Call for Proposals: English Journal 

Special Issue: Talking Back to Policy

Submission Deadline: September 1, 2024

Guest coeditors: Bridgette Davis, Tiffany A. Flowers, Ling Hao, and Hiawatha Smith

In this special, guest-edited issue of English Journal, we anticipate submissions from teacher scholars, researchers, activists, artists, and advocates who can speak back to new policies regarding topics in education such as critical race theory, curriculum mandates, teacher preparation, and evidence-based ELA (English language arts). Authors who publish in this special themed issue will document this moment in time, considering how middle-grade and secondary teachers in ELA classrooms are wrestling with these issues and how these policies may be affecting our youngest citizens. We encourage manuscripts that focus on reflections, practitioner pieces, and research articles related to policy that can affect historically underrepresented and marginalized youth in urban, suburban, and rural contexts.

We anticipate that this issue will address guiding questions such as the following:

• What are some of the ways that ELA teachers are keeping students engaged within the classroom despite new policies?
• What are our collective barriers to twenty-first-century ELA instruction and how do we overcome these issues?
• What role does multimodality play in our quest to engage students who are struggling due to current policy concerns?
• What are the implications of these new policies for classroom instruction?
• What do you believe policymakers should know and understand regarding ELA instruction of multilingual students?
• What is the new policies’ impact on historically marginalized voices?
• What considerations are missing from recent policies?
• Where do writing and composing fit into this new narrative regarding policy limitations of ELA instruction?
• Does policy limit the ways in which we engage with our students in the classroom?
• How do our classrooms look in light of these policy changes?
• What are the reactions of students to these policy issues?
• How are parents reacting to or promoting these new policies?
• What steps can educators take to fight against these policies?

You can find the guidelines for submission to the English Journal here.