The Literacy Research Association welcomes Marcus Croom as one of its speakers for the 72nd Annual Conference as part of LRA’s Integrative Research Review Panel. LRA’s IRR Panel Session, titled ‘Review and Scholarly Syntheses as Anti-Racist Action’ will focus specifically on the silencing of and importance of BIPOC authors and scholars, along with the history of their work and global impact. Croom’s topic: Characterizing and Traversing Racial Literacies Scholarship focuses on discussing and characterizing racial literacies scholarships, as well as, highlighting examples in order to present possibilities for traversing and advancing this literature toward post-White futures.   Croom is an assistant professor in Literacy, Culture and Language Education and an adjunct assistant professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington (IUB). He started his career in research through the Literacy, Language and Culture program, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He aims to document teachers’ understandings of race and determine how these understandings impact teacher efficacy, student identification, and other teaching practices. As a race critical researcher, he focuses on race and literacies within educator preparation and educator development in American schooling. Specifically, teaching and learning that is practiced with the post-White orientation. He generates knowledge through practice of race theory (PRT), qualitative methods, and case study, more so in race critical practice analysis.   Croom’s mission is to cultivate more human fulfillment and mitigate human suffering. Holistically, his work consists of using research and experience to assist others with developing racial literacies, which in turn can advance the justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts of schools, universities, businesses, organizations, and communities. Noted works that Croom has authored include: Real talk? How to discuss race, racism, and politics in 21st century American schools, “Black Lives Matter panel: A generous invitation to The Archive”, and “A case study from “Barracoon: The story of the last ‘Black Cargo’” with practice of race theory.”   To register for LRA’s 2022 Annual Conference, please visit the LRA website.

LRA takes the health and safety of its personnel and all guests at events very seriously. We remain mindful that COVID-19 variants and considerations for the health of attendees must be a priority.   To ensure everyone’s health and safety, all attendees are strongly encouraged to take a COVID-19 test prior to attending the conference.    Please do not attend the event if within ten (10) days preceding the event, you have tested positive or been diagnosed with COVID or other communicable disease; or experienced any new or unexplained symptoms commonly associated with COVID or other communicable disease.    Although proof of vaccination is not required for attendance this year, in accordance with CDC recommendations, we  encourage attendees to get vaccinated and boosted if eligible and able to do so.   The CDC has recently revised its guidelines for mask wearing based on COVID-19 Community Levels. The current Community Level for Phoenix, Arizona is “Low,” so conference attendees may choose to wear a mask based on personal preference, informed by personal level of risk.    Similar to last year’s conference, color coded stickers will be available for attendees to place on their badges to indicate their social interaction level.   For example: Green = hugs and handshakes Yellow = elbow and fist bumps Red = air high fives

The Literacy Research Association welcomes Catherine Compton-Lilly as one of its speakers for the 72nd Annual Conference as part of LRA’s Integrative Research Review Panel. LRA’s IRR Panel Session, titled ‘Review and Scholarly Syntheses as Anti-Racist Action’ will focus specifically on the silencing of and importance of BIPOC authors and scholars, along with the history of their work and global impact. Dr. Compton-Lilly’s studies focus heavily on these authors and scholars, with her work: A Metasynthesis and the Inclusion of Scholarship conducted by Black, Indigenous, People of Color that explores the lives and perspectives of academics within the BIPOC community.  As a panelist, she will provide insight and research regarding BIPOC members, bringing attention to anti-racism, and heightening the voices of all minorities.   Dr. Compton-Lilly will detail and share her research regarding how black, indigenous people of color have been singled out and othered within school systems, and in turn will reveal similar themes of exclusionism in academic scholarship. Her presentation will showcase extensive research regarding BIPOC scholars and their relationship to literary practices, including real perspectives from BIPOC academics, as well as detailed methodological research to highlight the issue. Compton-Lilly is the John C. Hungerpiller Professor at the University of South Carolina. She’s an established professor and academic in the College of Education. Primarily, most of her extensive research has been within familial literacy practices, with a particular interest in the literacy practices of children from communities that have been undeserved by other schools. Now, Dr. Compton-Lilly is currently studying and exploring the family literacy practices of immigrant families. She is an author and editor of eleven books, as well as multiple articles in major literacy journals including Reading Research Quarterly, Research in the Teaching of English, The Reading Teacher, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Written Communication, Journal of Literacy Research, and Language Arts.   Dr. Catherine Compton-Lilly has a unique passion for helping teachers assist children with reading, writing, and other literacy practices. She has a great interest in teacher education and is currently documenting the exceptional teacher education practices at the University of South Carolina. Other interests of hers include early reading and writing, student diversity, and working with families. Dr. Compton-Lilly holds emerita status at the University of Wisconsin Madison.  She is currently serving as an Honorary Visiting Professor at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and completing a Fulbright Research and Teaching Fellowship in Taiwan. Advance registration for the 2022 LRA Annual Conference ends on October 14th. To register, please visit the LRA website.

