55th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (Miami, Florida, November 30-December 3, 2005)

Close to 1,100 people attended the 55th Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami, Florida from November 30-December 3, 2005. A record number of proposals were submitted this year (548), with 392 papers, symposia, and round tables accepted. This year's conference theme was inclusiveness and synthesis of epistemologies, research design, and methods. Plenary speakers represented research paradigms such as literacy as social practice, literacy as brain functioning, and literacy as critical reflection and action. Invited symposiums consisted of representatives from across paradigms as they addressed crucial issues facing educators today. Following a preface and awards presented to Albert J. Kingston and Oscar S. Causey, the papers in this yearbook include: (1) Presidential Address: New Literacies, Reading Research, and the Challenges of Change: A Deictic Perspective (Donald J. Leu); (2) Invited Address: New Literacies, New Times: How do We Describe and Teach the Forms of Literacy Knowledge, Skills, and Values People Need for New Times? (Brian V. Street); (3) Award Address: What Does Culture Have to Do With It? (Victoria Purcell-Gates); (4) NRC Annual Review of Research: Critical Participatory Action Research and Literacy Achievement of Ethnic Minority Groups (Ernest Morrell); (5) Student Award: So That You'll Be Good Readers: ESL Teachers' Classroom Discourses about Reading (Megan Madigan Peercy); (6) Children Transact with Biography: Reader Response Styles of Elementary School Students (Mary Starrs Armstrong); (7) High-Stakes Assessment and Writing Instruction (Diane Barone); (8) Students' Experience of Dialogic Tensions in Responding to Multicultural Literature (Richard Beach, Amanda Haertling Thein, and Daryl Parks); (9) Mentoring in the Political and Cultural World of Academia: An Exploration of the Experiences of Literacy Educators (Mark Cobb, Dana L. Fox, Joyce E. Many, Mona W. Matthews, Ewylor, Gertrude Tinker Sach Yan Wang, and Faith H. Wallace); (10) Problematizing Adolescent Literacies: Four Instances, Multiple Perspectives (Mark Dressman, David O'Brien, Theresa Rogers, Gay Ivey, Phillip Wilder, Donna Alvermann, Elizabeth Moje, and Kevin Leander); (11) Working with Teachers to Change the Literacy Instruction of Latino Students in Urban Schools (Georgia Earnest Garcia, Teresa Mendez Bray, Raul A. Mora, Mariana A. Ricklefs, Joan Primeaux, Laura C. Engel, and Kimberly Garley-Erb); (12) E-literature and the Digital Engagement of Consciousness (Rebecca Luce-Kapler, Teresa Dobson, Dennis Sumara, Tammy Iftody, and Brent Davis); (13) Critical Performative Literacies: Intersections Among Identities, Social Imaginations and Discourses (Carmen L. Medina); (14) Connections Across Literacy and Science Instruction in Early Childhood Education: Interweaving Disciplines in Pre-Service Teacher Education (Karla J. Moller and Barbara Hug); (15) Tutoring: A Personal and Professional Space for Preservice Teachers to Learn about Literacy Instruction (Denise N. Morgan, Beverly Timmons, and Maria Shaheen); (16) Power in Cultural Modeling: Building on the Bilingual Language Practices of Immigrant Youth in Germany and the United States (Marjorie Faulstich Orellana and H. Julia Eksner); (17) From Pre-service to In-service: The Evolution of Literacy Teaching Practices and Beliefs in Novice Teachers (Michelle Pierce and Francesca Pomerantz); (18) Understanding the Paradoxical Relationship between Domain Specificity of In-service Literacy Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs and Their Instructional Practices (Gaoyin Qian and Liqing Tao); (19) Constructs Underlying Word Selection and Assessments Tasks in the Archival Research on Vocabulary Instruction (Judith A. Scott, Shira Lubliner, and Elfrieda H. Hiebert); (20) Teacher Scaffolding of First-Graders' Literary Understanding During Read Alouds of Fairytale Variants (Lawrence R. Sipe and Anne E. Brightman); (21) Scientific Literacy and Commercial Reading Programs: An Analysis of Text and Instructional Guidance (Martha L. Smith, Linda M. Phillips, Stephen P. Norris, Sandra L. Guilbert, and Donita M. Stange); (22) "I Want to Meet My Students Where They Are!": Preservice Teachers' Visions of Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction (Jennifer D. Turner); (23) Redesigning Literacy Preservice Education at Four Institutions: A Three-Year Collaborative Project (Mark D. Vagle, Deborah R. Dillon, Judith Davison-Jenkins, Bonita LaDuca, and Vicki Olson); and (24) Facilitating or Limiting? The Role of Politeness in How Students Participate in an Online Classroom Discussion (Ming-Lung Yang, Yu-Jung Chen, Minseong Kim, Yi-Fan Chang, An-Chih Cheng, Yangjoo Park, Treavor Bogard, and Michelle Jordan). This publication also contains an Introduction to the 55th NRC Annual Meeting (Victoria Purcell-Gates). (Individual papers contain references.)