Literacy Now

The International Literacy Association (ILA) has announced the next editor team to lead Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ), the leading global journal publishing multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed scholarship on literacy among learners of all ages.

Representing institutions across the United States, Central Asia, and the Asia-Pacific region, the incoming editorial team brings deep disciplinary expertise and global perspective to RRQ’s leadership:

 
• Chase Young, professor and associate director of assessments in the School of Teaching and Learning, Sam Houston State University

 
• Juan Araújo, professor and director of the School of Education, Texas Woman’s University


 
• Michelle Bedeker, associate professor and head of department, New Uzbekistan University


 
• Janet S. Gaffney, professor and director of the Marie Clay Research Centre, University of Auckland



• Bethanie C. Pletcher, professor in the Curriculum, Instruction, and Learning Sciences Department, Texas A&M University

New editors to focus on amplifying international and underrepresented voices

Dr. Young’s extensive editorial experience—including service as a reviewer, guest editor, and editorial board member—positions him to lead RRQ with a steady, discerning, and strategic vision. Together with his fellow editors, the team is unified in their vision for RRQ in an era where the field of literacy continues to evolve.

“We are energized by the opportunity to amplify international and underrepresented voices, deepen the journal’s engagement with critical and interdisciplinary perspectives, and support research that employs innovative and emerging methodologies,” the team stated. “RRQ must continue to foster scholarly dialogue that is inclusive, theoretically grounded, and methodologically rigorous—research that leaves a lasting imprint on the field.”

The team spans a wide range of research paradigms—quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods—with demonstrated expertise in psychometrics, discourse analysis, cognitive and sociocultural theory, and cross-contextual literacy research. In addition, their shared editorial values form a unified foundation for collaborative leadership, equipping them to engage with the full spectrum of submissions to RRQ.

“We see RRQ not merely as a publication, but as a scholarly community—one that values transparency, thoughtful peer review, and intellectual courage,” the team stated. “We are dedicated to upholding the high standards that define the journal while ensuring it remains responsive to the evolving contours of literacy scholarship worldwide.”

The incoming team’s term begins this year and concludes in 2029. The first year of the new team’s term will overlap with the final year of outgoing editors Jennifer Rowsell, Christian Ehret, Natalia Kucirkova, and Cheryl McLean.

RRQ provides high-quality, classroom-tested ideas as well as reflections on literacy trends, issues and research. The reach and influence of the journal is extensive. RRQ had over 589,000 article views in the last year and has a circulation of more than 6,500 academic institutions.

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The latest issue of Reading Research Quarterly

Literacy Today magazine: Global Perspectives

Creativity is a skill that enriches all the other learning, discovery, and growth children experience in their school careers. For the fifth straight year, Crayola will bring Creativity Week to schools, libraries, homes, and community organizations around the world.  

In 2025, this free event drew more than 13 million student participants from 122 countries, and the 2026 celebration is on pace to exceed that number.

What can teachers expect from Crayola Creativity Week 2026?

As in year’s past, this celebration will feature a star-studded lineup of celebrity creators reading a featured book aloud each day of the event. Celebrities include artist and actor Kate Micucci, Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott, musician and filmmaker Questlove, NASA astronauts, football/soccer greats Harry Kane and Matt Turner, actor Michael Rainey Jr., and conservationist Bindi Irwin. 


Each day, the illustrators of the featured books present creative activities so children can put their imaginations into action! From Bluey artists taking students behind the scenes of the TV show and showing children the storyboarding process, to having the opportunity to create original designs for a NASA mission patch and/or zero-gravity indicator, children can write, draw, and explore their own creative vision and interests.

Along with daily videos, the Creativity Week lineup also includes daily giveaways, an unforgettable group of sweepstakes co-sponsored by Crayola Learning and event partners, and a robust collection of instructional resources from both Crayola Learning and event partners.

Tune in to the livestream video event on Friday, January 30, at 1:00 p.m. ET.

As part of the Creativity Week lineup, a special livestream event will feature participating classrooms from around the globe, along with special guests including musicians, dancers, actors, and members of the wildly popular Savannah Bananas exhibition baseball team.

Learn more about the sweepstakes and daily giveaways.