The Literacy Research Association is thrilled to announce that Dr. Guadalupe Valdés has been selected by the Distinguished Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award Committee as the 2022 Distinguished Scholar Award Recipient. The award ceremony and presentation will be held at the 2022 LRA Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ, November 29th – December 3rd, 2022. Valdés is the Bonnie Katz Tenenbaum Professor of Education, Emerita at Stanford University. Much of her work has focused on the English-Spanish bilingualism of Latinos in the United States and on discovering and describing how two languages are developed, used, and maintained by individuals who become bilingual in immigrant communities. Valdés has also conducted extensive work on teaching, maintaining and preserving heritage languages among minority populations. Her early publications in this area include edited volumes, journal articles and language textbooks. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Education. In her presentation, Valdés will draw from long term concerns about the relationship between oral language and beginning reading in the case of Latino English language learners. Informed by current problematizations of language itself in the field of applied linguistics, she will focus on the challenges of curricularizing language in school settings, that is, of formally “teaching” English as a second language to young children. She specifically problematizes language instruction as it takes place in classroom settings and the impact of this practice on minoritized students. Her books include Bilingualism and testing: A special case of bias (Valdés & Figueroa, Ablex, 1994), Con respeto: Bridging the distance between culturally diverse families and schools (Teachers College Press, 1996), Learning and not Learning English (Teachers College Press, 2001) Expanding Definitions of Giftedness: Young Interpreters of Immigrant Background (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), Developing minority language resources: The case of Spanish in California (Valdés, Fishman, Chavez & Perez, Multilingual Matters, 2006) and Latino Children Learning English: Steps in the Journey  (Valdés, Capitelli & Alvarez, Teachers College Press, 2010). Advance registration for the 2022 LRA Annual Conference ends on October 15th. To register, please visit the LRA website.

The International ICG  The International ICG is a group of researchers who are interested in international and global research. We engage with participants across different nationalities. The goal of the International ICG is to increase the presence of such research in the LRA.    International ICG Travel Grants  LRA International ICG offers partial travel support to a small number of international scholars to help defray costs of attending the LRA Annual Meeting. The LRA Board of Directors has allocated funds for this purpose. The amount of travel grant that individual applicants will receive will vary with travel distance.   Those eligible for this support are ICG members who are currently living outside of the U.S. and who have a paper accepted for presentation at the Annual Conference. Prior recipients who received this support within the last three years are not eligible.    Priority will be given to  Doctoral students or junior faculty members who received their doctorate within the last five years;  Members attending the Annual Conference for the first time;  Members who are from countries with limited research infrastructure and funding.  Applicants are strongly advised to secure funding from in-country and/or international sources such as the Ministry of Education, international agencies, and philanthropic organizations.    How to Apply  Applicants are to send in their application forms and queries to Lina Trigos-Carrillo, lmtrigos@uninorte.edu.co. The application form can be accessed here.    Please write “International ICG Travel Grant” in the subject line. Application forms are attached. Your application will be acknowledged upon receipt.    Deadline of Application  Please submit your application forms via email by midnight EST on Friday, October 7th, 2022.    Award Announcement  The International ICG co-chairs will contact the travel grant recipients by the end of October 2022. Recipients will receive their checks during the International ICG Business Meeting at the 2022 LRA Conference on Nov. 30th.  

