Call for Papers

Issue #55: Beyond the ‘Crisis:’ Challenging the Politics and Practices of the Science of Reading

In Issue 55 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we explore the science of reading (SOR). Representing the most recent iteration in the long history of claims about a “reading crisis,” curriculum based in SOR is mandated in most American states, in the UK, and Australia. We seek submissions that complicate, problematize, or challenge claims of a “reading crisis” and/or the implementation of SOR. We intend to situate the research base on reading in historical and current contexts, examine the lived experiences of literacy teachers and students learning to read, and offer nuanced discussions of acquiring and teaching reading in the context of racial, class, linguistic, disability, and gender inequities faced by students and teachers.

Over the past several years, media and political stories about education have perpetuated a manufactured reading “crisis” by misrepresenting student data from The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), American College Testing; and Programme for International Student Assessment. However, Reinking et al (2023) clarify about the US: “There is no indisputable evidence of a national crisis in reading, and even if there were a crisis, there is no evidence that the amount of phonics in classrooms is necessarily the cause or the solution” (p. 113).

The media and political narratives in the SOR movement have included several misleading claims about the NAEP data; “no excuses” ideology and anecdotes; the “bad teacher” myth; reading “miracles;” the meaning and uses of cueing systems; balanced literacy and whole language; the findings of the National Reading Panel; teacher education and commercial teacher training such as Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling; grade retention; what cognitive science says about reading; and dyslexia. This misinformation campaign has resulted in de-professionalizing teachers by requiring excessive retraining while increasing teacher and student use of standardized and scripted curricula and computer-based commercial programs. Concurrently, in many locations, this attack on teacher expertise is accompanied by growing surveillance of teachers, punishments for a lack of fidelity in implementation, and book bans.

For this issue, we seek submissions from an array of stakeholders, including classroom-based reading/literacy teachers; administrators; teacher educators; scholars of literacy, education, and cognitive science; students; parents; community-based educators; and authors. Questions addressed might include (but are not limited to):

• How has the SOR legislation and policy impacted literacy instruction? What impacts are scripted and boxed commercial programs having on teacher autonomy?
• How are teachers working with and around SOR mandates?
• How has the SOR legislation and policy impacted student acquisition of, uses of, and attitudes toward reading/literacy?
• How do SOR mandates impact marginalized and minoritized students? In what ways does the SOR movement address—or fail to address, effectively—so-called “gaps” in reading achievement by students with special needs (dyslexia), multilingual learners, minoritized students, and students in poverty?
• What are some ways forward that can better address challenges to learning and teaching reading that resist in-school-only reforms and accountability-based policy and mandates?
• What forms of knowledge are excluded, marginalized, or erased through SOR mandates? What community voices are elevated and what community voices are silenced in public and policy conversations about the “literacy crisis” and SOR as the solution for it?
• How have SOR-centered reforms worked with or against educators’ efforts to pursue culturally sustaining, anti-racist, critical, or asset-based pedagogies?
• How do we assess and make use of claims about cognitive science in relation to reading development?
• What connections exist or are being created between SOR practices, book banning, and other classroom censorships?
• What does the current and longitudinal data from NAEP reading assessments show about student reading proficiency? How do state-level assessments of reading fit into the current claims of a reading crisis?

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 Paul Thomas at paul.thomas@furman.edu or Elana Aydarova at aydarova@wisc.edu.

Deadline for Submissions: June 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