Restorying Hopeful Socioecological Futures
This special issue aims to explore how, amidst climate and ecological crisis, Language Arts and Literacy education across prek-12+ levels can contribute to restor(y)ing hopeful futures for all beings on planet Earth. We seek guidance and well-analyzed examples of students, educators, and community members engaging with critical socioecological Language Arts and Literacy education beyond a solely scientific framing, raising important questions and providing exemplars on what this works like in practice. This special issue builds upon and extends the existing literature, highlighting the affordances and tensions of exploring socioecological justice with young people, their communities, and their educators, particularly through cultivating constructive, working hope that resists denial and supports imagining, planning for, and/or acting towards more sustainable and just futures.
Socioecological justice ties together understandings of natural systems and social systems, promoting justice for people, the environment, and future generations. Part of working towards socioecological justice may include climate change education (CCE), which helps people understand and address the impact of the climate crisis. This issue uniquely prioritizes empirical scholarship on socioecological justice education within Language Arts and Literacy education, expanding a growing body of work across prek-16+ contexts on this topic, as well as offering a unique emphasis/orientation on cultivating hope and futuring.
In this special issue, we are particularly interested in empirical research on the use of Language Arts and Literacy education that supports socioecological justice and hopeful futuring with students, educators, and community members across PreK-16+ school-based settings, informal learning spaces, and community activities.
List of Topic Areas
We can imagine many diverse topical and theoretical entry points, including but not limited to:
- socioecological identities
- emotions/affect
- embodiment
- post/colonialisms
- placemaking
- transnationality
- translingualism
- social justice
- Indigenous ways of knowing
- critical media literacies
- speculative imagaining
- futuring
- re-storying
- environmental justice and racism.
We are interested in well-analyzed examples of folks attempting this work, including both visions of what is/can be possible and engagement with tensions and challenges. We especially encourage work that connects to or theorizes socioecological justice, imagination, storying, hope, and/or futuring, so that the issue as a whole can make important theoretical, conceptual, and pedagogical contributions in these areas.
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/etpc
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/etpc
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 1st June 2025
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 1st September 2025
Guest Editors
Alexandra Panos, University of South Florida – ampanos@usf.edu
Rebecca Woodard, University of Illinois – Chicago – rwoodard@uic.edu
For more details refer here
