Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives

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.