Reconceptualizing The Literacies In Adolescents Lives

Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives, Second Edition focuses on exploring the impact of young people's identity-making practices in mediating their perceptions of themselves as readers and writers in an era of externally mandated reforms. What is different in the Second Edition is its emphasis on the importance of valuing adolescents' perspectives--in an era of skyrocketing interest in improving literacy instruction at the middle and high school levels driven by externally mandated reforms and accountability measures. A central concern is the degree to which this new interest takes into account adolescents’ personal, social, and cultural experiences in relation to literacy learning. In this new edition of Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives students’ voices and perspectives are featured front and center in every chapter. Particular attention is given throughout to multiple literacies--especially how information and new communication technologies are changing learning from and with text. Nine of the 15 chapters are new; all other chapters are thoroughly updated. The volume is structured around four main themes: * Situating Adolescents’ Literacies–addressing how young people use favorite texts to perform their identities; how they counter school-based constructions of incompetence; and how they re/construct their literate identities in relation to certain kinds of gendered expectations, pedagogies, and cultural resources; * Positioning Youth as Readers and Writers–stressing the importance of classroom discourse, cultural capital, agency, and democratic citizenship in mediating adolescents’ literate identities; * Mediating Practices in Young People’s Literacies–looking at issues of language, social class, race, and culture in shaping how adolescents represent themselves and are represented by others; and * Changing Teachers, Teaching Changes–capturing the productive ambiguities associated with teaching urban adolescents to read and write in changing times, encouraging students to conduct action research on topics that are personally relevant, and using ‘enabling constraints’ as a concept to formulate policies on adolescent literacy instruction. Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives, Second Edition is an essential volume for researchers, faculty, teacher educators, and graduate students in the field of adolescent literacy education.

Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives, Second Edition focuses on exploring the impact of young people's identity-making practices in mediating their perceptions of themselves as readers and writers in an era of externally mandated reforms. What is different in the Second Edition is its emphasis on the importance of valuing adolescents' perspectives--in an era of skyrocketing interest in improving literacy instruction at the middle and high school levels driven by externally mandated reforms and accountability measures. A central concern is the degree to which this new interest takes into account adolescents’ personal, social, and cultural experiences in relation to literacy learning. In this new edition of Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives students’ voices and perspectives are featured front and center in every chapter. Particular attention is given throughout to multiple literacies--especially how information and new communication technologies are changing learning from and with text. Nine of the 15 chapters are new; all other chapters are thoroughly updated. The volume is structured around four main themes: * Situating Adolescents’ Literacies–addressing how young people use favorite texts to perform their identities; how they counter school-based constructions of incompetence; and how they re/construct their literate identities in relation to certain kinds of gendered expectations, pedagogies, and cultural resources; * Positioning Youth as Readers and Writers–stressing the importance of classroom discourse, cultural capital, agency, and democratic citizenship in mediating adolescents’ literate identities; * Mediating Practices in Young People’s Literacies–looking at issues of language, social class, race, and culture in shaping how adolescents represent themselves and are represented by others; and * Changing Teachers, Teaching Changes–capturing the productive ambiguities associated with teaching urban adolescents to read and write in changing times, encouraging students to conduct action research on topics that are personally relevant, and using ‘enabling constraints’ as a concept to formulate policies on adolescent literacy instruction. Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives, Second Edition is an essential volume for researchers, faculty, teacher educators, and graduate students in the field of adolescent literacy education.

Like previous editions, the third edition of Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives invites middle- and high-school educators to move toward a broad, generative view of adolescent literacies. Recognizing that digital media, social networking phenomena are now central in adolescents’ lives, what is different is the focus in this edition on bridging students’ everyday literacies and subject matter learning. Four chapters from earlier editions serve as touchstone texts, honoring youth’s diverse experiences and illustrating how young people’s literacies are enacted, situated, and mediated in various locales; nine new chapters consider how these themes are lived in today’s schools and in the rapidly changing world outside of school This edition features heightened attention multimodal meaning construction, more discussion of practical implications of the ideas presented, and co-authored teacher commentaries at the end of each section. A Companion Website, new for this edition, facilitates practical application of the text’s key ideas, with discussion questions, and links to instructional activities, blogs, additional readings and viewings, and interactive web pages, and videos.

Inviting middle- and high-school educators to move toward a broad, generative view of adolescent literacies, this edition of Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives focuses on bridging students' everyday literacies and school learning.

Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives invites middle and high school educators to move toward a broad, generative view of adolescent literacies. The aim is to capture adolescents' know-how and evolving expertise in an array of literacy contexts--all of them rich in language and meaning. This volume moves beyond a tendency to view current instructional recommendations--which focus on textbooks, tasks, and outcomes--as being apolitical or having universal applications. In these times of school reform and public accountability, this book calls on readers to bear in mind that issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class have everything to do with who is listened to as well as when and with what effect. It also calls on readers to remember that adolescents carry an almost infinite number of abilities and insights that can and should be invited to any work deemed important in classrooms. By concentrating on the social and cultural dimensions of adolescent literacies, the contributors to this volume have written in ways that move the adolescent learner up front and center stage.

Thorough and accessible, this professional resource and text shows how the latest research in adolescent literacy can be translated into effective practice in middle and high school classrooms. Leading authorities discuss findings on the adolescent learner, addressing such essential topics as comprehension, content-area literacy, differentiated instruction, gender differences in literacy learning, and English language learners. With a focus on evidence-based methods, coverage ranges from techniques for building digital literacy and comprehension skills to strategies for flexible grouping and writing instruction. Ideal for courses in adolescent literacy, each chapter includes guiding questions, discussion questions, and classroom examples.

Adolescents' Online Literacies: Connecting Classrooms, Digital Media, and Popular Culture is a compilation of new work that makes concrete connections between what the research literature portrays and what teachers, school librarians, and media specialists know to be the case in their own situations. The authors (educators and researchers who span three continents) focus on ways to incorporate and use the digital literacies that young people bring to school.