Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. This four volume set includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on literacy. Together, they offer a comprehensive outline of the study and practice of literacy in the United States.

The first comprehensive research handbook of its kind, this volume showcases innovative approaches to understanding adolescent literacy learning in a variety of settings. Distinguished contributors examine how well adolescents are served by current instructional practices and highlight ways to translate research findings more effectively into sound teaching and policymaking. The book explores social and cultural factors in adolescents' approach to communication and response to instruction, and sections address literacy both in and out of schools, including literacy expectations in the contemporary workplace. Detailed attention is given to issues of diversity and individual differences among learners. Winner--Literacy Research Association's Fry Book Award!

"Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. This work includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on literacy. Together, they offer a comprehensive outline of the study and practice of literacy in the United States. The first volume, Early Literacy, covers infancy and early childhood. Topics such as oral language development, phonics, beginning writing, storytelling and drama, and instruction for second language learners and special needs children are all addressed. Volume two, Childhood Literacy, includes information on popular approaches to reading instruction, children's literature, spelling, computer and instructional technology, book clubs, and after-school programs. Adolescent Literacy, the third volume, covers supplementary literacy programs for at-risk adolescents, literacy tutors, young adult literature, gender issues, digital literacy, and blogging. Finally, volume four, Adult Literacy, offers chapters on adult basic education, programs for English language learners, and workplace literacy."--publisher's description.

By embracing a rapidly changing digital world, the so-called millennial adolescent is proving quite adept at breaking down age-old distinctions among disciplines, between high- and low-brow media culture, and within print and digitized text types. Adolescents and Literacies in a Digital World explores the significance of digital technologies and media in youth's negotiated approaches to making meaning within a broad array of self-defined literacy practices. Organized around a series of case studies, this book blends theories of an attention economy, generational differences, communication technologies, and neoliberal enactive texts with actual accounts of adolescents' use of instant messaging, shape-shifting portfolios, critical inquiry, and media production.

Thorough and accessible, this professional resource and text shows how the latest research in adolescent literacy can be translated into effective practice in middle and high school classrooms. Leading authorities discuss findings on the adolescent learner, addressing such essential topics as comprehension, content-area literacy, differentiated instruction, gender differences in literacy learning, and English language learners. With a focus on evidence-based methods, coverage ranges from techniques for building digital literacy and comprehension skills to strategies for flexible grouping and writing instruction. Ideal for courses in adolescent literacy, each chapter includes guiding questions, discussion questions, and classroom examples.

What is wrong with young people today? This question has captured the concerns of the older generation about the habits and attitudes of the adolescents in their midst. The assumption is that there is indeed something wrong with young people. Even Plato must have rolled his eyes, as he relates his diatribe about the adolescents of Greece. Is the current generation of adolescents less motivated or less focused than their parents? How will they respond to the challenges facing them as they progress to adulthood? When, in fact, do they become adults? Although every generation draws upon their own unique and varied experiences, the speed of our current societal changes has created a very different adolescent passage for contemporary youth than ever before. The world as we know it has changed significantly and because of it, much of today’s youth is decidedly different from their parents. Adolescence itself has shifted dramatically. Young children are displaying adolescent behaviors well before they are ready to act on or understand their meaning, and older adolescents are staying perpetual children. As one writer put it, “the conveyer belt that transported adolescents into adulthood has broken down”. This book provides an interdisciplinary collection of research on the constants and challenges faced by young people today. Failure to launch? Social media? Economic stagnation? For the generation that is coming of age in a post-terrorist world and in the midst of economic upheaval, the challenges might seem insurmountable. However, in this book, scholars from across the academy, from sociology, psychology, education, philosophy, science, and business, explain how the young people today are responding to the constants of growth and change in adolescence and the unique challenges of life in the 21st century.

"Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. This work includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on literacy. Together, they offer a comprehensive outline of the study and practice of literacy in the United States. The first volume, Early Literacy, covers infancy and early childhood. Topics such as oral language development, phonics, beginning writing, storytelling and drama, and instruction for second language learners and special needs children are all addressed. Volume two, Childhood Literacy, includes information on popular approaches to reading instruction, children's literature, spelling, computer and instructional technology, book clubs, and after-school programs. Adolescent Literacy, the third volume, covers supplementary literacy programs for at-risk adolescents, literacy tutors, young adult literature, gender issues, digital literacy, and blogging. Finally, volume four, Adult Literacy, offers chapters on adult basic education, programs for English language learners, and workplace literacy."--publisher's description.

Supported Literacy for Adolescents, written by nationally recognized experts, introduces an innovative and field-tested instructional framework for preparing secondary students to succeed academically in a fast-changing and globally networked world. Filled with examples from science, history, literature, and special education classrooms, the book shows how teachers can enable diverse students, including under-performers, to develop critical thinking and other essential competencies along with the "multi-literacy" tools needed to engage in twenty-first century content learning.

This book presents results from a four-year project addressing the central question: What factors, challenges, and contexts contribute to and constrain literacy achievement among at-risk adolescent learners with culturally diverse backgrounds? Researchers consider the importance of several, interrelated factors that support the development of adolescents’ literacies in multilingual contexts: support from educators, community groups, families, and peers; recognition of the multi-faceted complexity of literacy through multiple, complementary methods of research and assessment; approaches to pedagogy that engage learners’ zones of proximal development in humanistic and purposeful ways; and promoting students’ vocabulary knowledge, strategies for reading, writing, and learning, and orientations to engaging with epistemic purposes of literacy critically, through multiple media, and with self-confidence.

The definitive encyclopedic resource on literacy, literacy instruction, and literacy assessment in the United States. Once upon a time, the three "R"s sufficed. Not any more—not for students, not for Americans. Gone the way of the little red school house is simple reading and writing instruction. Surveying an increasingly complex discipline, Literacy in America: An Encyclopedia offers a comprehensive overview of all the latest trends in literacy education—conceptual understanding of texts, familiarity with electronic content, and the ability to create meaning from visual imagery and media messages. Educators and academicians call these skills "multiple literacies," shorthand for the kind of literacy skills and abilities needed in an age of information overload, media hype, and Internet connectedness. With its 400 A–Z entries, researched by experts and written in accessible prose, Literacy in America is the only reference tool students, teachers, and parents will need to understand what it means to be—and become—literate in 21st-century America.