Last week Bill Bowen discussed the fact that the topic of K-12 education in low-income urban areas is almost never addressed by researchers who identify themselves as urban studies scholars.  Even though the field of urban studies is broadly conceived and interdisciplinary, when he and several colleagues conducted in-depth interviews several years ago with leading urban researchers and examined the content of the most frequently used urban studies textbooks, they found little overlap with the topic of urban education.

This Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning (AJAL) will explore various trends developing at the forefront of literacies in adult education, to consider ways that literacies are being defined and enacted in current times in research and practice. We encourage submissions from around the globe about literacies that relate to these four fields:

• Critical literacy
• New literacy studies
• Multiliteracies
• Sociocultural approaches to additional language learning in adult education

A new book "Adult Education and Social Justice: International Perspectives" was published just before Xmas 2023 in honour of the adult educator par excellence, Professor Lalage Bown, who died just over two years ago. Edited by Maria Slowey, Heribert Hinzen, Michael Omolewa and myself, it contains contributions from many esteemed adult educators, many from the core CR&DALL team and others beyond, particularly those with connections to Africa.

Editors Timothy D. Ireland and Shermaine Barrett introduce the special issue of Convergence to commemorate the 50th anniversary of ICAE.