With conceptions of literacy growing beyond the traditional print medium, new understandings of multiliteracy practices and pedagogies are needed to better inform the preparation of secondary English teachers. This article presents the findings of a study examining five first year teachers' understandings of and experiences with…

This article analyzes the potential of a series of Youth Action Coalition's (YAC) Arts-for-Change (AfC) youth programs for literacy and identity development, as well as for engaging youth in addressing issues of social justice. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews, surveys, and participant-observation fieldnotes inventorying changes in…

An essential requirement for supporting the activist literacies of adolescents is a critical understanding of the purposes, practices and roles of engaged citizens and of the linguistic and broader semiotic resources they deploy in response to their multi-layered contexts. Drawing on theories from social semiotic and rhetorical traditions as well…

Inspired by her attendance at the inaugural JoLLE Activist Literacies conference, the author ruminates on the ways in which children's literature and activitist literacies are inextricably wed and manifested in myriad ways. References to a sampling of children's literature spanning genres and grade levels, websites, and affiliated articles provide…

This study explored three purposefully-sampled avid adolescent male writers' experiences at a residential summer writing workshop program. It investigated how the social context of the program influenced the writing of the focal students, the ways that they identified themselves as writers, and the risks that they took in their works. It also…

Current research suggests that it is imperative for researchers and educators to pay more attention to the needs of African American adolescent girls and how their race and gender affect schooling (Fordham, 1993; Morris, 2007). The purpose of this study was to highlight the lived experiences of two African American adolescent girls when they used…