Call for Papers

Issue #56: Recovering and Reclaiming Black Education Histories in Teaching and Research

As legislation and policies affecting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are enacted across various states and internationally, educational stakeholders must be equipped with effective strategies that support the continuation and growth of practices of educational equity. In Issue 56 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we are highlighting the history of Black educators, whose intellectual, cultural, and political contributions have provided guidance in navigating various sociopolitical currents in education. We look to Black educators’ intricate narratives and histories, their lived experiences and successes. In this special issue, we call for manuscripts that center the vibrant and resilient histories of Black teachers who can shape our understanding of the possibilities of powerful practices of curriculum, pedagogy, advocacy, and activism in these political and social times.

Inspired by Dr. Cynthia Dillard’s work in The Spirit of Our Work (2021), we invite submissions that uplift often forgotten and overlooked stories and pedagogies of Black educators across the history of education in the United States and internationally. Our objective is to cultivate an archive of stories, artifacts, voices, and perspectives that highlight the work of Black educators. Not limited to stories from North America, we recognize the African diaspora in extending the call to the Global South. We aim to feature histories that narrate Black educators’ navigation of the sociopolitical contexts that have influenced schooling, the networks of negotiation they have developed to maintain educational access for communities and families, the approaches to curriculum and pedagogy they have embraced to support their students, and the advocacy systems through which they have continuously worked toward greater educational equality and justice. This process nurtures Dillard’s endarkened feminist praxis framework through (re)searching, (re)envisioning, (re)cognizing, (re)presenting, and (re)claiming to reimagine educational futures through storytelling and research that puts the Black experience at the heart of our journey. We are excited to consider what these educators can teach us both about today’s classroom practices and the future of education research.

We invite teachers, researchers, administrators, community members, policy makers, parents, and other education stakeholders to contribute submissions of essays and manuscripts with a maximum length of 5,000 words. We also welcome short films, audio essays, photo essays, and small-scale artistic works. Questions addressed might include (but are not limited to):

1. What erased, obscured, forgotten, or under-highlighted stories of Black educators might support our efforts toward educational equity in contemporary times?
2. How can we leverage the stories, histories, and perspectives of Black teachers across the diaspora to maintain liberatory practices in tumultuous political climate?
3. What significant Black oral traditions can help us in building towards embodied or living education archives?
4. In this time of the erasure of history, what are the affordances of (re)membering in education? What are the implications of disremembering, the right to forget, and the politics surrounding being forgotten?

Only unpublished materials that are not currently under review by other publications will be considered for evaluation. While not mandatory, we encourage interested individuals to contact the editors to propose ideas and obtain feedback and assistance. For further information or to discuss your concepts, please contact the guest editors, Mariah Harmon at mth6501@psu.edu or Taryrn T.C. Brown, at taryrnbrown@coe.ufl.edu.

Deadline for Submissions: December 1, 2025

Submission Guidelines

Issue #55: Lessons From the Field on the Science of Reading: School and Classroom Stories Across Contexts

In Issue 55 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we explore school-based reading instruction following the implementation of “Science of Reading” (SoR)  policies across different contexts. Our goal is to highlight powerful practices for teaching reading, with an emphasis on how educators can draw on a wide range of research-informed strategies to support all students in becoming avid, engaged, and accomplished readers. 

While the SoR movement has brought significant renewed attention to the role of phonics in decoding, it has also raised concerns that too narrow a focus on phonics can marginalize other vital aspects of reading instruction.

Research tells us that phonics plays a role in students learning to read, but policy makers, teachers, and parents need to ask how phonics fit into a broader conception of reading instruction that also includes effective and efficient uses of multiple strategies at the word level, including semantic and syntactic knowledge, and classrooms that support reading comprehension and connection through teacher read-aloud, literature study, independent and interdisciplinary reading, diverse classroom libraries, and pleasure and purpose in reading. 

Across the large and varied American educational landscape—and in many other countries as well—the teaching of reading has been shaped in different ways by SoR. In some contexts, policy makers, teacher educators, and K-12 educators are working together to support reading practices that tap into the research and professional knowledge of teachers to support reading instruction that provides students with phonics in conjunction with other strategies and practices that foster fluency, comprehension, and an enjoyment of reading.

In other contexts, researchers and teachers have raised concerns that local, state, or regional implementation of SoR policies requires a one-size-fits-all approach that does not address the multiple needs of developing readers and prevents teachers from applying their deep knowledge of the complexities of teaching reading. And in some of these settings, adoption of SoR has been accompanied by growing surveillance of teachers and punishments for a lack of fidelity to new curricular mandates. Such attacks on teacher expertise limit teachers’ ability to support specific students’ efforts to read.

Further, it is important to attend to how context and identity shape student motivation and connections to the purposes and pleasures of reading. Recognizing reading as a sociocultural act, it is critical that we consider how practices within and beyond the Science of Reading address racial, class, linguistic, disability, and gender identities and inequalities. 

This special issue will situate the research base on reading in historical and current contexts, examining the lived experiences of reading teachers and their students and offering nuanced discussions of acquiring and teaching reading. It is time to hear from educators, their students, and other key stakeholders about their firsthand experiences amid these policies and how they are impacting student access to the reading instruction they most need.

Thus, we seek the voices of students, teachers, parents, and administrators; scholars of reading and literacy, education and cognitive science; community-based educators; and literacy advocates. We want your stories of what these reading reforms do and should look like from the classroom perspective. We are calling for submissions that center classroom experiences to address how—living with and across a vast array of SoR policies—teachers are making use of their professional knowledge to meet the variety of students’ needs as readers. Questions addressed might include (but are not limited to):

• What are classroom teachers’ experiences working in contexts that have adopted new SoR policies and curricular mandates? What impact have these mandates had in terms of teachers’ development,  their uses of professional knowledge, their sense of efficacy, and their experiences teaching reading?
• How have SoR policies impacted student acquisition of, uses of, and attitudes toward reading?
• What evidence do we have on how SoR mandates impact marginalized and minoritized students? In what ways does the SoR movement effectively address or fail to address so-called “gaps” in reading achievement by students with special needs, multilingual learners, and students in  poverty? How do they impact culturally sustaining or anti-racist practice?
• What forms of knowledge are highlighted, supported, marginalized, or excluded through SoR mandates? What community voices are elevated and what community voices are silenced in public and policy conversations about reading and SoR?
• What does the current and longitudinal data show about student reading proficiency? How do different states use their data to inform literacy policy, including assessments? What are some strengths of and concerns about the way data is used to inform the public discourse about reading?

The Occasional Paper Series accepts essays and manuscripts (no more than 5000 words) as well as short films, audio essays, photo essays, and small-scale artistic products. Only unpublished pieces that are not under review by other publications are eligible for consideration. Although not required, we invite those interested to reach out to the editors to pitch ideas and receive feedback and support. For more information or if you would like to discuss your ideas, please contact editors Patricia Enciso at enciso.4@osu.edu or Gail Boldt at gmb15@psu.edu.

Deadline for Submissions: July 1, 2025

Submission Guidelines