Reading Youth Writing

This book aims to provide new insights into the complexities of theorizing contemporary adolescent literacies. It proposes a theoretical approach to understanding youth cultural production which addresses several lacunae in the field of new literacy research. Through a series of examinations of youth «writing» both inside and outside of school, the book builds an approach to the study of contemporary youth expression that draws on the theoretical and methodological insights of cultural studies. The voices of youth are central, and both the content and form of what they have to say ground the project. Reading Youth Writing is intended for a cross-disciplinary academic audience: it will be of particular interest to scholars and both undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of education, new literacy, cultural studies, communications and media studies, rhetoric and composition studies, sociology, and sociolinguistics. Since the content is based on youth cultural production in a period of economic and cultural globalization, the book has relevance to a broad international audience.

Learning and Literacy over Time addresses two gaps in literacy research—studies offering longitudinal perspectives on learners and the trajectory of their learning lives inside and outside of school, and studies revealing how past experiences with literacy and learning inform future experiences and practices. It does so by bringing together researchers who revisited subjects of their initial research conducted over the past 10-20 years with people whom they encountered through ethnographic or classroom-based investigations and are the subjects of previous published accounts. The case studies, drawn from countries in three continents and covering a range of social worlds, offer an original and at times quite an emotive interpretation of the effects of long-term social change in the UK, the US, Australia and Canada; the claims and aspirations made by and for certain kinds of educational interventions; how research subjects reflect on and learn from the processes of being co-opted into classroom research as well as how they make sense of school experiences; some of the widespread changes in literacy practices as a result of our move into the digital era; and above all, how academic research can learn from these life stories raising a number of challenges about methodology and our claims to 'know’ the people we research. In many cases the process of revisiting led to important reconceptualizations of the earlier work and a sense of 'seeing with new eyes’ what was missed in the past. The reflections on methodology and research processes will interest postgraduate and academic researchers. The studies of change and of long-term effects are widely relevant to teacher educators and scholars in language and literacy education, educational anthropology, life history research, media and cultural studies, and sociology.

The Handbook of Reading Research is the research handbook for the field. Each volume has come to define the field for the period of time it covers. Volume IV brings the field authoritatively and comprehensively up-to-date.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

Feminist Speculations and the Practice of Research-Creation provides a unique introduction to research-creation as a methodology, and a series of exemplifications of research-creation projects in practice with a range of participants including secondary school students, artists, and academics. In conversation with leading scholars in the field, the book outlines research-creation as transdisciplinary praxis embedded in queer-feminist anti-racist politics. It provides a methodological overview of how the author approaches research-creation projects at the intersection of literary arts, textuality, artistic practice, and pedagogies of writing, drawing on concepts related to the feminist materialisms, including speculative thought, affect theories, queer theory, and process philosophy. Further, it troubles representationalism in qualitative research in the arts. The book demonstrates how research-creation operates through the making of or curating of art or cultural productions as an integral part of the research process. The exemplification chapters engage with the author’s research-creation events with diverse participants all focused on text-based artistic projects including narratives, inter-textual marginalia art, postcards, songs, and computer-generated scripts. The book is aimed at graduate students and early career researchers who mobilize the literary arts, theory, and research in transdisciplinary settings.

This versatile volume combines examples of poetry from historical and contemporary masters with high school writing. Each chapter contains poems for reading aloud, poems for discussion, models for writing exercises, samples of student poems, and a bibliography for extended reading. Many teachers use Reading and Writing Poetry with Teenagers across disciplines. Writing exercises include: Animals as Symbols Family Portraits in Words Of War and Peace Writing Song Lyrics as an Expression of Social Protest

Mapping the changing realities of youth creative self-employment in the twenty-first century.

Every day, children living in low-income communities have no choice but to grow up in a climate where they experience multiple unending assaults to their sense of dignity. This volume applies theoretical and historical insights to think through the increasingly undignified realities of life in economically marginalized communities. It includes examples of curricular challenges that low-income students in the US confront today while attempting to learn. Curricular challenges are analyzed as material texts that emerge out of student lived experiences in the economically disposed neighborhoods in which schools are located, and the dynamics of the schools and classrooms themselves. Attention is also paid to educators and students who push back against these forces in an effort to reclaim voice, identity and dignity.