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In processing the impact of the pandemic amidst other global crises, we found rereading Brandt and Clinton's “The Limits of the Local” article, published 20 years ago next year, to offer much, both theoretically and practically. Written within its own tumultuous time, according to its editors, it argues for transcontextualizing accounts of literacy and employing thingness as a means to subvert local/global dichotomies in literacy studies. In this essay, we reflect on this work 20 years later, and propose an extension of Brandt and Clinton's transcontextualizing perspective through an affirmative ontology of éclosion. We hope this actualization will provide an orientation for furthering transcontextual literacy studies that meet the urgency of our own tumultuous times.

In field-based research, masking practices, as well as the general practice of relegating historical context to abstracted ‘site descriptions’ in a paper’s methodology section, can produce a tacit ...

Amidst numerous curricular reforms across the USA that censor reading materials and promote standardized literacy policies, the authors ask in this article: What rights do early childhood teachers and students have in curriculum-making, and to the very materiality of their own classrooms? More broadly, they wonder: How do material regulations in US schools impact the curricular work of restorative justice in early literacy classrooms? The authors examine one curriculum material used in classrooms across the USA, using theories of materiality to explain its orientation, disorientation, and reorientation within discourses around anti-critical race theory and pro-“science of reading” legislation. Moreover, they aim to explore the potentialities of curricula as agents of restorative justice and, consequently, the threats to justice from the disorientations expressed around specific curriculum materials.

This study documents the collective capacity of the external support providers working to improve K-3 reading outcomes in New York City. Interviews and social network surveys with a sample of the 112 providers at work in this “reading improvement sector” showed that they serve as a conduit for sharing reading-related resources and expertise throughout a large part of New York City. However, the collective impact of the sector remains limited because their goals vary widely; support is unevenly distributed; and many programs work in isolation and are informed by funders and sources of expertise that are unlikely to be connected.

What are the ethical responsibilities of doing and teaching qualitative inquiry at a time when Black and Brown bodies are under assault, an expression of White supremacy that has become ever more visible in the wake of the election of Donald Trump? And how might scholars who “think with” posthumanist theories respond to the call for more “humanizing” methodologies being made by African American and Latinx researchers? This article responds to this moment by presenting a conversation among three literacy scholars about the ethical challenges they have encountered in their own engagements with posthumanist theories, and the implications this has for doing/teaching qualitative inquiry. We call for more openness about the limits as well as the possibilities of posthumanisms, and more attention to ethics for justice. The entanglements of human/nonhuman assemblages in these dangerous times call on us to act, not only think, with theory.

Recent scholarship looks at the relationship of learning to space and place within educational research. The purpose of this article was to put data produced from teaching in four Japanese preschools into conversation with spatial theory and Ma, a Japanese spatial esthetic. We seek to understand how and what spaces (physical, curricular, and relational) are produced in Japanese hoikuen. We engage with Soja’s Firstspace, Secondspace, and Thirdspace in order to examine space in the Japanese preschools. We also think with concepts from Ma esthetics in order to understand the appreciation of unexpected moments and interactions. Specific insights gained from analysis focus on the design of the preschools, flexibility of furniture, shared workspaces, field trips, inquiries with nature, bonds between students, and addressing conflict. We present these insights to add to an emerging discussion of how spatial aspects of environments influence teaching and learning in early childhood education.