Construction and Experience of Black Adolescence - L90 AFAS 461B

Sample Search in the Academic Search Complete and Education Full Text Databases

Title:  Breaking down barriers that disenfranchise African American adolescent readers in low-level tracks.

Authors: Tatum, Alfred W.

Source: Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy; September 2000, Vol. 44 Issue 1, p52-64, 13p  [Full Text]

Abstract: In order to increase the literacy achievement of African-American youth in low-level reading tracks, educators must rethink the test-driven approach and basic skills indoctrination and incorporate culturally relevant literature into their programs. By using a framework that addresses word study, fluency, comprehension, and writing and by including culturally relevant literature in their classrooms, teachers can increase students' reading achievement while helping the students develop cultural competence. A description of how the combination of a culturally relevant approach and explicit skill and strategy instruction benefited one group of economically disadvantaged African-American adolescents in low-level reading tracks is provided.

Database: Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson)

Title: Getting It Right: Building a Bridge to Literacy for Adolescent African-American Males.

Authors: Boone, Jennifer; Rawson, Casey; Vance, Katy

Source: School Library Monthly; Oct2010, Vol. 27 Issue 2, p34-37, 4p [Full Text]

Abstract: The writers discuss a model for building a bridge to literacy for adolescent African American males to promote reading as a foundational skill for learning, personal growth, and enjoyment. In this context, they describe an assignment that students in the Information and Library Science Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill take to identify personal steps to move the literacy process forward in their schools and districts. Given this background, they describe how an assignment requires them to create an appendix for school librarians for the literacy text Reading for Their Life: (Re)building the Textual Lineages of African American Adolescent Males.

Database: Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson)

Title: Playing and resisting: rethinking young people's reading cultures.

Authors: Kendall, Alex¹ A.Kendall@wlv.ac.uk

Source: Literacy. Nov2008, Vol. 42 Issue 3, p123-130. 8p. 2 Charts. [Full Text]

Abstract: In this paper I will argue that while young adult readers may often be represented through ‘othering’ discourses that see them as ‘passive’, ‘uncritical’ consumers of ‘low-brow’, ‘throw-away’ texts, the realities of their reading lives are in fact more subtle, complex and dynamic. The paper explores the discourses about reading, identity and gender that emerged through discussions with groups of young adults, aged between 16 and 19, about their reading habits and practices. These discussions took place as part of a PhD research study of reading and reader identity in the context of further education in the Black Country in the West Midlands. Through these discussions the young adults offered insights into their reading cultures and the ‘functionality’ of their reading practices that contest the kinds of ‘distinction[s]’ that tend to situate them as the defining other to more ‘worthy’ or ‘valuable’ reading cultures and practices. While I will resist the urge to claim that this paper represents the cultures of young adult readers in any real or totalising sense I challenge the kinds of dominant, reductive representations that serve to fix and demonise this group and begin to draw a space within which playfulness and resistance are alternatively offered as ways of being for these readers.

Database: Academic Search Complete