Literacy Now

The International Literacy Association (ILA) announced today the winners of its 2022 awards and grants, including its top honor and one of the literacy field’s most prestigious—the William S. Gray Citation of Merit—which was awarded to City University of New York’s Linnea Ehri.

The William S. Gray Citation of Merit honors a nationally or internationally known individual for their outstanding contributions to multiple facets of literacy development, including research, theory, practice, and policy. Past recipients have included P. David Pearson, Steve Graham, Nell K. Duke, and Jeanne Chall.

Ehri, a longtime member of ILA, is a distinguished professor emerita of educational psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Her groundbreaking research centers on reading acquisition processes, phonemic awareness in word reading and spelling, characteristics of phonemic awareness instruction, the impact of literacy on language processes, and the causes, prevention, and remediation of reading difficulties. Her findings on the importance of grapheme-phoneme knowledge, phonemic awareness, decoding skills, and orthographic mapping have greatly contributed to today’s understandings about psychology processes and sources of difficulty in learning to read and spell.

“I was surprised and felt very honored to join the ranks of highly accomplished scholars in receiving the William S. Gray Citation of Merit award,” Ehri said. “Gray’s stage-based portrayal of the development of reading ability is an important forerunner of approaches such as mine. As one of many researchers who use a scientific approach to understand how reading skill develops, much like Gray’s work on assessment, it is especially gratifying to have the significance of our contributions recognized.”

Ehri is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association. She was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 1998, served on the National Reading Panel and was president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR). She has published more than 130 research papers in books and scholarly journals, edited two books and served on editorial boards of 11 scientific journals, including ILA’s Reading Research Quarterly.

“Ehri’s meticulous research over decades has profoundly influenced the field of literacy education, particularly our understanding of how young children learn to read, spell and learn the meanings of words,” said Nell K. Duke, chair of the William S. Gray Citation of Merit Award Committee. “Her research has a deep relevance to practice. She addresses questions that are on the minds of educators and curriculum designers. Numerous programs, interventions, and curricula that have been informed by Ehri’s work.”

Joining Ehri in this year’s ILA awards and grants program are 10 other educators and literacy leaders, including Alida Hudson, Texas A&M University, who received the Timothy & Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “Upper Elementary Teachers’ Knowledge of Reading Comprehension, Classroom Practice, and Students’ Performance in Reading Comprehension.”

The other award recipients include

• Melanie Collins, Literacy Association of Tennessee | Maryann Manning Special Service Award
• Allison Swan Dagen, West Virginia University | Leaders Inspiring Readers Award
• Amanda C. Dahl, Georgia State University | Steven A. Stahl Research Grant
• Brittany Finch, Michigan State University | Jeanne S. Chall Research Fellowship
• Gary E. Bingham, Georgia State University, and Hope K. Gerde, Texas A&M University | Diane Lapp & James Flood Professional Collaborator Award
• Mary-Claire Ball, Erin Curran, Fabrice Tanoh, Hermann Akpé, Shakhlo Nematova and Kaja K. Jasińska, University of Toronto; and Seung-Hee Claire Son, Kirsten R. Butcher and Lauren Aimonette Liang, University of Utah | Dina Feitelson Research Award
• Tanya S. Wright, Michigan State University | Jerry Johns Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award

The full list of awards/grants and recipients can be found here.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) today announced the next editor team to lead the organization’s flagship journal, Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ). The appointment marks the first time in the peer-reviewed publication’s history that it will be steered by a team of researchers representing four countries.

The editor team includes

• Jennifer Rowsell, Professor and Deputy Head of School, School of Education, University of Bristol, United Kingdom
• Christian Ehret, Associate Professor, Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Canada
• Natalia Kucirkova, Professor, Norwegian Centre for Learning Environment and Behavioural Research in Education, University of Stavanger, Norway
• Cheryl A. McLean, Associate Professor, Rutgers Graduate School of Education, New Jersey, United States

Rowsell, Ehret, Kucirkova, and McLean are well-established as forward-thinking scholars and partners in the field. Their involvement in collaboration and with ILA is extensive. For instance, Rowsell, a former member of ILA’s Literacy Research Panel, and Ehret recently served as guest editors of a special issue of RRQ, “Literacy, Affect, and Uncontrollability.” Kucirkova was most recently a member of the editorial board for ILA’s The Reading Teacher (RT) and she is a member of ILA’s Early Literacy Committee, while McLean is a past member of ILA’s Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Awards Committee, a past reviewer for the annual conference research program, and a recent RT contributor.

