This book disrupts the false dichotomy of college versus career by showing how young people and the programs created to serve them integrate the worlds of college and career readiness as students work to learn against the odds and strive toward lives that matter to them. Work-based learning at each stage of the K-college experience is crucial to…

This study describes an investigation of a research apprenticeship program that we developed for diverse high-school students often underrepresented in similar programs and in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions. Through the apprenticeship program, students spent 2 weeks in the summer engaged in biofuels-related research…

Achievement of adequate yearly progress (AYP) is crucial for all students due to the increased rigor of Common Core Standards and Keystone graduation requirements. Logically then, programs that can help students achieve AYP should be implemented to their fullest potential. This study investigated whether the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) framework…

The low educational achievement of our poorest youth is fundamentally a political problem. Against a background of interconnected gaps in educational achievement, health and wealth, and political participation, this paper calls for a liberatory educational praxis that disrupts these reinforcing inequalities. This is a critical literacy grounded in…

This case study describes the literacy development of a struggling reader over a seven-month period as he engaged in a youth-led participatory action research (PAR) project. The project's goal was for youth participants to develop a proposal for productive change in their local community and present it to community stakeholders. The study focused…

This article describes an adolescent's development of multiliterate and multilingual writing practices and identities. It further explores how a literacy teacher enacted a writing pedagogy of multiliteracies that assisted the youth in building writing practices and identities. Data include interviews of the young woman and her teacher, classroom…

This case study explored how adolescents were empowered through afterschool media production activities and, in the process, re-imagined themselves as active and engaged citizens within their community. Through analyzing interviews, participant observations, and media artifacts of 14 participants (aged 15-19) over a period of 18 months, three main…

This article reports on a descriptive study of youth identity as developing through "trajectories of identification" in a science outreach apprenticeship program designed to transition urban African American youth to professional work and career aspirations. A sociocultural framework of identity development is utilized, incorporating the notions…

In October 2010, WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) won an i3 "Validation" grant to scale up and validate the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) model in three core secondary content area classes: U.S. history, biology, and English language arts. SLI's proposal stated two goals. Goal 1: To transform academic literacy teaching and…

This article presents the results of research into how young trainees in the level III apprenticeship system formulate their educational and professional plans, what expectations they have of obtaining socially and professionally recognised qualifications, and in what way enterprises see such training as a strategy for providing human resources…

This study investigates how high school students respond to an environment of authentic science inquiry while participating in an intensive summer institute, the Waksman Student Scholars Programme at Rutgers University. We examined how students apprenticed with expert scientists in a study of contemporary questions in molecular genetics. Students…