Current scholarship suggests that many youths identify with hip-hop, especially youths of color. Study of this artistic form has been suggested as a means of helping youths acquire and become fluent in literacy practices. This article explores how the use of a hip-hop literacies curriculum addressed the literacy skills of urban ninth-grade English…

Prior scholarship suggests that many boys are disengaged from school-based literacy because they do not see its value or significance in their lives. In response, this study investigates the role of popular culture and new literacies in motivating adolescent boys within secondary English. Drawing on sociocultural approaches to literacy research,…

The classroom dynamic has become a competition of whose information is more important: the quickly accessed and popular digital texts or the perhaps less popular print texts. Whether or not teachers or school systems sanction the reading or teaching of popular culture texts in the classroom, students are reading--are even bombarded with--messages…

The 160 third, seventh, and eleventh-graders involved in this study agreed, almost unanimously, that reading was "important." Participants cited the empowering benefits of reading as they justified this opinion. However, with regards to the enjoyment of reading, fewer middle and high school participants reported "liking"…

Although not a new concept, remix has recently gained popularity in mainstream sources ranging from video games to newspaper columns and television commercials for airline tickets, fried chicken, and soft drinks. All these examples draw on a concept that originates from hip-hop culture and refers to the creative blending of materials from…

In this article, and from the standpoint of an African American woman teacher/researcher, the author explores what happened when one African American adolescent boy known inside of school as a "severely disengaged" student cultivated literacy practices and events of his own volition in an after-school program. The author asks, how does race and…

A Latino teenager participated in an after school digital movie composing program called the Technology and Literacy Project. As a student of color previously identified as at risk for school failure, Horatio's case speaks to a common discrepancy highlighted in sociocultural literacy scholarship. He was competent and engaged with numerous…

The nation's focus on the literacy skills of students--especially boys--has produced many notions of reform. School districts reorganized and changed curricula to meet the needs of struggling readers and writers. In New York City, where this author was teaching, "Balanced Literacy" (a reading and writing workshop) had been implemented in…

This book shows teachers how to bring students' Do-It-Yourself media practices into the classroom (Grades 6-12). In one accessible resource, the authors explain DIY media, identify their appealing features for content area instruction, and describe the literacy skills and strategies they promote. Chapters address: Adolescents' DIY Media as New…

In this article, the author describes how one high school chemistry teacher, Sharon (pseudonym), implemented a literacy-based unit that appealed to her students by capitalizing on their out-of-school interests in forensics and how her students responded to that unit. The author also describes how two colleagues at her school joined her in teaching…

This article describes the formation and enactment of a student and teacher-generated framework for re-authoring a troubling representation of Black masculinity in a popular culture narrative. This data-driven framework highlights the ways students and teacher provided a means for literacies to serve students' desire to re-author images and words…

This article builds upon the concept of hybridity to affirm the relevance of poetry, music, and other forms of popular culture in the lives of urban youth. Its focus examines the blending of seemingly disparate forms to understand how young people, in particular young people of color, negotiate their multilayered social worlds. One of these worlds…

In June 2008, the Department of English at the University of Minnesota partnered with the Minnesota Spoken Word Association to inaugurate an outreach literacy program for local high-school students and teachers. The four-day institute, named "In Da Tradition," used spoken word and hip hop to teach academic and creative writing to core-city…