Their professional relationships date back to 2006, having worked together on numerous books and book chapters, journal articles, conference presentations, and research grants. Their collective interests span across age levels and include multimodal, makerspace, and arts-based research; posthumanist and affect approaches to literacy teaching and learning; the digital divide; social justice in children’s literacy and technology use; and race, culture, and identity.

Their vision for the future of RRQ demonstrates a knowledge of and commitment to the evolving nature of literacy, with plans in the works for a podcast series and other methods to extend conversations about innovative approaches to reading and literacies across diverse formats, perspectives, voices, platforms, and spaces.

“Each member of the team is a digital literacy expert, which is key to emphasize in a dramatically changing literacy landscape, and the team therefore carries potential to move the journal into newer directions,” the team wrote in their application. “We believe that the diversity of our backgrounds and cultures, work experience, career stages, and how we approach digital literacy will enrich our editorial work together.”

The incoming editor team’s four-year term will begin July 1, 2022, and conclude June 30, 2026.

Rowsell, Ehret, Kucirkova, and McLean will take over leadership from the current team of Amanda Goodwin and Robert Jiménez of Vanderbilt University who, during their tenure, spearheaded two landmark special issues of the journal examining the oft-polarizing science of reading (SOR) from supportive and critical perspectives. Among their accomplishments: boosting the journal’s impact factor, a measure used to indicate the relative importance of a journal, by more than 52%.

Nicola Wedderburn, interim executive director of ILA, said she feels confident that the incoming editor team is poised to build upon the success of their predecessors. “We are excited by their plans for carrying RRQ’s 50-plus year legacy forward and are confident that they will not only leave their mark on the journal but also the literacy field at large.”

Danielle Dennis, ILA Board liaison to the search committee that vetted all of the RRQ editorship applicants, echoed Wedderburn’s sentiments and also expressed gratitude on behalf of ILA for the members of the search committee who spent the past several months on the review and interview process.

“As a member of the ILA Board of Directors and chair of the Publications Committee, I wish to acknowledge the outstanding, thoughtful, and intelligent deliberations of the RRQ Editorial Team Search Committee,” Dennis said. “The members of this committee held true to their charge and aligned their decisions with the mission and vision of the organization.”

The search committee was led by Margaret Hagood, professor, College of Charleston, South Carolina, and also included Marcus Croom, assistant professor, Indiana University Bloomington; Raúl Alberto Mora, associate professor, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Colombia; Fiona Maine, associate professor, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; Seth Parsons, professor, George Mason University, Virginia; Mia Perry, senior lecturer, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom; and Jon Wargo, assistant professor, Boston College, Massachusetts.

RRQ is the leading global journal offering multidisciplinary scholarship on literacy among learners of all ages, including the latest research studies. The reach and influence of the journal is extensive. RRQ had more than 350,000 full-text downloads in the last volume year and has a circulation of nearly 6,400 academic institutions.

Like all of you, we continue to watch the news today and try desperately—and unsuccessfully—to wrap our heads around the unimaginable and unexplainable tragedy that took place in Uvalde, TX, yesterday morning.

This unfathomable situation—the loss of these innocent lives—has become an all-too-common occurrence.

Nineteen children. Two teachers. In their school. A place that should be a haven safe from harm, a bastion of knowledge and learning, and a common ground for developing friendships and discovering the joys and wonders of the world.

Nineteen children. Two teachers. In Robb Elementary School. That’s how many lives he took. How many more have been touched? Countless may have lost any hope of finding joy in going to school and in getting an education. Countless may never feel safe and in a place where they should feel safest of all.

We can only hope that every person in the United States and around the world plays witness to this tragedy and works to make all schools a safe and joyous space for all learners and all educators. To fail to do so dishonors the memory of 19 children, who will never have the chance to grow up, and two teachers, heroes Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, who gave their lives to protect their students.

There are no words that can convey the sorrow we feel or soothe the pain of the families who lost loved ones. So let our actions do what words cannot.

Stay safe. Stay connected. Stay strong.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) today announced the results of the ILA 2022 Board Election.

Kia Brown-Dudley, director of Programs and Partnerships for The Education Partners, is the newly elected vice president of the ILA Board of Directors. Brown-Dudley, currently a member-at-large, serves as the chair of the Program Committee and cochair of the Equity and Social Justice Committee, as well as a member on both the Global and Finance committees. Brown-Dudley’s new term begins July 1, 2022, and she will assume the presidency of the Board on July 1, 2023.

