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EDITORIAL

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 58(1) September 2014 doi: 10.1002/jaal.326 © 2014 International Reading Association (pp. 6–8)

The Vitality of Embracing Changes in Literacies’ Research, Education, and Publication

Margaret Carmody Hagood & Emily Neil Skinner

In 2013, DreamWorks Animation released The Croods (DiMicco & Sanders, 2013 ), a 3D ani-mated adventure film that chronicles the lives of

the last surviving Neanderthals family. The family consists of Grug and Ugga, their three children, and Ugga ’ s mother. They spend most of their time in a cave, emerging only to hunt for food. The cave has kept them safe, as have dictates of Grug, the overpro-tective and controlling father. Grug operates from a tradition of survival with the central tenant being fear of change, which has kept his family alive when all other families have been killed by the wild. Thunk, the middle child and early adolescent, quickly learns from Grug ’ s evening storytelling and cave drawings, and espouses his father ’ s position, stating, “I will never do anything new or different.” But Eep, the adolescent eldest child, hates the rules and confines of the cave, wants to explore the world, ever pushing against her father ’ s mantras of “New is al-ways bad” and “Never not be afraid.”

The story shifts when Eep meets Guy, a more evolved caveman who realized change is necessary in order to survive. The family and Guy travel together to

find safety in a new land. Guy inadvertently chal-lenges Grug ’ s mantras through his uses of resources such as fire and shoes, and discovery of hunting via trapping, all of which aid the family ’ s well- being. When the Croods encounter new problems in the new land, Grug realizes he can ’ t protect his family with his instruction based on tradition, fear, and mis-trust of others.

The Croods is the story of change, and change can be both frightening and inspirational. As Grug realizes his ways of life are no longer supported, he gets metaphorically left behind, due not only to his inability to evolve to the new circumstances, but also because of his unwillingness to do so. In the end, Grug realizes that his ways of thinking lack relevance to the current context and has to develop skills in the newly evolved world if he wants to remain use-ful. Grug survives by humbling himself, working col-laboratively, embracing progress, altering his way of thinking by combining his background knowledge within new contexts, learning technologies to create new ways of being in the world, surrendering his fear of change, and trusting others. His ability to change is ultimately valued within the community.

Pop culture often provides portals to examine our own approaches to life (Hagood, Alvermann, & Heron- Hruby, 2010 ). Aside from being a well- received box office hit, The Croods serves as a social commentary on educational shifts and how people respond to changes to foundational security. The

Margaret Carmody H agood and Emily Neil Skinner are coeditors of JAAL September 2012 through May 2016. Both teach at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, USA; e-mail HagoodM@cofc.edu and SkinnerE@cofc.edu .

Authors (left to right)

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Croods demonstrates the importance of relevancy of content knowledge, contextual understanding, col-laboration, and shifts in thinking about how to use resources wisely. It also illustrates how power circu-lates and how change often doesn ’ t produce fruitful outcomes from a top- down model of implementation, but rather from a shared perspective-taking among stakeholders such that all parties learn and grow and change in new and often unexpected ways.

During the past year, we ’ ve observed changes in educational research and publication not unlike those experienced by characters in The Croods . Specifically we see the vitality of changes in educa-tional collaborations and partnerships through input from stakeholders and in changes in research prac-tices, data sources, and uses of data in representation. As we move into the latter half of our editorship, we take stock in these areas so as to keep JAAL on the fore of changes that impact literacy research and edu-cational practices.

Educational collaborations between various stakeholders are not new; however, approaches to educational collaboration are becoming more ex-plicit in terms of import for demonstrating the deep connection between the various stakeholders. For ex-ample, Gutierrez and Penuel ( 2014 ) draw upon the newest IES (Institute of Education Sciences) funding programs that value research and practitioner part-nerships to make the case that collaborative efforts focusing on iterative processes and adaptive interven-tions affected by contextual changes will produce more robust, rigorous, and applicable finding for im-proving teaching and learning.