Everyone who registers for Crayola Creativity Week also has the opportunity to enter the event’s five sweepstakes. Grand prizes include:

• 10 schools will win custom Junior Martin guitars printed with their classroom’s artwork.
• 10 elementary and middle school educators will receive an all-expenses-paid VIP trip to Florida’s Space Coast in June of 2026.
• 10 schools will win $2,500 to host financial literacy events for families, and one family will win $4,500 to establish or contribute to a 529 savings plan.
• 24 educators will win a Teachers’ Lounge makeover for their school.
• 15 educators will win a 4-day trip to a specially planned Creativity Retreat.
• Sweepstakes winners will all receive bundles of Crayola art supplies.
• Daily giveaways will include art supplies, tech, and more. Participating educators can earn extra chances to win these prizes by posting students’ artwork on social media using the hashtag #CrayolaCreativityWeek.

Here's how to plan your Creativity Week celebration.

Crayola Learning has developed two helpful planning guides, the Family Engagement Guide for Crayola Creativity Week and Beyond and Celebrate Creativity with Your Learning Community. These guides will give teachers, librarians, and principals all kinds of ideas and inspiration for involving families, and the community in Creativity Week events. 

Additionally, thinking sheets, activity sheets, family letters, supplies wish lists, and standards alignments for all the activities (available in 8+ languages) will help make planning and preparation easier for educators. There is no cost to register for Creativity Week, and no special equipment or supplies are needed for students to enjoy all the activities and events. 

Does Creativity Week make an impact in the classroom? The answer is yes!

Each year, Crayola Learning surveys participants following Creativity Week. Following the 2025 event, 80 percent of the educators and librarians who participated indicated that their students showed more curiosity, self-expression, and learning enthusiasm. What’s more, 70 percent noted that the event boosted their understanding of creativity’s importance in learning. Encouragingly, nearly 100 percent stated they were enthusiastic about participating in the 2026 event.

Registration is fast and easy. On the Crayola website, visitors will find information about the daily events, free content and resources, and FAQs. 

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No Empty Shelves: 10 Ways to Eliminate "Book Deserts" in Schools

Please RSVP: Inviting Children's Picturebooks Back Into the Classroom

In classrooms across the country, teachers encounter a puzzling situation: A student reads fluently, even confidently, yet struggles to make sense of the text. It’s a disconnect that can leave educators frustrated and puzzled. How can a “good” reader still miss the meaning of what they read? In an era when schools are under pressure to produce data-driven results, the meaning behind those numbers often gets lost.

This dilemma, explored by Mary DeKonty Applegate, Anthony J. Applegate, and Virginia B. Modla in an article for The Reading Teacher, highlights a core problem in literacy assessment. The tools we use to measure reading are not always aligned with what it truly means to read. For many schools, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and other curriculum-based measures (CBMs) have become the primary way of monitoring student progress. These assessments track how quickly and accurately students can read connected text.

On the surface, this seems useful. After all, a child who struggles to read fluently will likely struggle to comprehend. But here’s the catch: Fluency assessments alone tell us little about whether students actually understand what they read. A student who races through text at an impressive words-per-minute rate may still be unable to make inferences, connect ideas, or construct meaning. This is the goal of reading and what we do as adults. When this happens, we risk confusing fast reading with real reading. 

This challenge isn’t new. In an article for Literacy Now, Peter Johnston warned that while CBMs provide a quick snapshot of fluency, they are often treated as comprehensive measures of reading. They are not. As Johnston argued, comprehension is not an “add-on” to fluency; rather, it is the heart of reading.

Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory offers a powerful lens for understanding why these measures fall short. Rosenblatt argued that reading is a transaction between the reader and the text, where meaning is constructed through engagement, reflection, and response. Similarly, researchers such as P. David Pearson and Gina N. Cervetti as well as Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright have reinforced that the end goal of reading is comprehension—an active process of making meaning—not simply decoding words on a page. Phonics and fluency provide essential access to print, but they are not the destination.

As Tim Pressley, Richard Allington, and Michael Pressley noted in Reading Instruction That Works, skilled readers constantly monitor for understanding, making predictions, and revising interpretations as they read. When assessment reduces reading to a timed score, it overlooks this complex interplay of cognitive and affective processes that foster deep comprehension. Reading becomes performance, not meaning-making. Therefore, the very heart of literacy is lost.