An ILA member since 1997, Brown-Dudley began her career as a teacher in the New York City Department of Education. Her expertise includes leading blended professional learning, developing research-based reading programs and directing national initiatives advocating for transparency and equity in pre-K–12 education. She is the author of the family guide Read and Rise: Preparing Our Children for a Lifetime of Success and has collaborated with organizations such as Boys’ Club of New York, Reading Is Fundamental and the National Urban League in service of family and community literacy empowerment.

Through her position with The Education Partners, Brown-Dudley works with educators and leading organizations to create and deliver transformational curricula and professional learning opportunities to improve student outcomes in literacy and early childhood education.

“I am energized to take on the role of vice president,” Brown-Dudley said. “Over the past three years, I have witnessed ILA transform, adapting to the evolving landscape to meet the needs of literacy educators and advocates. I look forward to working with the ILA community as we create more opportunities to empower and give greater agency to our global constituency to achieve our mission—to improve the quality of literacy learning across the globe in ways that are respectful, responsive and ethical.”

Three new Board members-at-large were also elected for the 2022–2025 term:

• Sue Corbin, professor and chair of the Division of Professional Education, Notre Dame College, OH. Corbin, a member of ILA for more than 30 years, is a former pre-K–6 literacy specialist and middle school reading teacher. She wrote literacy curricula for elementary and middle schools, founded a summer literacy clinic for readers who struggle and has presented at multiple ILA international and state conferences. Corbin is a current board member of ILA’s Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group, which she previously chaired. She has been a member of the editorial board of the group’s journal, The Dragon Lode, in addition to a member and chair of the group’s Notable Books for a Global Society committee.
  
  
• Rebecca Silverman, associate professor of early literacy, Stanford Graduate School of Education, CA. Silverman, an ILA member since 2001, began her career as an elementary school teacher in New Orleans, LA. She has presented at numerous ILA conferences and served as a contributor to and editorial review board member for ILA’s The Reading Teacher and Reading Research Quarterly journals. At Stanford, where Silverman leads the Language to Literacy Research Lab, she focuses on research and practice related to literacy development and instruction of early childhood and elementary-age children from diverse backgrounds. She has also worked in teacher education and professional development across the United States and internationally.
  
  
• Jeanette Toomer, 12th-grade English language arts teacher, Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health & Science Charter School, Bronx, NY. Toomer, an ILA member since 2015, has been teaching English language arts and literature, primarily in New York high schools, since 2001 and has written curricula for 10th through 12th grades. In addition, she served as a staff developer for schools and educational corporations and as a composition professor in local colleges.

Brown-Dudley, Corbin, Silverman and Toomer were elected by ILA’s membership during the ILA 2022 Board Election, which was conducted online between March 28, 2022, and May 6, 2022. The new vice president and members-at-large will begin their terms on July 1, 2022.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) Board of Directors announced today that Nicola Wedderburn has been appointed Interim Executive Director.

Wedderburn has been with ILA since February 2011, most recently as Director of Business Development, during which she oversaw ILA’s marketing program as well as membership, the chapter and affiliate network, customer service, and partnership development. In her new role, she will not only be the first Black woman to take the helm of the organization but also the first born outside of the United States.

Throughout her tenure, Wedderburn has been a strong advocate for ILA’s global membership, working diligently to ensure that the organization’s offerings reflect the interests and diversity of all constituents. Her background in business administration and proven record of partnership development, coupled with this “members first” philosophy, made her a natural pick to fill the vacancy left by Marcie Craig Post, who stepped down from the position in January.

ILA Vice President of the Board Kenneth Kunz said that Wedderburn’s appointment “comes at a vital point in ILA’s history,” adding, “Nicola’s innovation, contagious enthusiasm and commitment to ILA’s mission will help to carry out strategic initiatives.”

It is a sentiment shared by his colleagues on the Board—a group that unanimously approved Wedderburn’s appointment.

“Her ability to build and sustain relationships has breathed new energy into the ILA network,” said Stephen G. Peters, ILA Immediate Past President of the Board and chair of ILA’s Equity and Social Justice Committee, on which Wedderburn serves. “She is a leader whom others trust to value their voice and feedback, and we all look forward to working with her.”

“Nicola brings the humanity, the ability, and the drive to engage ILA in making a difference in the advancement of literacy worldwide,” concurred ILA President of the Board Robert J. Tierney. “She ushers in a bright, bold day for ILA—one filled with possibility and promise.”