A Note from the Editorial Team

In the months since our last issue, we have continued to experience the uncertainty, the loss, and the devastation brought on by COVID-19. Amid this global pandemic, we have also witnessed the civil unrest precipitated by the brutal and unjust murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Sadly, these murders are just the three most recent of countless examples of the deep-seated racial injustice that continues to plague our nation. The JCRL editorial team would like to echo the sentiments expressed by the CRLA Board in their statement issued on June 2, 2020. We stand in solidarity with the CRLA leadership and with people across the globe denouncing racism, white supremacy, police brutality, and justice systems based on racial inequality. We, too, stand firm in our declaration that Black Lives Matter and in our commitment to promote diversity, equity, and social justice within our organization and throughout our world.

For this issue of JCRL, we continue our amplification of cultural and linguistic diversity within postsecondary literacy and learning with a piece from guest contributor, Dr. Asao B. Inoue, and two feature articles. We are sure that the contents of this issue will further position you to embrace and promote cultural and linguistic diversity in your professional and personal spaces.

Guest Contributor: Asao B. Inoue

The inspiration for this themed 50^th volume of JCRL was the following quote from the keynote address delivered at the 2019 annual convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication by conference chair, Dr. Asao B. Inoue (2019).

We tell our students how much right they have to their languages, how much we care and embrace the diversity of languages that they bring and use, yet we tacitly contradict these messages by asking them to wait just a bit longer for us to feel comfortable enough to change our classroom practices, to change the way standards work against them, despite the linguistic truths we know about the communicative effectiveness of all languages.

In his keynote address, Dr. Inoue challenged us as educators to abandon our comfort zones and to align curriculum, pedagogy, and professional practices with what we claim we believe. While doing so is no easy feat and requires intentional and sustained focus, as we have seen in the previous issues of the volume, there are very practical steps that we can take. Helping us move yet one step closer to our ideal, we are so delighted to showcase a guest contribution from Dr. Asao B. Inoue.

A professor and the associate dean for Academic Affairs, Equity, and Inclusion in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University, Dr. Inoue’s research focuses on antiracist and social justice theory and practices in writing assessments. He is the 2019 Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and he has been a past member of the CCCC Executive Committee and the Executive Board of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. Among his many articles and chapters on writing assessment, race, and racism, his article “Theorizing Failure in U.S. Writing Assessments” in Research in the Teaching of English won the 2014 CWPA Outstanding Scholarship Award. His co-edited collection Race and Writing Assessment (2012) won the 2014 NCTE/CCCC Outstanding Book Award for an edited collection. His book Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing for a Socially Just Future (2015) won the 2017 NCTE/CCCC Outstanding Book Award for a monograph and the 2015 CWPA Outstanding Book Award. He also has published a co-edited collection, Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity (2018), and a book, Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom (2019).

His guest contribution, “Teaching Antiracist Reading”, lays out a framework for approaching texts in ways that allow readers to identify the biases, assumptions, and mental shortcuts that reproduce racism through use of and attitudes toward language. While the title and content of Inoue’s piece highlight the teaching of antiracist reading, the practices he proposes are no doubt ones that educators can personally implement. We hope to see continued engagement in our field with the concept, use, and teaching of antiracist literacy practices.

Featured Articles

This issue includes two peer-reviewed articles that examine the ways in which students and faculty navigate linguistic and cultural diversity in the postsecondary literacy classroom.

First, in “Looking Beyond Language: An Examination of College Literacy Readiness of Students from Refugee Backgrounds”, author Meagan Hoff examines the literacy practices of refugee students. This understudied population can be subjected to stereotypes and misconceptions regarding their college readiness. Hoff presents evidence that the refugee students in her study use various advanced literacy practices, while requiring much of the same developmental support as non-refugee students, thus challenging the view of refugee students as “not college ready.”

We close this issue with “Perceived Reading Strategy Awareness and Use (RSAU) and Reading Ability across Foreign Language Disciplines at the University Level”, where authors Seyed Hassan Talebi, Mojtaba Maghsoudi, and Abolfazl Khodamoradi examine the reading practices and perceptions of Iranian university learners studying English, Russian, and Arabic as foreign languages. Based on the results of this study, the authors advocate for a disciplinary literacy approach to reading, along with an emphasis on metacognitive awareness and use of discipline-specific reading strategies. They argue that this will better prepare students to be “constructively responsive” readers who strategically engage in meaning-making while reading.

We are certain that you will agree that the papers included in this issue present not only food for thought, but also practical action steps that we can take in our work with students whether in the classroom or in the learning support center. Each one speaks to the importance of fighting stereotypes that affect the practices of reading and teaching and suggests approaches that can be taken to advance more just and inclusive postsecondary literacy education.

We look forward to our fourth and final issue of this themed volume. More importantly, we look forward to our continued dialogue and work toward more culturally and linguistically informed teaching and learning support.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.