College of Charleston Professors Margaret Hagood and Emily Skinner are receiving national attention after just one issue as editors of The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (JAAL), a premier research into practice journal for literacy professionals focused on literacies of learners ages 12 to adulthood and published by the International Reading Association. The journal is housed in the College’s School of Education, Health, and Human Performance. Read the first issue.

Hagood and Skinner have made changes to position the journal as the central resource for the literacy community. Reading Today says, “Hagood and Skinner bring a bold new vision to the journal. The new JAAL is a resources practitioners in the field cannot afford to skip.”

“Our goal with the changes is to make the journal content accessible in a variety of formats,” Hagood says. “It will be available in print as well as online with supplemental material such as video data from research, and podcast interviews with authors. We are using social media to connect literacy educators interested in interacting with and accessing content and sharing ideas with other literacy educators.”

Hagood and Skinner encourage scholars to submit video components with their print submissions, and report that there is at least one video component for each of the next five journal issues. They have also created a section in the journal that will bring together print and online communities, drawing on Facebook conversations and other online content called Meeting of the Minds. A new “Literacy Lenses” section will feature short, first-person nonacademic essays that spotlight diverse perspectives on teaching and learning literacies written by both adolescents and adults.

“Including video components with scholarly articles is a new form of data sharing in our field,” Skinner says. “We feel we are on the forefront of changes in publication formats and it is exciting! This whole process has been a terrific challenge and we are enjoying building a community that shares content in virtual spaces. IRA has been supportive of our ideas to bring these small changes to fruition.”

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 the intersection of literacies and identities of children and adolescents. Recent publications: Hagood, M. C. (in press). New technologies: Have computers and other new technologies enhanced classroom instruction? To appear in J. Eakle (Ed.)., Debating Issues in American Education. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Hagood, M.C. (2012). Risks, rewards, & responsibilities of using new literacies in middle grades. Voices from the Middle 19(4), 10-16. 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: Hagood, M. C., & Skinner, E. N. (2012). Appreciating Plurality Through Conversations Among Literacy Stakeholders. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 56(1).Skinner, E. N., Hagood, M. C., & Provost, M. (in press). 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.