We continue to grow in collaborative commu-nity and partnerships, welcoming new department editors: Jen Scott Curwood from University of Sydney, Australia (Pop Culture/Digital Literacies); Victoria Gillis from University of Wyoming, USA (Content Area/Disciplinary Literacies); Ian O ’ Bryne from University of New Haven, USA (Multiliteracies: Consumption and Production); Raúl Alberto Mora Vélez from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Colombia (Advocacy and Policy); and Peggy Semingson, University of Texas at Arlington, USA (Meeting of the Minds). We are also appreciative of returning department editors: James Blasingame (Adolescent & Adult Print- Based Text Reviews), Stergios Botzakis (Adolescent & Adult Visual and Digital Text Reviews), and Marcelle Haddix (Adolescent & Adult Professional Text Reviews). These collaborators have begun initiatives in

conceptualizing an extension of department column participation through social networking contexts. In Volume 58, with the collaboration of our new and continuing department editors, we will grow our vi-sion through hosting department- based Google Hang-outs of expert panel discussions with content- based stakeholders followed by Twitter conversations with JAAL users.

As editors, committed to the ever- growing forms of literacies and to the praxis of research, we believe that research that employs a variety of digital data sources should include these artifacts not only in the description of methods but also in data representation via findings and discussion sections in articles. Rigor is extended when authors illustrate findings using not only multiple data sources through description but also multiple modes of representation (Hammond, 2013 ). Data analyses and representations that move beyond print- based transcriptions allow readers to gain different perspectives than that of author ’ s sole interpretation/intent. Building into research articles portals for publication of digitally rich artifacts deep-ens readers’ access to the content and appreciation for participant self representation, forces authors to show and not just tell of connections to practice, and ulti-mately improves the rigor of the study. However, in-clusion of digital artifacts in research articles isn ’ t without problems. Issues related to anonymity, which may or may not be addressed in participant permis-sion and through Institutional Review Boards, to stor-age of such data in cross platforms (print article versus online article), and to preparation time for publica-tion sometimes slow up the production process, which can seem a deterrent for authors and cause them to move back into traditional article representa-tions of digital media. However, the vitality of embracing change here will assist in our goal of mov-ing JAAL from a predominantly print- based consumer experience to a multimodal community of JAAL users including various stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, researchers, administrators, policy makers).

Finally, we have found that perceived or actual changes in literacy education are closely tied to folks’ motivations toward and uses of digital tools in their work. Just as characters in The Croods epitomized various stances toward change and new technologies in Neanderthal times, so too do educational stakeholders take up various positions in relation to their (dis)interests in the vast and ever- growing field of literacy in current times. To that end, a common

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language about perceptions of shifts and changes in education and literacy can benefit all stakeholders. We have found Hobbs and Moore ’ s ( 2013 ) Digital Learning Horoscope helpful for stakeholders to use to identify their positions on changing literacies and their motivations for including and excluding them (see http://quiz.powerfulvoicesforkids.com ). Comple-tion of the 48- item Likert- scale statements yields a profile based upon 12 types of motivation for using digital media (see http://powerfulvoicesforkids.com/content/which-teacher-type-are-you ). This profile has helped those interested in educational change— especially related to digital and media literacy shifts—better understand themselves and one another as they work through issues as a community of teachers and learners (Hobbs & Moore, 2013 ).

We hope JAAL users will continue the conversa-tion with us about the vitality that changes provide in our work as researchers and educators. Through various JAAL forums (the print medium including cover art, Meeting of the Minds, feature articles,

departmental columns, and Literacy Lenses, as well as digital media including podcasts, Facebook, and the addition of Twitter and Google Hangouts) our hope is that we will, like The Croods , work collabora-tively, sharing our fears and trusting others so as to evolve together as we make changes in education and research as a community for the betterment of litera-cies for adolescents and adults worldwide.

References DiMicco , K. , & Sanders , C. (Directors). ( 2013 ). The Croods

[Motion picture]. (Available from Dreamworks Animation, Beverly Hills, CA.)

Gutierrez , K. , & Penuel , W. ( 2014 ). Relevance to practice as a criterion for rigor . Educational Researcher , 43 ( 1 ), 19 – 23 .

Hagood , M.C. , Alvermann , D.E. , & Heron , A. ( 2010 ). Bring it to class: Unpacking pop culture in literacy learning . New York, NY : Teachers College Press .

Hammond , S.P. ( 2013 ). Enhanced eBooks and multimodal pub-lishing: Spitting games and making claims with multimodal data . Qualitative Research , doi: 10.1177/1468794113481793

Hobbs , R. , & Moore , D. ( 2013 ). Discovering Media Literacy . Thousand Oaks, CA : Corwin Press .

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