Most of the job losses that occurred in New York City after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center occurred in low-wage jobs held by lower-skilled workers. Many of those affected faced multiple obstacles limiting their employment prospects, including limited literacy and English language skills and a lack of "connections" to formal and…

In this personal narrative, the author describes "READ 180," a framework designed to teach struggling readers. The READ 180 program is premised on surface-level skills. Students answer comprehension questions and spell words with a keyboard and a computer screen rather than a booklet, pencil, and paper. Describing her experience with one…

Among the criticisms often made of high-stakes assessments in the United States is that they promote "teaching to the test." There is little question that, under pressure to produce higher test scores, schools tend to implement more standardized curriculums that are geared toward preparing students to perform well on year-end tests. Proponents of…

The author asserts that literacy teacher training programs should design opportunities for teachers to become more reflective about the literate self. Graduate students were queried about the relationship between their personal, historical, and professional literate selves. They documented their memories of reading and considered what it means to…

This article describes a small-scale project designed to help engage reluctant adolescent readers in voluntary reading practice during sustained silent reading (SSR). Three teachers worked with a secondary school reading expert to identify and agree on elements of effective instructional conversations and then implemented these "book talks" with a…

This article argues that issues surrounding adolescent literacies problematize the relationship between the acquisition of core skills, the need to connect with a more expansive repertoire of literate practices, and a middle school reform initiative that encourages greater connectedness to the world of the adolescent. The terms "public literacy"…

Online fanfiction communities provide adolescent English-language learners (ELLs) with a forum for engaging in an array of sophisticated literacy practices. This article draws on constructs from literacy studies and second-language acquisition as conceptual bases for exploring the writing, reviewing, and social practices in an online fanfiction…

The authors address concern in the field today about the literacy needs of boys. In a 1977 precursor to this article, it was literacy issues related to girls that appeared to command attention. As in that article and another preceding one, information is presented here as a true-false test. After taking the test, readers are provided with answers…

The Imposter is a strategy that encourages a focused approach to reading among adolescents. Contradictions or other types of conceptual flaws are inserted into a reading passage. The reader, knowing that flaws are hidden in the text, attempts to discover the errors. The reader then justifies his or her identification of flaws based on the concepts…

This study extends the knowledge garnered from work with younger populations to determine the reading comprehension strategies most important to adults' success on outcome measures and to align them with previously researched interventions. According to an analysis of competence-based standardized tests of literacy (such as the General Educational…

The authors argue for teaching queer-inclusive English language arts (ELA). They report on a study that surveyed high school personnel across the United States, revealing that very few people in charge of ELA curricula value such inclusion. In response to these findings, the authors offer "images of the possible" in which texts and methods that…

In an effort to make reading more visible and find out what goes on in the minds of adolescent readers, the author led a group of seventh-grade students in creating Symbolic Reading Inventories. The students created "snapshot" scenes from the books they were reading and placed themselves, as readers, in or around the picture. Reading is a complex…

Ten years ago, an ethnographic study in a bilingual whole-language third-grade classroom identified conditions that defined the classroom as a learning community: a high level of intellectual expectation, symmetric power and trust relationships, authenticity, and additive bilingualism and biliteracy. The students' insights strengthened the…

The Partnership for Reading (PFR) in the United States has recently thrown its hat into the ring of adult literacy research and practice. Its information about adult literacy comes, almost entirely, from the National Reading Panel's (NRP) data on children. Building its case from the NRP data, the PFR advocates for a narrow, school-based conception…

The research reported in this article intends to contribute to an understanding of how out-of-school literacies can influence the present and future learning of adolescents. Evidence suggests that students, boys particularly, are becoming literate in many ways through out-of-school activities (e.g., video games, Internet browsing, chatrooms), but…