Abstract: Dear JAAL Readers, We note that the term design is often used in research and development contexts to refer to purposeful, detail-oriented planning that is intended to yield a desired outcome. The usage is widespread, including scientific, artistic, and social realms ranging from automobile manufacturing to architecture, from fashion to public health. At Stanford University, an open-enrollment elective, “Designing Your Life,” has become so popular among undergraduates from a multitude of majors that it has been profiled in both The New York Times (Kurutz, 2016) and Forbes (High, 2017). We use the term design to describe our own research, which is concerned with engineering, studying, and improving literacy-learning environments for youths and their teachers. Although the pieces in this issue do not all claim to engage in design-based research, they share a common design feature. All the reports and reviews presented by the authors center descriptions of projects and recommendations for literacy instruction in the perspectives of learners, families, and communities. As such, the authors offer important, learner-focused design principles for adolescent and adult literacy educators who make deliberate efforts to base their teaching on research, as JAAL readers usually do. The articles also situate these perspectives toward literacy and instruction in a variety of authentic settings. The commentary in this issue, “Centering Disciplinary Literacies on Student Consciousness: A Tanzanian Case Study” by Phillip Wilder and Daudi Msseemmaa, is an excellent example of an international project with such a learner-centered focus. The authors are well grounded in the existing research literature on disciplinary literacies, but they worried that some interpretations of that literature might not be suitable in the setting—a collaborative literacy initiative in Tanzania—in which they work. Wilder and Msseemmaa sought to avoid casting students and their communities as problematic when so-called best practices derived in other contexts did not yield measurable change in theirs. Instead, the authors designed solutions to enhance students’ awareness of disciplinary literacies that were sensitive to local resources, needs, and intentions. The feature articles in this issue are unusually consistent in their respect for adolescent and adult learners’ own capacity for design. In the lead piece, “Writing Toward Change Across Youth Participatory Action Research Projects,” Joanne E. Marciano and Chezare A. Warren document how youths collaborated to design, enact, and disseminate their research about educational opportunity with community stakeholders. Emily Meixner, Anne Peel, Rachel Hendrickson, Lynn Szczeck, and Kelly Bousum's “Storied Lives: Teaching Memoir Writing Through Multimodal Mentor Texts” also explores a collaborative design process, this one supporting teachers in rethinking their use of print-based memoirs and autobiographies. The next two articles focus on constructing pedagogies that fully enfranchise adolescent newcomers in literacy classrooms: “Hurdling Over Language Barriers: Building Relationships With Adolescent Newcomers Through Literacy Advancement” by Patricia Flint, Tamra Dollar, and Mary Amanda Stewart and “Meaningful Writing Opportunities: Write-Alouds and Dialogue Journaling With Newcomer and English Learner High Schoolers” by Rebecca E. Linares. Both pieces emphasize the importance of sensitive teacher scaffolding in developing learners’ confidence and competence with both oral and written English. Our department editors authored or curated columns in this issue that offer examples of purposeful, multifaceted planning for enhanced literacy. In “Critical Literacy and the Importance of Reading With and Against a Text,” a contribution to the Critical Perspectives on Literacy Policy and Practice department that Barbara Comber and Hilary Janks share with George G. Hruby, Janks demonstrates the value of deliberately assuming multiple stances when reading to inform a complex political position. Vianey Camela shares her personal experience as an undocumented student turned teacher in “Sustaining Multilingual Literacies: Looking Through an Immigrant Lens to Inform Practice,” a piece for Danny C. Martinez and Limarys Caraballo's Sustaining Multilingual Literacies department. The Leading Literacy Change department headed by Cynthia Greenleaf, Mira-Lisa Katz, and Aaron Wilson features “The Prerna Girls’ Education Initiative in India: Scaling Literacy to Reach for the Sky” by Urvashi Sahni. Finally, in “Authentic Choice: A Plan for Independent Reading in a Restrictive Instructional Setting,” an installment of the Beyond Struggling: Transforming Literacy Teaching department that Maneka Deanna Brooks and Katherine K. Frankel edit, Brooks offers principled work-arounds for teachers mandated to use commercial reading programs such as READ 180. The columns in this issue's Text & Resource Review Forum offer new vantage points on designing with text by adolescents and adults. In his Texts and Identities department, Alfred W. Tatum describes unexpected convergences in his personal reading agenda in “Meaningful Literacy and Life Exchanges With Text: An Uncommon Trilogy.” Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey review findings on peer tutoring in “Peer Tutoring: ‘To Teach Is to Learn Twice’” for the Research department that they alternate with Josephine Peyton Marsh and Deborah Gonzalez. Finally, for the Professional Resources department, M. Kristiina Montero reviews the second edition of Teaching Reading to English Learners, Grades 6–12: A Framework for Improving Achievement in the Content Areas as another installment in a deliberately themed series of resources responsive to multilingual learners’ strengths and needs. We find design to be a powerful construct for literacy educators because it draws equally on clear-eyed critique and hope. Designing always begins with recognizing gaps between what is and what is needed, including around the most intractable problems. Designers dare to tackle those problems because of their hope that they, in working with others, can improve a product, service, or environment. As you make your way through this issue, we are sure that you'll identify new problems to solve in literacy education and new hope that they can be addressed in particular contexts through design. Best, Kelly and Kathy