Beginning in August 2011, the College of Charleston’s School of Education, Health, and Human Performance is home to The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (JAAL). This prominent journal has an international readership of more than 14,000 and is the only literacy journal published exclusively for literacy advocates of older learners. Teacher education professors Margaret C. Hagood and Emily N. Skinner will serve as co-editors of the publication through 2016.
“The opportunity to provide intellectual leadership for such an internationally well-respected journal reflects a great deal of confidence in two of our most outstanding faculty in the School of Education, Health and Human Performance,” says George Hynd, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “Their selection as co-editors reflects well on the high quality of scholarship expected of faculty who strive to better understand the many cultural and developmental factors influencing adolescent and adult literacy. We are very proud to support this partnership with the International Reading Association.”
Hagood and Skinner have served on the Editorial Review Board of the JAAL and are active members of the journal’s publisher, the International Reading Association. They will adjudicate manuscripts beginning this fall and their first issue as co-editors will be in August 2012.
“Our vision for the journal is to make connections across literacies, melding old with new, foundational with digital, print texts with digital ones and to open up conversations among various stakeholders, including students, content area teachers, media specialists, literacy coaches, researchers, administrators, and policy makers,” Hagood says.
Skinner adds, “With our backgrounds in new literacies and our interests in making connections to digital literacies based on our work with the Center of Excellence in the Advancement of New Literacies in Middle Grades at the College, the move to bring the editorship to the College seemed a natural fit to the work we’ve established with pre-service and in-service teachers.”
JAAL is published online and in print eight times a year: monthly from September through May, with a combined issue in December/January.
About Margaret C. Hagood
Margaret C. Hagood is an associate professor of literacy in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston. Her research and teaching interests include digital literacies, pop culture, and identities of children and adolescents. Recent publications: Hagood, M.C. (in press). Risks, rewards, & responsibilities of using new literacies in middle grades. Voices from the Middle. Hagood, M. C. (2010/2011). An ecological approach to classroom literacy instruction: Lessons learned from No Impact Man. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54, 236-243. Hagood, M. C., Alvermann, D. E., & Heron, A. (2010). Bring it to class: Unpacking pop culture in literacy learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
About Emily N. Skinner
Emily N. Skinner, Ed.D. is an associate professor of literacy in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston. Her teaching and research interests include bridging children and adolescents’ in and out-of-school literacies, teaching writing/design in the 21st century, and engaging practicing teachers in new literacies professional development. Recent publications: Skinner, E. N., Hagood, M. C., & Provost, M. (under review). Creating a new literacies coaching ethos. Submitted to Reading and Writing Quarterly, Rainville, K., & Jones, S. (Eds.). Skinner, E. N., & Lichtenstein, M. (2009). Digital storytelling is not the new PowerPoint: Adolescents’ critical constructions of presidential election issues. In M. C. Hagood (Ed.) New Literacies Practices: Learning from youth in out-of-school and in-school context. New York: Peter Lang. Skinner, E. N., & Hagood, M. C. (2008). Developing literate identities with English Language Learners through digital storytelling. The Reading Matrix (online).
For more information, contact Margaret Hagood at hagoodm@cofc.edu or Emily Skinner at skinnere@cofc.edu.
