Growing our knowledge base

LESLLA Research & Publications

1. LESLLA Annual Symposia Proceedings

With more than 200 contributions, the proceedings of our symposia provide an invaluable source for anyone interested in research, policies, and practices specifically for LESLLA learners. The published proceedings from the Annual LESLLA Symposia are openly available to everyone.

You may also wish to visit our Annual LESLLA Symposia page. There you will find resources available from each of the symposia dating back to 2005. The quantity and type of resources vary from year to year depending on the organizers of particular symposia. In many cases, we have provided symposium programs, presenter slides, handouts, and more. We will continue to add to these resources as they become available.

Because LESLLA began as a small grassroots organization, the organizers of each Symposium has traditionally solicited, edited, and published the proceedings on their own with funds they raised through Symposium registration fees and other grants they were able to secure through their organization and other supporting institutions.

Publications Coordinator

In 2019, the Board of Directors created a new position — Publications Coordinator. We are extremely thankful for Nicole Pettitt, our first Publications Coordinator who has marvelously contributed to the professionalization of our proceedings and is serving as Publications Coordinator until 2022. In 2021, the Board expanded this role into two positions: Publications Coordinator and Assistant Publication Coordinator. Our publications team (see here for current coordinators) works with a growing network of authors and reviewers in the LESLLA field.

Open source

The Publication Coordinators work with Symposium organizers to ensure that the symposium is published in a timely and professional manner. Therefore we moved toward an open source, online journal platform known as Open Journal Systems (OJS) to simplify access to the deep knowledge base that we are collectively building as the LESLLA community. Since 2023 you can read the Proceedings of our Symposia on this new open-source platform hosted by the Public Knowledge Project at Simon Fraser University. Click HERE to view the Proceedings.

The OJS platform gives us a new way to share our LESLLA knowledge and connect with one another:

1. By mid-2023, all LESLLA Symposium Proceedings from 2021 and older have been launched on OJS. From now on every new issue of the LESLLA Proceedings will be published on OJS. Recently: LESLLA 2023 Proceedings of the 19th Annual Symposium Barcelona Spain.

2. The search function at the top right-hand corner of the home-page will let you find articles by topic, date, or author.  There are 200+ articles, published from 2005-2023, so have fun searching!

3. Register with the open-source platform (it’s free), and you’ll get Proceedings updates sent to your email

We aim to ensure the ‘rigor’ of the publication for those who need peer reviewed journal publications on their resume for tenure and promotion.

Citing the Proceedings

In the early years of our organization, LESLLA was an acronym that stood for “Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition.” In 2019, as we formalized as an international non-profit organization, we also updated the acronym to stand for “Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults.” With this change, there may be some confusion around how to appropriately cite studies that have been published in the numerous proceedings of the annual symposia held around the world since 2005. Members of our Board of Directors worked to compile this citation style guide to facilitate appropriate citations of work published in LESLLA proceedings. You can also find the accurate citation for each proceeding on our website. We hope you will find this guide and the website helpful. Please send feedback or inquiries to leslla.org@gmail.com.

2. Crowdsourced LESLLA research database

Since the founding of the LESLLA organisation in 2005, research with migrant adults learning to read and write for the first time in a new language has continued to grow year on year. However, this population of learners remains underrepresented in broader second language acquisition (SLA) research. Additionally, due to the scarcity and scattering of published research with these learners, researchers and teachers can struggle to locate the existing literature. For this reason, some research has already been compiled on this LESLLA website, including open access to conference proceedings from the Annual LESLLA symposia since 2005.

Today, we are excited to build on this work and announce the launch of a new, crowdsourced research database for LESLLA focused research. The aim of which is to cooperatively and comprehensively draw together our knowledge of existing studies, as well as disseminate our own work to other members of our LESLLA community. We hope that this can offer a useful, easy-to-use, searchable resource for both researchers and teachers working with LESLLA learners around the world.

Please find more detailed information about the the crowdsourced LESLLA research database this blog.

