June marks three years since Kelly Chandler-Olcott and Kathleen Hinchman began their editorship with the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (JAAL) Now we’re catching up with them to discuss their current mission, goals, and research interests.

How would you describe the journal's mission and editorial objectives?

JAAL highlights innovative, peer-reviewed, research-based practices aimed at improving engagement and achievement among literacy learners ages 12 and older.

We are committed to a vision of literacy research and pedagogy intended to promote more equitable outcomes for all learners, including traditionally underserved populations. We identify primarily as pragmatists in enacting that vision. This means we approach our editorship without a particular agenda or ideology, other than the desire to represent multiple viewpoints about adolescent and adult literacy.

We seek to infuse the journal with healthy skepticism about literacy reform agendas, both in and beyond the United States, and we recognize that we need the participation of others whose backgrounds and social locations differ from ours to ensure that such pragmatism doesn’t devolve into colorblindedness. We also have a desire to keep the reader at the forefront of all decisions. We strive for clear, user-friendly, and engaging material.

What are some of the main issues and challenges (within adolescent and adult literacy education) you aim to bring into focus?

Given increasing attention to intersections between educational equity and literacy opportunities by policymakers, researchers, teachers, parents, and community leaders, issues of inclusion must be deeply represented in the journal. Practitioners need research-based guidance about how to support high levels of literacy learning and engagement by all students, including traditionally marginalized populations, such as English language learners, incarcerated adults in education programs, and students with disabilities. We are particularly interested in pedagogical recommendations that address the needs of such populations without essentializing them, treating them as “other,” or suggesting they be segregated from peers.

Literacy educators have become increasingly interested in disciplinary literacies, and in recent years JAAL has published a number of useful pieces that were well-grounded in the disciplines. The relationship between disciplinary literacies and high-utility skills and strategies that “travel” from one learning context to another still needs to be teased out more fully. In addition, scholarship in JAAL has tended to focus on some disciplines (e.g., history and science) more than others (e.g., art, music, mathematics, physical education). These patterns hinder teacher educators in using JAAL resources to help address academic language and literacy with a range of teacher candidates. They also limit what is available to administrators and coaches seeking to develop school and districtwide literacy plans that do not marginalize some practitioners.

Writing should be another key area of emphasis for the journal, both in its own right and in terms of its relationship to reading and oral language. Although JAAL has published material about writing throughout its history, we do not think that literacy professionals have always seen the journal as a primary source of insight on this topic. The organization’s transformation from the International Reading Association to the International Literacy Association in 2015 signals a commitment to literacy scholarship beyond reading. Heightened attention to writing in print, digital, and multimedia forms is in line with that commitment.

What are some of your 2018 goals for the journal?

• Continued attention to issues of inclusion and diversity.
• More focus on assessment.
• Additional translation of research that appears in other venues.

How can JAAL help make literacy research more accessible to a nonacademic audience?

During the first two years of our editorship, we assembled and interacted with a practitioner advisory board with members from across the U.S., Australia, and Canada that served as a sounding board for our plans and provided feedback on recent issues. Several of the members submitted manuscripts, and we have since invited them to serve as ad hoc reviewers, further diversifying our reviewer pool and helping to ensure that journal content is responsive to the needs and interests of practicing teachers in varied school and community contexts.

To attract readers tending to competing concerns, we have also worked hard to ensure that all contributions to the journal, both peer-reviewed articles and columns in recurring departments, have inviting titles that are not just clever but that also point to their significance. Such titles signal more explicitly why the pieces are worth investing time, and they also enhance searchability, making it easier for readers to locate them quickly in the first place.

What are your main research interests within adolescent and adult literacy?

KC: I identify primarily as a design researcher. I work collaboratively with classroom teachers, school leaders, university colleagues, and my own teacher education students to design, implement, and revise writing-focused instructional interventions. I am particularly interested in the impact of coteaching and of Japanese-style lesson study to improve instructional practice in diverse, inclusive settings.

KH: I identify primarily as a qualitative researcher who is interested in educators’ and adolescent and adult literacy learners’ enactments of and perspectives toward literacy and instruction. As such, I collaborate with teachers and school leaders to learn their perspectives toward schoolwide literacy initiatives and impact of local, state, and federal policy, and collaborate with them on the design of instructional responses in response to this policy.

How does what’s happening in the research sector affect literacy professionals?

Boundaries between the research sector and the lives of literacy professionals are more permeable than most people imagine, representing a complex interrelationship, rather than a unidirectional “research-to-practice” arrow. Many JAAL authors are K–12 practitioners themselves, while many others are researchers or teacher educators who partner with K–12 practitioners. For example, lots of recent research has attended to the importance of designing literacy instruction grounded in the knowledge and interests that adolescent and adults bring to literacy learning and tasks.

Do you have any advice for authors looking to publish their work in JAAL?

The articles we appreciate most tend to include very explicit purpose statements, and they are explicit about the research-based takeaways for our readership. Our 6,000-word limit for feature articles is useful in attracting and maintaining the attention of busy practitioners, but it can be a challenge for authors. The most effective submissions hone in on a clear idea or two of keen interest for our primary audience of adolescent and adult literacy educators; they don’t try to address too many ideas at once.

Kelly Chandler-Olcott is the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence and associate dean for research in the School of Education at Syracuse University.

Kathleen Hinchman is the associate dean of the School of Education and a professor in the Reading and Language Arts Center at Syracuse University.