WHAT'S HOT IN LITERACY

Headnote

Global perspectives help to shape the literacy landscape in 2017

We put our fingers on the pulse of literacy leaders from around the globe for this year's What's Hot in Literacy survey. By using a new methodology, the goal was to expand our reach in capturing not only what topics are trending in literacy today but also what has been inherently absent from the conversation.

From communities to countries, we sought to engage those in the boardrooms and the classrooms where policy meets practice and the heavy lifting of teaching a nation occurs.

This year includes an expanded scope from the survey founded and conducted by Jack Cassidy, past president of the International Reading Association (IRA), now the International Literacy Association (ILA), in which he compiled responses from roughly two dozen literacy leaders on "hot" and "cold" topics. For 20 years, his survey was an annual mainstay for readers, helping to conceptualize the literacy landscape, ranking what was in vogue year after year, and putting educational values under the microscope.

For this 21st edition of the survey, we conducted 19 interviews last summer with leaders from four countries across sectors and disciplines of literacy. Our goal was to capture a baseline of integral topics. We spoke to teachers, administrators, specialists, academics in the field, and representatives from private institutions and philanthropic organizations. From there, we broadened the scope to reach nearly 1,600 respondents in 89 countries and territories in an online survey sent out in August, asking them to look at the 17 topics derived from the previous interviews and decide "what's hot" along with "what's important" at both their community level and their country level. A 1-5 Likert scale ranging from not at all hot/important to extremely hot/important was used.

Hot was defined as the attention a topic is currently receiving. Important was defined as most critical to advancing literacy for all learners.

The findings suggest some key gaps may exist between what is trendy (hot) and what is truly valuable (important). Considering that nearly three quarters of primary and secondary school educators who responded to our survey had more than 15 years of experience (26% had 30+), we view our data pool to be an authority on what works in literacy education.