Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Dialogue

2021; Wiley; Volume: 64; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/jaal.1145

1936-2706

Kathleen A. Hinchman, Kelly Chandler‐Olcott,

Digital Storytelling and Education

Dear JAAL Readers, Dialogue is typically defined as a conversation between two or more people, often among characters in a novel or as an exchange of ideas on an issue, particularly political or religious ones, with an eye toward agreement. It is in the spirit of this last usage, which we see as embracing the others, that we selected the term dialogue to describe this issue’s content. In a contentious world with varying and competing points of view about education in general and literacy more specifically, this collection of articles offers readers the chance to learn from conversations between and among students and literacy educators, working both inside and outside of schools. This issue’s commentary, “The Things We Carry: Teaching Writing to Tibetan Buddhist Monks and Nuns in India” by Tanya Baker and Jessica S. Early, offers a unique take on the dialogue that occurred when these distinguished authors traveled to South Asia to teach writing. Their narrative of what they learned from their efforts to create culturally sustaining writing pedagogy in an uncertain context offers important lenses for teaching responsively. The potential for literacy dialogues in community contexts is a common thread across the first two feature articles in this issue. Crystal Chen Lee, Kelsey Virginia Dufresne, and Jackie Eunjung Relyea capture the many activism-related contributions of an after-school writing club in “‘They Are Doers’: Writing to Advocate With Immigrant Youth in Community-Based Organizations.” Erica R. Hamilton and Deborah V. Van Duinen document generative conversations between preservice teacher candidates and sixth-grade students in “Hybrid Spaces: Adolescent Literacy and Learning in a Museum.” Both research teams call for adults to recognize and draw on adolescents’ experience and expertise related to some of the most pressing issues of our time. The next two articles focus on the potential for multimodal communication to promote dialogue among students, as well as between students and teachers. “Broadening Student and Teacher Participation: Multimodal Projects in a Classroom Affinity Space,” by Valerie L. Marsh, reveals how a multimodal creative writing project helped students participate as interactive audiences for one another and pursue less typical routes to peer status. JuliAnna Ávila’s article, “#MultimediaResponse: Instagram as a Reading Activity in a University English Class,” reveals how a class-wide social media account served as what one undergraduate participant called an “interactive” support for deeper comprehension of assigned readings. Both pieces show how multimodal composing can promote historical disciplinary agendas while attending to new communication tools and trends. Our next two feature articles share a common focus on middle school students. In “Grappling With Ideas: Adolescent Writers in a Rural African American Community,” Lucy K. Spence and Robert M. Walker describe identity-focused literacy instruction in an eighth-grade English class. Their study was grounded in a years-long dialogue among the two authors and the focal teacher participant, yielding a useful mix of insider and outsider perspectives on the pedagogy. “‘Sometimes, I Just Go on a Pinning Spree’: How One Middle Schooler Negotiates Multimodal Platforms” shares the insights that Jennifer D. Morrison derived from interviewing a student in her English class at length about her personal writing processes. The last feature article of this issue represents an intriguing cross-cultural exchange of ideas. In “Encouraging Independent Readers: Combining Reading Workshop and Textbook-Based Lessons in a Japanese High School Classroom,” Hikaru Katsuta and Eisuke Sawada document the affordances of blending U.S. perspectives on student choice with more typical Japanese approaches, such as close reading of shared text. The study reveals the value of the dialogue that ensues when bodies of literature are juxtaposed atypically with each other. Our invited department columns also deliberately value dialogue that centers alternative perspectives. In Chauncey Monte-Sano’s department, Culturally Sustaining Disciplinary Literacies, Monte-Sano and coauthor Christine Quince offer “Reflections on Designing Curriculum to Interrogate Social Studies.” Tricia Ebarvia contributes “Starting With Self: Identity Work and Anti-Racist Literacy Practices” for Kimberly N. Parker’s department, Students and Teachers: Inquiring Together. The We’re All Adults Here department edited by Kristen H. Perry gives us “Performing Fluency: Using Improv and Drama With Adult English Learners” by Carmela A. Romano Gillette. “Remaking Community With Art,” by Ahram Park and Lalitha Vasudevan, appears in Jon M. Wargo and Gabrielle Oliveira’s department, Community Literacies: Anthropological Perspectives in Practice. Jennifer Randall, Mya Poe, and David Slomp coauthored “Ain’t Oughta Be in the Dictionary: Getting to Justice by Dismantling Anti-Black Literacy Assessment Practices” for Slomp’s department, Literacy Assessment for Learning. The Text & Resource Review Forum introduces texts that we think will spark provocative and productive dialogue for readers. E. Sybil Durand’s latest offering in her Global Texts and Contexts forum is “Counterstories: Reimagining Youth in Multiethnic Short-Story Anthologies.” The Professional Resources forum edited by Cynthia H. Brock and Vassiliki I. Zygouris-Coe features Kouider Mokhtari’s “Instructional Casualties: A Review of Transforming Literacy Education for Long-Term English Learners: Recognizing Brilliance in the Undervalued,” an appraisal of a new book by Maneka Deanna Brooks, a former JAAL department editor. Dialogue is central to pedagogies that foster literacies for youth and adults. Effective literacy educators know they can learn much from their students’ perspectives. This issue’s content offers new takes on the types of instructional practices that foster such dialogue. We encourage you to join with us in learning from these authors’ ideas. Best, Note. © Dmitrii_Guzhanin/Getty Images. The color figure can be viewed in the online version of this article at https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/.