The Literacy Research Association is honored to have revered literacy professionals Dr. Catherine Compton-Lilly, Dr. Marcus Croom, Dr. Allison Skerrett and Dr. Mary McVee participate in the Integrative Research Review Panel at the 2022 Annual Conference to be held in Phoenix, AZ at the Arizona Grand Resort & Spa from November 29th – December 3rd, 2022. Details on the session, titled Review and Scholarly Syntheses as Anti-Racist Action can be read below. For 35 years, W.S. Gray published the annual Summary of Investigations Relating to Reading (1925-1960). Alongside these summaries were dozens of other reviews related to various aspects of literacy. Among the documents was a lone and troubling reminder of the historical silencing of African American voices in literacy scholarship. In short, there was one review, published in 1958 and ancillary to Gray’s official Summary Investigations, entitled, “A Summary of Reading Investigations among Negro College Students, 1940-1954.” This was the only review that named a population of color. This review was written by a well-established, but essentially forgotten, African American scholar, Leander L. Boykin. Boykin was the first African American scholar to receive a Ph.D. in education from Stanford University(1948) (Hood, 2001). His interest in making sense of bodies of educational scholarship led him to advocate for the inclusion of quantitative and qualitative data in order to “evaluate such correlative factors as the social and economic backgrounds of pupils and the educational climate in which classroom and school activities are conducted” (Boykin, 1957, p. 118). While Boykin’s scholarly output remains impressive, his legacy of affecting the trajectory of review scholarship to include African American communities was minimal. In short, it was not until 1975 and again in 1976, that reviews focused on the experiences African American students were again published (see Somervill, 1975; Harber & Bryen, 1976). This historical omission is significant and it is not a minor oversight. Scholarly reviews provide both novice and established scholars with macro views of our field. They focus on what is considered important and worthy of attention. It is with this history in mind that the Integrative Review Panel for LRA 2022 has been organized. Across the papers presented in this panel, presenters will explore silences and obfuscations relative to the voices of BIPOC scholars and the experiences of BIPOC communities. The panel views the public presentation of these syntheses as an intentionally anti-racist act designed to name, describe, and celebrate the contributions of BIPOC scholarship. Panel participants are confident that the LRA community will find this work impressive, inspiring, and important. A Metasynthesis and the Inclusion of Scholarship conducted by Black, Indigenous, People of Color Catherine Compton-Lilly, University of South Carolina; co-authors Tisha Lewis Ellison, University of Georgia and Rebecca Rogers, University of Missouri, Saint Louis Characterizing and Traversing Racial Literacies Scholarship Marcus Croom, Indiana University Banned Books and Banners for Change: Literacy Education for Troubled Times Allison Skerrett, University of Texas at Austin Racial Positioning and Emotion in Stories of Literacy Teachers: Transgressing Boundaries and Borders Mary McVee, University of Buffalo, SUNY; co-authors Aijuan Cun, University of New Mexico and Kristian Douglas, Clark Atlanta University In the coming weeks, LRA will share further details on each panelist’s biography and presentation. Registration for 2022 Annual Conference is now open. References Boykin, L. L. (1957). Who is the exceptional child?. The Elementary School Journal, 58(1), 42-47. Harber, J. R., & Bryen, D. N. (1976). Black English and the task of reading. Review of Educational Research, 46(3), 387-405. Hood, S. (2001). Nobody knows my name: In praise of African American evaluators who were responsive. New Directions for Evaluation, (92), 31-44. Somervill, M. A. (1975). Dialect and reading: A review of alternative solutions. Review of Educational Research, 45(2), 247-262.

Dear LRA Family,   We are enthusiastically awaiting the opportunity to gather again in-person for the 72nd Annual Conference in Phoenix from November 29th-Decemember 3rd, 2022. The past leaders of LRA always envisioned the annual meeting as opportunities for face-to-face networking and reconnecting with old friends in an atmosphere that challenges our thinking and creates opportunities for addressing significant issues impacting literacy research theory, practices, and policies. As members, we value the feeling of being more connected and engaged as presenters, discussants, session chairs, and attendees and the time spent socializing with colleagues in a casual and relaxing environment.   We were forced to change the conference format with the advent and duration of the COVID pandemic. We adopted technologies such as Zoom to fit our need to collaborate with others and to participate in professional meetings. The 2020 conference was fully online to provide a safe environment while meeting our mission as an organization.   Many of you wanted and liked the flexible option of meeting online and requested that we move to offer a greater degree of hybridity in future conferences, which led us to provide an on-demand virtual option with the 2021 conference. We considered offering this option again in 2022, however, a survey of those who participated in this option received mixed results about the extent to which it met the needs of the participants and should be offered again. Further, we learned that the increased cost of equipment and technical support needed to host a fully hybrid conference, or any form of hybridity at a level that is up to LRA’s standards, would be financially detrimental to the organization’s budget due to AV costs, and would require a significant increase in conference fees.   Although there will be no official online or hybrid option for the 2022 conference, similarly to last year, those presenters or groups who choose to use Zoom to involve others in their presentation do so with the possibility of limited bandwidth. The Wi-Fi bandwidth will be limited in rooms and in the meeting areas.   Meanwhile, we invite you to make plans to join your LRA colleagues in Phoenix. Remember that the value of an in-person meeting is not only the learning, but the networking and socializing with colleagues in a casual atmosphere. We hope to see you there!   With much anticipation, Doris Walker-Dalhouse Conference Chair Alfred W. Tatum Associate Conference Chair

The Impact of Gunther Kress on Social Semiotics and Education: An AERA Semiotics SIG Panel followed by a Graduate Student Networking Event is 3 weeks away! Have you registered yet? If not, see below!   Open to all! Join the Semiotics in Education SIG on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. Eastern Time for an exciting panel featuring the work and legacy of Gunther Kress.   Panelists Jeff Bezemer, Carey Jewitt, Jennifer Rowsell, and Theo van Leeuwen will consider the influence and impact of the work of Gunther Kress in social semiotics and education. Sponsored by the AERA Social Semiotics in Education SIG, the panel is in honor of the newly created Gunther Kress Scholarly Impact Award. The Panel will be followed by an informational event for Graduate Students. All are welcome. Register in advance for this meeting: https://buffalo.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqdu-vrT8qEtyJaGtKKLslcswDL1ZRhPnz   After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.   If you have any questions about the event, contact: Mary McVee (mcvee@buffalo.edu), AERA SIG Chair of Social Semiotics in Education: Signs, Meanings, and Multimodality