacks on teacher expertise limit teachers’ ability to support specific students’ efforts to read.

Further, it is important to attend to how context and identity shape student motivation and connections to the purposes and pleasures of reading. Recognizing reading as a sociocultural act, it is critical that we consider how practices within and beyond the Science of Reading address racial, class, linguistic, disability, and gender identities and inequalities. 

This special issue will situate the research base on reading in historical and current contexts, examining the lived experiences of reading teachers and their students and offering nuanced discussions of acquiring and teaching reading. It is time to hear from educators, their students, and other key stakeholders about their firsthand experiences amid these policies and how they are impacting student access to the reading instruction they most need.

Thus, we seek the voices of students, teachers, parents, and administrators; scholars of reading and literacy, education and cognitive science; community-based educators; and literacy advocates. We want your stories of what these reading reforms do and should look like from the classroom perspective. We are calling for submissions that center classroom experiences to address how—living with and across a vast array of SoR policies—teachers are making use of their professional knowledge to meet the variety of students’ needs as readers. Questions addressed might include (but are not limited to):

• What are classroom teachers’ experiences working in contexts that have adopted new SoR policies and curricular mandates? What impact have these mandates had in terms of teachers’ development,  their uses of professional knowledge, their sense of efficacy, and their experiences teaching reading?
• How have SoR policies impacted student acquisition of, uses of, and attitudes toward reading?
• What evidence do we have on how SoR mandates impact marginalized and minoritized students? In what ways does the SoR movement effectively address or fail to address so-called “gaps” in reading achievement by students with special needs, multilingual learners, and students in  poverty? How do they impact culturally sustaining or anti-racist practice?
• What forms of knowledge are highlighted, supported, marginalized, or excluded through SoR mandates? What community voices are elevated and what community voices are silenced in public and policy conversations about reading and SoR?
• What does the current and longitudinal data show about student reading proficiency? How do different states use their data to inform literacy policy, including assessments? What are some strengths of and concerns about the way data is used to inform the public discourse about reading?

The Occasional Paper Series accepts essays and manuscripts (no more than 5000 words) as well as short films, audio essays, photo essays, and small-scale artistic products. Only unpublished pieces that are not under review by other publications are eligible for consideration. Although not required, we invite those interested to reach out to the editors to pitch ideas and receive feedback and support. For more information or if you would like to discuss your ideas, please contact editors Patricia Enciso at enciso.4@osu.edu or Gail Boldt at gmb15@psu.edu.

Deadline for Submissions: July 1, 2025

Submission Guidelines

Issue #54: Why Indigenous Children’s and Young Adult Literatures Matter

In Issue 54 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we extend and honor Daniel Heath Justice’s pivotal work, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, to highlight and celebrate Indigenous Children’s and Young Adult Literature (ICYAL). We seek submissions that speak to the ways authors, teachers, librarians, students, and community members engage ICYAL as it changes the landscape of how Indigeneity is represented, speaking to and reimagining the diverse values, knowledges, dreams, and lives of Indigenous children, youth, adults, and communities.

The field of Children’s and Young Adult Literature has expanded greatly over the last decade and nowhere has this been more needed than within Indigenous literature. ICYAL texts are created by Indigenous authors and focus on Indigenous peoples and topics important to Indigenous ways of being. In this literature, Indigenous children and youth experience life in the near past, as in Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House (1999); in the present, as in Carole Lindstrom’s We are Water Protectors (2020); and in the future, as in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017). In the work of Darcie Little Badger, Indigenous youth are adventurers (2020). Indigenous young people become superheroes in David A. Robertson’s writing (2017, 2018, 2019), and in Jen Ferguson’s world in The Summer of Bitter and Sweet, Indigenous youth participate in everyday life, working at an ice cream shop (2022). The life experiences portrayed in ICYAL are crucial the centering of the diversity of Indigeneity, representing a vast array of distinct Indigenous nations and communities, and at the same time, speaking to universal human experiences. Muscogee author Cynthia Leitich Smith reminds us:

“…[W]hat fiction does best is to provide an opportunity for developing interpersonal relationships between real live kids and those who live only on the page. For Native readers, that may mean connecting with a character who embodies aspects of themselves. For non-Native readers, that may mean gaining cross-cultural understanding and empathy.” (Leitich Smith, 2020)

Articles published in this issue will provide readers with opportunities to learn more about ICYAL texts and how to use them responsibly and in relationship to Indigenous peoples, supporting the creation of conceptual and practical tools for anti-oppressive education. Offering readings and interpretations of this literature can open spaces of celebration of Indigenous ways of survivance, serve as resistance to settler-colonial logic, and unsettle the Western epistemological hegemony often practiced in schools.

For this issue, we seek submissions from an array of participants, including scholars of ICYAL and education, teachers using ICYAL, students reading ICYAL, and authors writing ICYAL. Questions addressed might include (but are not limited to):

• What might ICYAL teach us about Indigenous ways of knowing and being historically, in the present, and in future imaginations?
• What insights about ICYAL may help readers, including educators, to understand ICYAL more deeply?
• What tools might be effective for utilizing ICYAL in classroom or community spaces?
• What should non-Indigenous teachers and readers of ICYAL consider when engaging this literature?
• What insights can we gain from child/youth experiences of reading these texts?
• What do authors of ICYAL hope readers will consider or experience in reading these texts?

We are interested in essays and manuscripts (no more than 5000 words) as well as short films, audio essays, photo essays, and small-scale artistic products. Only unpublished pieces that are not under review by other publications are eligible for consideration. Although not required, we invite those interested to reach out to the editors to pitch ideas and receive feedback and support. For more information or if you would like to discuss your ideas, please contact guest editors Joaquin Muñoz at joaquin.munoz@ubc.ca or Dawn Quigley at dawnquigleywriter@gmail.com.

Deadline for Submissions: December 1, 2024

Submission Guidelines