Argues that teachers need a comprehensible and flexible view of what counts as a written text in the larger world outside the classroom. Discusses two cases that demonstrate working with middle schoolers and their writing. Discusses the kind of knowledge about written text that teachers of writing need, and offers recommendations for teacher…

Examines a family literacy program based in a disadvantaged area of Scotland, to show how deficit views of children and their parents (feeling that one's own ways of speaking and writing are "wrong") might be challenged and overcome so that real learning can take place, learning that focuses on people's strengths and different types of language…

Shares the author's experiences helping teenage students write for audiences beyond the teacher, the classroom, the school and the geographical community. Discusses issues of policies, procedures, and possibilities of online communities. Describes TEENLIT.COM, a website that fosters teens' writing and provides a community for adolescent writers.…

Presents findings from a two-year evaluation of a family literacy program in rural Appalachian Ohio. Demonstrates positive results for both impact/outcome and process objectives. Highlights an extensive network of interpersonal and interagency relationships that maximized resources and supported families as they changed. Suggests the importance of…

Describes the author's experiences and dilemmas serving as language arts teacher at an alternative education program for middle school students. Describes how students drew on popular culture to maintain their identities of "how bad I can be." Describes how bringing popular culture into the classroom to support students' learning also brought…

Describes a project which set up mentoring conversations via e-mail to support the developmental growth of preservice teachers in secondary English teaching methods courses. Examines in depth the e-mail correspondence of a mentoring veteran teacher, showing how she mentored by modeling, illustrating, affirming, questioning, qualifying, and…

Describes the Guided Lecture Procedure (GLP), a procedure that requires students to suspend all notetaking and listen carefully during an approximately 20-minute lecture, followed by an active notetaking and small group interaction phase. Adds one extra requirement in the active notetaking phase: requiring each learner to write a question for the…

Describes how the author worked with her colleagues and with her sixth and seventh grade students, together searching for ways to improve their ability to read textbooks effectively, and to process and build on text information independently. Notes the open dialogue engaged in by teacher and students throughout the entire process as they searched…

Outlines historical perspectives on Chicano self-definition and identity. Examines emancipation in Chicano literature, and contrasts the ideological positioning of two prominent authors deemed culturally relevant for "Hispanic" students. Offers the authors'"insider" and "outsider" perspectives for negotiating subjective differences related to…

Offers an overview of what is "hot" in fiction for young Australians currently (year 2000) from the point of view of an Australian educator with a long history in children's literature. Introduces contemporary key authors and emergent trends. Describes briefly 26 recent popular Australian books of young adult fiction. (SR)

Argues that adolescents' literacy needs for the future are complex and demanding and that adolescents' development of reading, writing, and language skills deserves serious and continuing attention. Discusses what "adolescent literacy" signals that "content reading" and "secondary reading" do not; best practices in adolescent literacy; needs of…

Argues that literacy is not a stand-alone mental ability but is inextricably connected to "identity work." Discusses the new kinds of workers and workplaces arising in the new capitalism. Examines discourse practices of middle school teenagers from different socioeconomic classes. Argues that the ways they use distinctive social languages have…

Describes how a teacher education course at the University of Queensland combines media-cultural studies with information technologies, thereby giving students the theoretical frameworks and practical applications for the critical and analytic principles of media-cultural studies in teaching information technologies. Outlines the teaching and…

Investigates "Fandom" (exaggerated commitment to some aspect of the music industry, cinema, television, or sports) by looking at two adolescents and their musical preferences. Argues that connecting adolescents' musical fandom to critical media literacy in the classroom can get students interested in school literacy practices, assisting students'…

Presents a broad description of one particular version of critical literacy that has broad influences on how many Australian teachers teach reading and writing. Describes the move from theory to classroom practice; the "four resources model" of early reading instruction (social practices requisite for critical literacy); and a capsule critical…