The narrowing of reading

This concept shows up in everyday classroom practice. One example I have observed is the insistence that students answer comprehension questions without referring back to the book. The rationale is often that students should “remember” what they read, but then comes the moment when a student asks the teacher about a particular part in the text and the teacher reaches for the book to check. That right there says it all. Authentic readers rely on the text. We revisit, reread, and reference constantly. To deny students this process sends the wrong message: That reading is about memory, not meaning. 

Some might argue that asking students to recall what they discussed in class demonstrates comprehension. But isn’t that really just testing memory? As Rosenblatt would remind us: Comprehension cannot be captured in a single recall task. It unfolds as readers transact with the text, shifting between the efferent stances (focused on information) and the aesthetic stances (focused living variously through the lives of the characters). When we block students from revisiting the text, we cut them off from this essential back and forth process of constructing and remaking meaning.

When reading becomes a performance, engagement fades, and meaning—the heart of reading comprehension—is lost.

Where does this leave us?

It doesn’t mean we should throw out fluency assessments altogether. They serve an important purpose, especially for identifying students who need additional support with automaticity and word recognition. But we cannot stop there. If fluency becomes the whole story, we risk raising readers who are quick but shallow, efficient but disengaged. This is where differentiation becomes essential. Every reader brings unique strengths, needs, and processing styles to the act of reading. Some students may need targeted fluency practice, others benefit more from explicit phonics instruction to strengthen decoding, still others may thrive through modeling comprehension strategies, guided peer led discussions, or guided questioning. Differentiation ensures that instruction aligns with what each student truly needs to grow, not just how fast they can read, but how deeply they can think and apply their understanding to live responsibility in society. 

Instead, we need a more balanced approach to assessment. Pairing oral reading measures with authentic comprehension tasks gives us a fuller picture of reading ability. Tasks that invite students to annotate, cite evidence, and engage in meaningful peer led discussions. Might we even see motivation increase when students read to find messages they can apply to their world? Allowing students to return to the text doesn’t weaken comprehension checks; it strengthens them by mirroring how reading works in the real world. 

Pause and reflect

• Are we measuring what matters most? 
• Are we giving students opportunities to practice the kinds of reading behaviors real readers use every day? 
• Are our assessment choices shaping instruction that builds not only speed but also depth of understanding? 

Ultimately, it’s time to move beyond the narrow definitions of reading toward a more balanced approach that honors both fluency and comprehension. Our best readers should not be praised solely for how quickly they move through text, but for how deeply they transact with it. After all—as Roseblatt, Johnston, and the Applegates remind us in different ways—comprehension is not just the outcome of reading; rather, it is reading.  

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No Empty Shelves: 10 Ways to Eliminate "Book Deserts" in Schools

Defining and Refining Equitable Vocabulary Instruction for English Language Learners

The October/November/December 2025 issue of Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine, explores the importance of literacy coaching and how it ties in with curriculum and community.

Our guest editor for this edition, Sara Gonzalez Flechas, is a founding member of GL Books and the Literacy Center. A passionate literacy coach and advocate for bilingual students, Sarah currently serves as the national academic director leading curriculum design, teacher training, and literacy implementation across public and private institutions.

“Literacy work is never done in isolation. It thrives when we learn from one another, when we take risks, and when we keep students at the center of everything we do,” she wrote in her opening note to readers.  

Read on to learn more about the issue, how Sara approached its curation, and what she hopes readers take away from it.

Tell us how you developed your vision for this issue.

My vision for this issue was shaped by what is happening right now in Colombia. Over the past few years, we’ve been intentionally positioning literacy—not traditional EFL approaches—as a powerful and evidence-based alternative for teaching English. It has been a slow but meaningful process, and every step reinforces that the strongest results emerge when we move away from methods that, after many years, have not produced the outcomes our students deserve.

For this reason, I wanted this issue to spotlight the Colombian context and the people driving these changes. I invited Claudia González and Alberto Lozano because they have been central to rethinking English teaching in Colombia and are actively advancing research-based practices. In addition, Lauren Hegarty, Diego Garzón, Mariana Ocampo Hernández, and Carolina Caipa’s work shows what is possible when schools embrace literacy and coaching as long-term commitments—small-scale transformations that can grow into national impact. Their articles reflect a continuum: From early childhood to primary and secondary school, and even, as I mentioned in my article, system-wide implementation in public education. Together, they portray a country in motion.

How did you approach selecting contributors? What important thread ties them together?

