Reassessing 21st Century Literacies at the Quarter-Century Mark

Program Co-Chairs: Dr. Brittanty Adams, University of Alabama,

Dr. Michelle Commeret, University of Florida

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Shifts in the collective understanding of literacy over the past three decades have

embraced the multiple cultural, social, and technical contexts in which literacies are enacted.

The technological, culturally rich, and information-driven nature of our increasingly global

society at the turn of the century, alongside politically inundated education policy, have

prompted education stakeholders to prioritize evolving skills imperative for 21st-century

success (New London Group, 1996). Consequently, education scholarship has continually

emphasized equipping teachers and learners with “21st-century” skills and literacies

(Bangert-Drowns & Swan, 1997; National Council of Teachers of English, 2007). Yet, the

interplay between digital innovation and sociopolitical realities has simultaneously fueled and

impeded a coherent conceptualization of 21st-century literacies, even as we approach the

mid-century mark. Situated within this evolving literacy landscape, we invite scholars to

reconsider the notion of 21st-century skills and practices (Mirra & Garcia, 2021) and explore

whether we must resituate these concepts to address contemporary challenges and

opportunities.

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At the American Reading Forum, recent conversations have centered on global realities

of asynchronous learning, the role of profit in the literacy field, education policy, socially just

literacy practices, reading comprehension trends, culturally sustaining literacy, and

transdisciplinary literacy (Puig & Froelich, 2022). Regardless of the specific issue,

sociocultural and political realities have shaped literacy education discourse. Perhaps most

significantly, the triple pandemic of COVID-19, racial injustice, and rampant misinformation

has redefined our understanding of 21st-century literacies. These challenges demanded

navigating unprecedented health terrain, responding to social upheaval, reacting to shifting

public policies (Harper-Anderson et al., 2023), and countering misinformation and

disinformation (Lewandowsky et al., 2017), exacerbated by weaponized artificial intelligence

(Kreps et al., 2022). Twenty-first-century literacies have become indispensable not only for

educational advancement in information, digital, and social contexts (Street, 1995) but also for

critically addressing health, sociocultural, and political tensions (Skerrett & Smagorinsky,

2023). As such, we must continuously read and reread the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987),

reassessing these literacies for the next 25 years.

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With these contextual realities in mind, we invite discussions around questions such as:

How has 21st-century literacy evolved? What societal shifts have influenced its

conceptualization? What must we address moving forward? This theme seeks to foster critical

dialogue on literacy in the 21st century, its gaps, and what must be done to propel the field

forward.

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