Dear Colleagues,
The Journal of Writing Assessment (JWA) invites manuscript proposals for a Special Issue focused on "Raciolinguistic Justice & Writing Assessment."
Building from the work of Wood and Suh’s recently published book, On Response: Raciolinguistic Justice and Responding to Student Writing (2026, published by WAC Clearinghouse), this special issue takes up raciolinguistic justice as a means to explore the relationship between race and language and its implications on pedagogy, praxis, and writing assessment (Howell et al., 2020; Suh et al., 2021). Raciolinguistic justice is a framework for “deep and ongoing contemplation” that interrogates how race and language are constructed together and mobilized to reproduce inequity within and beyond educational contexts. Raciolinguistically-just approaches embrace language difference as an asset, empower students’ voices and identities, resist standard language ideologies, and extend justice-oriented pedagogies and assessment practices. Raciolinguistic justice critically examines racialization (i.e., categorizing individuals or groups as holding a particular racial identity) as “a process of socialization in and through language… [and] a continuous project of becoming as opposed to being” (Alim, 2016).
The issue aims to communicate a need to see raciolinguistic justice as a framework that can braid disciplinary insights into richer institutional, programmatic, and pedagogical writing assessment practices. Raciolinguistic justice invites us to consider how writing assessment—in all its forms and locations—can be a site for intersectional frameworks, critical self-reflexivity and listening, equity and fairness, and collaboration. Editors invite work that considers the questions:
- What does it mean to enact raciolinguistic justice through assessment (e.g., placement, transfer, classroom, program, large-scale)?
- How are teachers and administrators centering raciolinguistic justice through writing assessment design and research methods?
- How does raciolinguistic justice extend and complicate ongoing work in antiracist pedagogies, racial literacy, linguistic justice, critical language awareness, or culturally sustaining pedagogy?
- What culturally responsive models of assessment advance raciolinguistic justice?
- How can raciolinguistic justice serve as a guiding framework to examine and disrupt writing assessments inside and outside classrooms?
- How are federal mandates and policies, state-level politics, and local institutional contexts impacting raciolinguistic justice work through assessment?
Shane Wood (University of Central Florida) and Emily Suh (Texas State University) will coordinate the Special Issue along with JWA editors.
Please submit a 300-400 word proposal to Shane A. Wood (shane.wood) and Emily K. Suh (emily.suh) by November 1, 2026. Please include author(s) names, institutional affiliations, and contact information for the lead author. Please also ensure you align with JWA policies throughout the writing process. Any human-subjects research must conform with IRB approval and submit documentation as requested by JWA.
Authors will be notified in December 2026 if they are invited to develop their proposal into a full manuscript for potential inclusion in the Special Issue. Initial drafts will be due March 2027, with a target publication date of Spring 2028.
See below or visit https://escholarship.org/uc/jwa/SIRaciolinguisticJustice for the full announcement. Thank you!
Matt Gomes, PhD
Assistant Professor of English
Santa Clara University
Indexer and Social Media Coordinator, The Journal of Writing Assessment
CFP – Journal of Writing Assessment – Special Issue on Raciolinguistic Justice.docx