Conference Agenda

Context. For nearly two decades, The Handbook of Research on New Literacies (Coiro et al., 2008) has provided foundational leadership in shaping scholarship around key issues, theories, and interdisciplinary research in what was then an emerging field. Its widely cited dual-level theory of new literacies (Leu et al., 2013, 2018) has been especially influential in describing the evolving nature of literacy, instruction, and assessment for scholars worldwide.

Research grounded in new literacies theory (Leu et al., 2017) has largely focused on how students make sense of online informational texts in school settings. Yet today’s rapidly shifting digital landscape calls for broader perspectives, constructs, and contexts—including cross-boundary connections—if education is to be inclusive and just (Barzilai et al., 2018; Mills, 2015). Digital literacies research therefore requires cross-cutting collaboration among scholars from diverse social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds to better reflect global contexts and support all learners (Hagerman, 2019).

As co-editors of The International Handbook of Research in Digital Literacies (Authors, forthcoming 2026), we have taken up the challenge of creating a new handbook that honors this history while also questioning and reimagining what is known and unknown. The volume offers a multidimensional portrait of priorities, methods, and approaches to digital literacies research, shaped through global collaboration and centered on criticality. Collectively, the chapters weave an inclusive tapestry that pairs deep analyses of established scholarship with emerging voices that illuminate new directions and issues in the field.

Session Purpose. Amid rapid social, political, economic, and technological change worldwide, this symposium shares what we, as co-editors, have learned about advancing digital literacies research through international collaboration, sustained dialogue, and shared commitments to criticality, humanistic values, and transformational change. The three papers document our collective learning as we confront disparities in digital access and examine both the risks and possibilities of digital literacies research. Together, they also explore how digital literacies, when developed and applied with human-centered purpose, can foster human growth and well-being, strengthen democratic participation, and advance justice and equity.

The first paper traces key trends and scholarly critiques in digital literacies research over the past two decades and offers a shared vision for its future. The second highlights the diverse topics, methodologies, and approaches represented across the volume, showing how scholars worldwide envision the future of digital literacies through their varied positionalities, theoretical perspectives, and sociocultural contexts. The final paper examines the core values and processes that shaped our development of this open-access volume, including our efforts to question traditional assumptions about what handbooks are and how they are created.

Structure. After a brief introduction to the Handbook and its objectives by the session chair (an editor of the Handbook), contributing authors from each of three papers will present their work (18 minutes each). The discussant will comment on how this collection of scholarship is advancing the field of digital literacies research from Nordic and cross-national perspectives (10 minutes). The session will conclude with 20 minutes of audience discussion with the presenters.

Significance. A global perspective on digital literacies is essential amid the rapid evolution of teaching, learning, and research in the digital age. This session features the work of digital literacies scholars from diverse international contexts. Together, the papers, and the broader volume that informs them, offer distinct perspectives on how digital literacies has been studied over time while presenting strong, evidence-informed directions for research that centers more inclusive, relational, and emancipatory practices.

Defining digital literacies is critical for designing meaningful research-informed pedagogies, policies, and assessments that support methodological imagination and invite learners into diverse learning contexts. Shifting conceptions of digital literacies, shaped by social, cultural, and political contexts, make this work challenging. In this presentation, we review conceptualizations of digital literacies in the research community over the past two decades, identify key scholarly critiques of this research, and offer a shared vision of essential priorities for future digital literacies scholarship. Our review of 39 literature reviews of digital literacies published between 2020 and2025 identified five key patterns relative to conceptualizations of digital literacies; these reflect evolving terminology, a broadening spectrum of contexts and uses, growing multidimensional complexity of digital literacies approaches, increasing attention to social contexts, and a stronger emphasis on contextual and cross-disciplinary connections. The compilation of complex research methods and multi-disciplinary approaches to understanding digital literacies has uncovered important implications for cross-sectoral work across academic, governmental, social, and business sectors (Gonzalez-Perez et al., 2022). Our review also surfaced five major concerns about the gaps, silences, and problems that persist within digital literacies scholarship. These include an overemphasis on cognitive skills and tools rather than situated, relational meaning-making practices (Nichols & Stornaiuolo, 2019; Pangrazio & Sefton-Green 2022); the need to move beyond older, narrower frameworks toward more complex and contextualized ones (Lee & Fanea-Ivanovici, 2022; Marin & Castaneda, 2023); insufficient attention to persistent and layered digital divides (Ilomäki et al., 2023); limited focus on criticality, identity, and agency (Mirra & Garcia, 2021; Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2022); and a call to cultivate learners’ critical consciousness (Freire, 2021) and future-oriented imagination (Garcia & Mirra, 2021) so that digital literacies can support meaningful participation and social change. Looking ahead, we can no longer separate design and economic drivers of digital systems from the literacies practices they enable and constrain. We must also firmly reject any uncritical, systemic impositions that undermine students’ rights to thrive, to grow up healthy, and to be literate. Grounded in these research-based concerns and further inspired by authors in this edited volume, we conclude by providing five hallmarks to help anticipate the future of digital literacies scholarship. By opening space for dialogue centered on advocacy, critical, ethical relationality, and action, we hope these hallmarks will serve as conversation starters for the next rounds of work that we might take up collectively.

