Abstract
In the professional literacy communities, name changing has, for the most part, broadened the intellectual, practical, and political scopes of inquiry from a narrower focus upon reading to a more inclusive one as illustrated by both the International Literacy Association (formerly the International Reading Association) and the Literacy Research Association (formerly the National Reading Conference). Further in 1999, the formerly named Journal of Reading Behavior was renamed the Journal of Literacy Research (JLR). This change opened the door to publishing previously unexplored topics, including one foregrounded here in this issue—community literacy. Historically, reading/literacy research focused on aspects of teaching and learning the process of reading, usually in the context of schooling (Guzzetti, Anders, & Neuman, 1999). The turn toward community and out-of-school literacies, however, suggested new research questions in contexts other than the classroom, such as within local communities. And this “turn,” per se, has resulted in some of the more seminal writings in the literacy field for the last three decades, including Heath’s (1983) work with communities in the Piedmont Carolinas; the funds of knowledge research by Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti (2006); and the notable anthropological work in the Middle East by Brian Street (1984) which added two new terms to the lexicon of literacy researchers—autonomous and ideological literacies.
Despite these foundational works, and as researchers have studied the community literacies of people’s everyday lives within contexts such as homes, neighborhoods, and community centers, finding these spaces indeed rich with “funds of knowledge,” it has not necessarily led to more socially just practices.
For example, in one local neighborhood of which we know, with a primarily Latino/a population of several generations, an audit of the literacy resources in the community reveals an amateur astronomy club, high public library usage, and active civic participation. Notably, citizens took over a corner of a large county park on the edge of their neighborhood to create a “peace garden,” where senior citizens work with youth to maintain the landscaping and where the astronomy club meets and other local events take place. In addition, a community initiated literacy council helps to optimize literacy resources for the neighborhood, and the qualities of care and pride that residents have in this community is evident everywhere.
However, local school district policies and city council decisions have adversely affected the neighborhood’s efforts at building capacity, and cast an unfavorable light upon the children from this community. For example, to expedite traffic around the neighborhood, large six-lane streets along with poorly maintained sidewalks disrupt the natural flow of the neighborhood, impeding residents from visiting each other and from taking advantage of resources such as schools, libraries, and malls.
Furthermore, state mandates for English only instruction, and the use of skills-based program materials and tests, void of culturally relevance, have reified a deficit perspective regarding the culturally and linguistically diverse students who live in the community. With 40% of the students in the district bilingual or Spanish dominant, official policies suggest that children are behind in their language development and, as a consequence, are not offered “content” until their English skills are deemed proficient. Thus, these school policies ignore the rich language and literacy resources of the community and position the citizens and their children as “disadvantaged,” ineligible for the instruction offered to other mainstream students, and make dangerous, unfounded assumptions about what is important for students to be successful in school and in their adult lives.
This is not a unique story for many communities here in the United States or in other countries, and there are certainly larger, seemingly intractable, issues at work as well such as those of economic depression, lack of employment for caregivers, and histories of violence within and perpetrated upon certain racial and ethnic groups. These are painful legacies which interfere with children’s schooling trajectories, opportunities afterward, and self-esteem during. And we wonder as members of the professional literacy community, whether as researchers, teachers, school administrators, and journal editors—is there anything that we can do to inject hope and knowledge to disrupt the cycle into which so many children are locked—is there another “turn” yet to be taken to open up new horizons in creating equitable conditions for all children? How can we better share our scholarship with policy makers so that decisions are based on documented knowledge of communities and the rich language and literacy practices and opportunities they offer?
This is our final editorial; we are handing the torch to the capable team of editors based at University of Texas, San Antonio. Editing the JLR has been a professional highlight for all of us and we thank the Literacy Research Association for this opportunity; we especially thank our outstanding reviewers who provided excellent feedback to authors, and to the authors who submitted their work and trusted us with their scholarship.
We want to leave you with some lines from one of Vygotsky’s favorite poets, Fyodor Tyutchev, lines which according to a childhood friend, Semyon Dobkin (Levitin, 1982, p. 31), Vygotsky frequently quoted from boyhood,
We still believe in miracles, For all the lessons and the truths That life has taught us; We know there’s beauty that won’t pall And strength that cannot be exhausted;
And to these lines, we add Vygotsky’s own statement, “Man is full of unrealized opportunities at any given moment” (Levitin, 1982, p. 130). Our suggestion for the next “turn,” as it were, of literacy research should be toward understanding the “inexhaustible strength” of the children, youth, and families with whom we work—the beauty that won’t pall—and toward unearthing the horizons of “unrealized opportunities” within all human beings.