I chose contributors whose work reflects the real challenges—and real possibilities—of doing things differently in Colombia. While each author comes from a distinct context and perspective, they share a common thread: They are practitioners who are courageously reshaping English teaching through literacy and coaching.

Their collective contributions offer a full panorama of the impact literacy can have. Tatiana Charry’s article brings us into kindergarten classrooms, while John Oyuela’s piece extends to professional development and systems-level change. Each one helps build a wide-angle view of the essential work happening across levels, regions, and school types. Together, they show a unified story: Literacy matters, and it is transforming learning in Colombia.

Your opening letter mentions how essential it is that literacy work is "never done in isolation." Can you expand upon that thinking?

In Colombia, talking about literacy immediately implies collaboration, because no part of the system can shift on its own. Real change requires participation from teachers, principals, coordinators, and families—and even students themselves.

Tatiana highlights this beautifully in her article, showing how young learners thrive when teachers and families work together. Mariana and Carolina describe how implementing a reading program was only possible because coordinators, teachers, and the principal approached the process as a shared challenge and a shared responsibility. Across schools and communities, we see that literacy grows when everyone involved understands that there is an alternative way to approach English.

This is why I intentionally included voices from all sectors and all grade levels—from pre-kindergarten to professional educators. Literacy truly is collective work.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions about literacy coaching in your experience, and how does this issue address them?

One of the biggest misconceptions is that a coach is simply an observer whose role is to evaluate or judge. In Colombia, the term “literacy coach” is not commonly used in schools, and the role is often misunderstood or, in many cases, nonexistent. In my recent work in schools in El Salvador, I found the same challenge—so much so that I recommended creating the position as part of the school structure. A coach is not there to critique from the sidelines; a coach is an active partner in the learning process.

Another misconception is that coaching is limited to supporting teachers. Literacy coaching must be present in the classroom, working directly with instruction, with students, and with the school’s curricular decisions. It is hands-on, collaborative, and centered on improving practice in real time.

This issue illustrates these ideas by showing coaches and teachers working side-by-side, reflecting together, and transforming everyday classroom interactions

What do you hope readers will take away from this issue of Literacy Today, and how do you envision it sparking further conversation about literacy coaching?

I hope readers walk away with at least two things: A renewed willingness to question traditional approaches to language teaching, especially in multilingual or bilingual contexts, and a collection of practical, realistic ideas they can bring into their schools, classrooms, or teacher training programs.

I also hope this issue encourages educators to talk more openly about literacy coaching—not as an extra role or a luxury, but as a central component of instructional transformation. My wish is that readers begin asking:

• What would change if we saw literacy coaching as essential, not optional?
• How can coaching help us break long-standing patterns and move toward evidence-based teaching?
• What might English education look like if literacy were the foundation rather than an add-on?

If this issue sparks these conversations—and inspires teams to explore literacy as a path to more equitable, effective English learning—then it will have done exactly what I hoped.

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Defining and Refining Equitable Vocabulary Instruction for English Language Learners

Literacy Today magazine: Coaching Across Borders

Barbara J. Walker, a compassionate teacher and influential scholar whose lifelong devotion to literacy touched countless educators and students, died on November 12, 2025. She was 79.

Walker served as the president of the International Reading Association (IRA; now the International Literacy Association) from 2008–2009. She began her work as a reading specialist in Oklahoma before serving in various roles that reflected her belief in the global importance of literacy. 

Walker earned her PhD in Curriculum Studies at Oklahoma State University (OSU) and went on to lead the Reading Clinic at Montana State University Billings before returning to OSU as a professor of reading. Her research centered on reading difficulties, teacher development, and literacy coaching—areas in which she became widely recognized for both her expertise and compassion.

A prolific author, Walker wrote extensively on diagnostic reading instruction, literacy coaching, and effective intervention for struggling readers. To this day, her books and teaching frameworks continue to guide reading specialists and classroom teachers. She also received numerous honors for her scholarship, including the College Reading Association’s A.B. Herr Award and distinction as a Regents Distinguished Professor for Research.

As president of IRA, Walker provided steady leadership during a time of evolving literacy practices. She supported the growing recognition of modern literacies and reaffirmed IRA’s commitment to equitable reading instruction for all learners.

Walker’s legacy continues to endure in the educators she mentored, the readers whose lives she helped change, and the professional community she served with integrity and compassion. Her impact will continue to shape literacy education for years to come.

You may make a donation in Walker’s honor here.