3. Journal Articles

Somali immigrant youths and the power of print literacy by Martha Bigelow and Kendall King (2010)

Following Roba: What happens when a low-educated adult immigrant learns to read by Nicole M. Pettitt and Elaine Tarone (2015)

Collaborative Inquiry in the LESLLA Context: Reflecting on Self to Make Sense of Practice by Raichle Farrelly (2017)

The simultaneous development of receptive skills in an orthographically transparent second language by Taina Tammelin-Laine and Maisa Martin (2015)

"We thought they had forgotten us:" Research, policy and practice in the education of Latino immigrant adults by Marguerite M. Lukes (2009)

Emerging literacy in adult second-language learners: A synthesis of research findings in the Netherlands by Jeanne Kurvers (2015)

Who are adolescents and adults who develop literacy for the first time in an L2, and why are they of research interest? by Martha Young-Scholten (2015)

"As a field, we have much to gain by acknowledging and including learners of various literacy levels and educational backgrounds, developing theories to account for a broader scope of language learning contexts, designing more fine-grained instruments, and using research methodologies that provide opportunities for participants to produce language that is more reflective of their underlying abilities."

— Pettitt & Tarone, 2015

4. Journals

Zeitschrift für Flüchtlingsforschung (Z‘Flucht) - Die Zeitschrift für Flüchtlingsforschung (Z‘Flucht) ist ein neues peer-reviewed journal, das wissenschaftliche Beiträge aus unterschiedlichsten Disziplinen zu Fragestellungen der Zwangsmigrations- und Flüchtlingsforschung veröffentlicht. Sie erscheint zweimal im Jahr im Nomos-Verlag.

The Journal for Refugee Research (Z'Flucht) is a new peer-reviewed journal that publishes scientific papers from a wide range of disciplines on questions of forced migration and refugee research. It is published twice a year by Nomos-Verlag.

The International Journal of Literacy, Language, and Numeracy - **New & Forthcoming** ProLiteracy is launching a new online peer-reviewed journal to be published twice a year in partnership with Rutgers University, and in collaboration with journal editors Alisa Belzer, Amy D. Rose, and Heather Brown. Upcoming themes include improving instructional outcomes and integrating technology. For information about submission, please contact the journal editors at ALEJournal@proliteracy.org.

Critical Multilingualism Studies: An interdisciplinary journal - This volume entitled “Languaging as Refuge: Practice Meets Theory” comprises 16 scholarly, creative, public, and multimodal contributions guest-edited by Amanda Marie Shufflebarger Snell and Marianna Pegno. (See Vol 6 No 1, 2018.) From the introduction: “Languaging, creative expression, and theory naturally overlap in the work of practitioners, who often closely encounter the urgencies of flight, migration, refuge and multilingualism” (Snell & Pegno, p. 2). This volume explores languaging in contexts of refuge and migration.

MinneTESOL Journal - MinneTESOL Journal is the official journal of Minnesota Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MinneTESOL), a professional association of teachers of English language in Minnesota and neighboring states dedicated to the education and support of students acquiring English at all levels of public and private education. The mission of the MinneTESOL Journal is to provide a meaningful benefit to members by sharing relevant, thought-provoking content linking theory and practice of interest to teachers, researchers, teacher educators, and the many others whose work touches the lives of English learners.

5. Papers

6. Books

7. Annotated Bibliography

People from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds: an open access annotated bibliography

This open access annotated bibliography has been curated by a collective of scholars, headed by Sally Baker of the Refugee Education Special Interest Group in Australia. This group of scholars share an interest in the impacts of forced migration on people from refugee, asylum seeking and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) migrant backgrounds.

These resources are intended to be shared with the international community of researchers, students, educators and practitioners who work with, or are interested in, forced migration, education, employment and resettlement.

This bibliography offers a snapshot of some of the available literature that relates to the following areas of scholarly and practitioner interest:

8. Graduate Dissertations & Theses

Laura Cunnington: Do Literate or Non-literate adults Learning English as a Second Language Follow a Similar Reading Development Process to English Children? 

Kate Moss: Acquisition of English morpho-syntax and the development of reading by immigrant adults 

Teresa Hernández García: Aprendizaje de la Lectoescritura en una Segunda Lengua por parte de Adultos Analfabetos en su LM. Una Propuesta de Alfabetización en Español como Segunda Lengua (L2) 

Helena Colliander: Being and Becoming a Teacher in Initial Literacy and Second Language Education for Adults

Danielle Boon: Teaching, Learning, and Using Written Language in Timor-Leste

Raichle Farrelly: Emerging from the Echo Chamber: An Activity Theory Perspective on L2 Teachers of Adult Emergent Readers

Patsy Egan: Professional Learning across Contexts for LESLLA Teachers: The Unlikely Meeting of Adult Educators in Kindergarten to Explore Early Literacy Instruction

Theresa Wall: L1 Literacy and its Implications for LESLLA Immigrant Women in Canada

9. Undergraduate Research and Papers