The International Literacy Association (ILA) is dedicated to connecting research and practice to improve the quality of literacy learning across the globe. ILA celebrates and supports the contributions of individuals and chapters within its network towards this mission.
ILA's Literacy Leadership Awards and Grants program is designed to honor exceptional graduate and doctoral students, literacy educators, and researchers at all stages of their careers for their contributions to literacy. Specifically, the Jeanne S. Chall Research Fellowship, a part of this program, offers a $5,000 grant to support promising scholars whose dissertation research focuses on various aspects of reading. This fellowship prioritizes research related to beginning reading, readability, reading difficulty, stages of reading development, the relationship between vocabulary and reading, and strategies for diagnosing and teaching adults with limited reading ability. Proposals are judged on their research question, rationale, literature review, methodology, significance, clarity, cohesion, specificity, budget, and timeline. The grant is awarded in years when an application of high quality that meets the outlined standards is identified.