Everyday Youth Literacies

Testifying to the maturity of the youth literacy education field, this collection of papers displays the increasing sophistication of research on the subject, and at the same time offers pointers to its potential for development in the next decade. The contributors track the rapid proliferation of youth literacies in today’s digital age, from video games to social media and film production. Drawing on detailed research and an intimate knowledge of youth communities in nations as diverse as Canada and Uganda, they provide notable examples of digital literacies in situ, and challenge conventional wisdom about literacy education.

The chapters do more, however, than merely offer reportage of a crisis in literacy education. The authors embrace the core challenge faced by educators everywhere: how to incorporate and utilize new modes of literacy in education, and how to realize the potential benefits of heterogeneous modern media in youth literacy education, especially in marginalized, remote, and disadvantaged communities. This volume expands our view of digital communications technologies and digital literacies to include complex understandings of how media such as translated videos can serve as learning tools for youths whose access to literacy education is limited. In particular, a number of contributing scholars provide important new information about the praxis of teachers and the literacies adopted by young people in Africa, a continent largely neglected by literacy researchers. This book’s global perspective, and its ground-level viewpoint of youth literacy practices in a variety of locations, problematizes normative assumptions about researching literacy as well as about literacy itself.

• formal and informal learning
• globalization new literacy
• literacy and youth
• literacy in new times
• new literacies
• new literacy engagement
• school literacy practices
• literary diction
• media research

From the book reviews:

“This collection offers research on literacies most prevalent in an adolescent’s life … . The volume not only looks at the value of incorporating such literacies into student development but also explores the positive impact these literacies have had in a variety of world youth cultures … . Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, professionals.” (J. M. Stiles, Choice, Vol. 52 (7), March, 2015)

• University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada

  Kathy Sanford

• Department of of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

  Theresa Rogers

• Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

  Maureen Kendrick

Kathy Sanford is a professor of Language and Literacy Education whose research and teaching focuses on multiliteracies and digital literacies in informal spaces, specifically related to youth engagement with videogames, and the intersections of multiliteracies with issues of gender.

Theresa Rogers is a professor of Language and Literacy Education whose research and teaching focuses on adolescent literacy, arts and media practices in schools and communities.

Maureen Kendrick is Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education whose research and teaching addresses the relationship between literacy and multimodality in diverse contexts in Canada and East Africa.

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