Everyday Youth Literacies

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.

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.

Foreword by John Willinsky.- 1 An Introduction to Everyday Youth Literacies: Critical Perspectives in New Time: Kathy Sanford, Theresa Rogers, and Maureen Kendrick.- 2 Narrative Interpretation: Tacit and Explicit, Analogue and Digital: Margaret Mackey.- 3 Videogame Literacies: Purposeful Civic Engagement for 21^st Century Youth Learning.- Kathy Sanford and Sarah Bonsor Kurki.- 4 Public Pedagogies of Street-entrenched Youth: New Literacies, Identity and Social Critique: Theresa Rogers, Sara Schroeter, Amanda Wager, and Chelsey Hague.- 5 "My film will change the world...or something": Youth Media Production as "Social Text": Lori McIntosh.- 6 Digital media and the knowledge-producing practices of young people in the age of AIDS: Claudia Mitchell.- 7 Youth Literacies in Kenya and Canada: Lessons Learned from a Global Learning Network Project: Maureen Kendrick, Margaret Early, and Walter Chemjor.- 8 eGranary and digital identities of Ugandan youth: Bonny Norton.- 9 What counts as the social in a social practices approach to the study of children's engagement with electronic media, language and literacy in a context of social diversity?: Mastin Prinsloo and Polo Lemphane.- 10 Shack Video Halls in Uganda as Youth Community/Literacy Learning and Cultural Interaction Sites: George Openjuru and Stella Achen.- 11 Making School Relevant: Adding New Literacies to the Policy Agenda : Cheryl McLean, Jennifer Rowsell & Diane Lapp.- 12 From 'Othering' to Incorporation: the dilemmas of crossing informal and formal learning boundaries: Julian Sefton-Green.- 13 Epilogue: Victoria Carrington.