Garcia, A., & Mirra, N. (2021). Writing toward justice: Youth speculative civic literacies in online policy discourse. Urban Education, 56(4), 640–669. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085920953881 González-Pérez, L. I., & Ramírez-Montoya, M. S. (2022). Components of education 4.0 in 21st century skills frameworks: Systematic review. Sustainability, 14(3), Article 1493. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1493 Ilomäki, L., Lakkala, M., Kallunki, V., Mundy, D., Romero, M., Romeu, T., & Gouseti, A. (2023). Critical digital literacies at school level: A systematic review. Review of Education, 11(3), e3425. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3425 Lee, Y. T., & Fanea-Ivanovici, M. (2022). An exploratory study of digital literacy frameworks: A comparative analysis. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4088293 Marín, V. I., & Castaneda, L. (2023). Developing digital literacy for teaching and learning. In Handbook of open, distance and digital education (pp. 1–20). Springer. Mirra, N., & Garcia, A. (2021). In search of the meaning and purpose of 21st‐century literacy learning: A critical review of research and practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(3), 463–496. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.313 Nichols, T. P., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2019). Assembling" digital literacies": Contingent pasts, possible futures. Media and Communication, 7(2), 14-24. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i2.1946 Pangrazio, L., & Sefton-Green, J. (2021). Digital rights, digital citizenship and digital literacy: What’s the difference? Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 10(1), 15–27. https://link.springer.com/article/10.7821/naer.2021.1.616

With this Handbook (Authors, forthcoming), we sought to create an open‑access volume that showcases the rich, complex, and diverse understandings of digital literacies across the globe. We also considered whose expertise should be centered and contemplated how we could ensure this book would be accessible, inclusive, and available to more people. Within the book, readers will discover contributions by colleagues working to develop new lines of research across many areas of expertise alongside contributions by colleagues who have made significant advancements in digital literacies research through their long careers. Although many contributors are across institutions in the United States, scholars from Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have also contributed to this project. In this presentation, we trace the diverse topics, methodologies, and approaches represented across the Handbook’s five sections, showing how scholars worldwide envision the future of digital literacies through their varied positionalities, theoretical perspectives, and sociocultural contexts. Specific focus will be given to five themes which mirror the sections of the Handbook itself. First, we describe the theoretical landscapes of digital literacies, showing how multidisciplinary perspectives (e.g., cognitive, sociocultural, critical, and post‑humanist) have shaped the field. Chapters illustrate how digital technologies expand information, expression, participation, and critical reflection. Second, we describe lines of scholarship that offer novel and expansive directions in digital literacies research. Topics include computational and data justice literacies, critical maker literacies, queering digital literacies, positioning theory, and gaming. Third, we explore how people make meaning in and beyond digital systems, while also addressing justice, post‑digital realities, and transnational policies surrounding digital surveillance. Chapters highlight diverse lived experiences and call for relational, critically engaged, and inclusive approaches to research and design. Fourth, we examine digital literacies instruction across the lifespan, highlighting diverse learning contexts and topics such as inquiry, critical reading, play, coding, and teacher support. Chapters emphasize culturally grounded, student‑centered pedagogy shaped by families, communities, and educators. Fifth, we outline diverse approaches to researching and assessing digital literacies. Topics include innovative methods and equitable assessment practices that reflect learners’ lived experiences, and using multiple theoretical lenses to connect methodology and assessment across disciplinary and educational contexts. By tracing the contributions of author teams, this paper invites deep engagement with this collection of work and with our global community of digital literacies researchers.

Authors. (forthcoming). International handbook of research in digital literacies. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

In this paper, the six co-editors of the International Handbook of Research in Digital Literacies (Authors, forthcoming) reflect on the values and processes that guided how the Handbook was created, how a vibrant virtual community grew around it, and ways the community was sustained. Three priorities this paper discusses are : 1) documentation of the generative, collaborative dialogue that occurred in the visioning of the Handbook, 2) reflection on the future of digital literacies research, and 3) description of intentional community building among international scholars. In developing the Handbook, the co-editors created spaces for connection by convening conversations virtually, at academic conferences, and through dialogic exchanges (Authors, 2023, 2024, 2025). Because traditional handbooks are static and often lose relevance as technologies, research methods, and theoretical lenses rapidly evolve, we aimed instead to create a ‘living’ handbook that centered community; one that could grow through international dialogic interaction aimed at capturing emerging issues and new developments in the field of digital literacies. In response to the varied contexts in which digital literacies develop, and to mark various educational and societal shifts in research, the co‑editors integrated cross‑cutting scholarly voices representing a broad range of stances, methods, and research traditions across social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. The Handbook sought to weave together a tapestry of ideas that paired deep analyses of established scholarship with new insights into evolving topics in digital literacies. Thus, the Handbook, and the dialogic interactions that surround it, brings together international perspectives, traditions, and diverse theories of learning while recognizing that digital literacies are fast moving, global, and multidisciplinary. The building of a community invites shared co-visioning of groundbreaking, cross‑boundary, and critically informed efforts to improve digital literacies research, practice, and policy. In building a digital literacies scholarly community, we have worked intentionally to support, evolve, and advance the field into the future. Four core values that guided this work include: 1) supportive scholarship, 2) critical reflection, 3) inclusive and diverse voices, and 4) a commitment to quality and comprehensiveness. By creating sustained spaces for gathering and collaboration, we affirm our commitment to ensuring that the Handbook functions as both a community‑driven and community‑building effort; one sustained through ongoing dialogue. We argue that strengthened connections among colleagues extend well beyond this single publication. Through this paper, we offer an open invitation to join us in fostering generative, collaborative digital literacies scholarship now and for years to come.

Authors. (2023, December). Literacy Research Association 73rd Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, United States. Authors. (2024, April). American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, United States. Authors. (2025, April). American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, United States. Authors. (forthcoming). International handbook of research in digital literacies. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.