Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives: Bridging the Everyday/Academic Divide, Third Edition

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.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Reconceptualizing Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement, Randy Bomer Introduction, Kathleen A. Hinchman and Donna E. Alvermann Part I: Understanding Youth’s Everyday Literacies 1. Touchstone Chapter: Playing for Real: Texts and the Performance of Identity, Lorri Nielsen 2. Becoming Life-Long Readers: Insights from a Comic Book Reader, Stergios G. Botzakis 3. Low-Income Youth’s (Public) Internet Practices in South America: Potential Lessons for Educators in the U.S. and Other Post-Industrial Nations, Eliane Rubinstein-Avila 4. Teacher Response: Lessons Learned from Young People’s Everyday Literacies, Anne Bulcher and Margaret Moran Part II: Integrating Everyday and Academic Literacies 5. Touchstone Chapter: “Struggling” Adolescents’ Engagement in Mulitmediating: Countering the Institutional Construction of Incompetence, David O’Brien 6. Thinking with Forensic Science: A Content Analysis of Forensic Comic Books and Graphic Novels, Barbara Guzzetti & Marcia Mardis 7. Reclaiming and Rebuilding the Writer Identities of Black Adolescent Males, Marcelle M. Haddix 8. Teacher Response: Bridging Everyday Literacies with Academic Literacy, McKenzie Weaver Part III: Addressing Sociocultural and Identity Issues in Adolescents’ Literacy Lives 9. Touchstone Chapter: Exploring Race, Language, and Culture in Critical Literacy Classrooms, Bob Fecho, Bette Davis and Renee Moore 1 0. Re-Writing the Stock Stories of Urban Adolescents: Autobiography as a Social and Performative Practice at the InterSections of Identities, Kelly Wissman and Lalitha Vasudevan 11. “In This Little Town Nothing Much Ever Happens, But Someday Something Will”: Reading Young Adult Literature from the Blue Ridge Foothills, Gay Ivey 12. Teacher Response: Addressing Sociocultural and Identity Issues in Adolescents’ Literacy Lives, Justin Claypool and George White Part IV: Changing Teachers, Teaching Changes 13. Touchstone Chapter: Adolescents’ Multiple Identities and Teacher Professional Development, Alfred W. Tatum 14. Reconceptualizing Together: Exploring Participatory and Productive Critical Media Literacies in a Collaborative Teacher Research Group, Eli Tucker-Raymond,Daisy Torres-Petrovich,Keith Dumbleton and Ellen Damlich 15. Baby Steps toward Web 1.5: Middle School Teachers’ Personal Learning and Explorations of Pop Culture and Digital Literacy Tools for Classroom Literacy Instruction, Margaret C. Hagood 16. Teacher Response: Professional Development to Reconceptualize Literacy Instruction, Maryanne Desmond Barrett and Elizabeth G. Mascia Afterword, Donna E. Alvermann and Kathleen A. Hinchman Contributors Index

About the Author :
Donna E. Alvermann is Distinguished Research Professor, University of Georgia. Kathleen A. Hinchman is Professor, Reading & Language Arts Center and Director, Reading and English education doctoral programs, Syracuse University.

Review :
"In the new edition of Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives: Bridging the Everyday/Academic Divide, Donna Alvermann and Kathleen Hinchman have put together a collection that engages the literacy practices of adolescents in ways that recognize the range and variety of reading and writing that young people do on a daily basis." — Bronwyn Williams, University of Louisville, Teachers College Record "Eliot was a twelve-year-old seventh grader when I first met him for a testing session. I was an educational specialist and conducted assessments with students who were thought to have learning disabilities or who struggled in school. Eliot’s seventh-grade experience highlights the possibilities of inclusion. Hehir and Katzman found that the collective responsibility of successful inclusive schools is based, in part, on the relationships formed among the staff at the school, including school leaders, teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and others, and among parents, students, and staff. …Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives, edited by Donna E. Alvermann and Kathleen A. Hinchman, taken together, allow a deep look at some of the forces that made Eliot’s seventh-grade year successful." — Rachel Currie-Rubin, Harvard Educational Review "In this third edition of their time-honored text, Alvermann (Univ. of Georgia) and Hinchman (Syracuse Univ.) challenge today's educational culture by interrogating the ways that teens' identities are multiple, fluid, and amalgamated into their lives at school--understandings necessary for any teacher looking to reach adolescent learners. Chapters are written by various reputable researchers of adolescent literacy (e.g., Bob Fecho, Kelly Wissman, and Margaret Hagood) on the myriad ways teens consume and construct texts in and out of school. Particularly compelling are "touchstone" chapters revised and updated from previous editions of this book that reveal the pervasiveness of issues affecting adolescents. The chapters written by teachers are a wonderful model of the reflective stance practitioners should assume in respect to educational research, practice, and the profession as a whole. Summing Up: Highly Recommended" — M. B. Hopkins, Nazareth College of Rochester, CHOICE