[Reading-hall-of-fame] Reading Association Creates Literacy Research Panel

[Brian Cambourne]

 Dear RHF Members,
According to Education Week the following IRA members have been appointed to a ' Literacy Research Panel' which has the role of 'respond(ing) to critical issues in literacy by translating research into practical recommendations':
•Peter Afflerbach, University of Maryland
• Nell Duke, Michigan State University
• Virginia Goatley, University of Albany (and IRA Research Director)
• John Guthrie, University of Maryland
• Kris Gutierrez, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Kenji Hakuta, Stanford University
• Peter Johnston, University of Albany
• Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Nonie Leseaux, Harvard University
• Elizabeth Moje, University of Michigan
• Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, University of Michigan
• P. David Pearson, University of California, Berkeley
• Victoria Risko, Vanderbilt University (and IRA President)
• Timothy Shanahan, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Catherine Snow, Harvard University
• Karen Wixson, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

While each member may may be highly qualified the majority are US citizens. All are situated in the USA. I was under the impression that the ' I' in IRA  stood for 'INTERNATIONAL' . Why are there no INTERNATIONAL scholars on this panel? Especially from countries whose students perform well on international  comparisons? Are there no Finnish, Singaporean, New Zealand, Australian, Canadian, UK, or European scholars with  sufficient credentials to at least be a token INTERNATIONAL repesentative on this panel?

The implication that only USA scholars have sufficient epxertise to be members of  such a panel is professionally insulting to non-USA based scholars who are also members of IRA. Is it simply an unfortunate oversight? Or does it reflect unbridled ethnocentrisim? Is it time to remove the ' INTER-' from IRA and call the organisation the NRA?
I'm interested in other RHF members' opinions on this matter.
Sincerely,
Brian Cambourne
Assoc. Prof. ( Dr) Brian Cambourne
Principal Fellow
 Faculty of Education
University of Wollongong
Northfields Rd Wollongong
AUSTRALIA
Phone: Overseas callers
Home 61-244-416182
email<brian_cambourne at uow.edu.au<mailto:brian_cambourne at uow.edu.au>
 Mobile/Cell phone: 0408684368
[cid:A4258508-A4C9-4A2D-9E80-09D7662F7A90]

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/mailman/private/reading-hall-of-fame/attachments/20120204/c5795576/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 16825 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/mailman/private/reading-hall-of-fame/attachments/20120204/c5795576/attachment-0001.jpg>