Call for Papers: Beyond Crisis: Activating Discourse Analysis for Literacy Teaching and Learning

Introduction

Contemporary literacy education is shaped by politicized discourses circulating through policy, media, and everyday talk. This discursive culture constructs a persistent sense of crisis for teachers and learners alike. Discourse analysis offers powerful tools for interrogating the impact and impetus of how language shapes activity (e.g., fidelity checks, book bans, social surveillance on topics and texts). Yet, critiques persist that discourse analysis remains detached from action. This special issue seeks to bridge that gap by mobilizing ethical and situated responses beyond analysis. 

For this special issue, we invite scholarship that demonstrates how discourse analysis can be leveraged for actionable change in language arts and literacy education across prek-12+ levels. We envision submissions moving beyond discursive critique to show how teachers, researchers, and students collaboratively reframe and enact discourses in ways that promote justice, curiosity, and care. Articles for this special issue may utilize a variety of discourse-analytic approaches to attend to social action and change. We encourage submissions that will equip readers--scholars and practitioners--to contend with politicized discourses in their own local contexts.

Priority will be given to work that activates discourse analysis as an ongoing, responsive approach to examining how language works in and on practice. This may include studies that trace discursive trajectories over time, highlight participatory and teacher-led inquiry, and offer concrete tools or examples for addressing politicized discourses in English language arts classrooms. In this special issue, we especially welcome studies that engage pluralistic approaches, feature analyses conducted alongside teachers, and provide methodological insights for challenging polarizing language in language arts and literacy education. 

List of Topic Areas

Potential topic areas include, but are not limited to:

• Discursive constructions of crisis, achievement, and authority in literacy policy.
• Coaching conversations and reflective dialogues amid curricular narrowing.
• The relationship between curricular materials and literacy production.
• AI-mediated discourse and the politics of digital literacies in instruction.
• Research–practice partnerships and teacher inquiry as sites of discursive reconstruction.
• Languaging of empathy, identity, and belonging in classrooms.

Submission Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here.

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here.

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 manuscript submission: 1st May 2026 

Closing date for manuscript submission: 1st September 2026

Guest Editors

Melissa Mosley Wetzel, University of Texas at Austin, mmwetzel@austin.utexas.edu

Kerry Alexander, University of Maryland, kha57@umd.edu

Molly Marek, University of Texas at Austin, mollymarek@utexas.edu