This article follows the development of three then-adolescent male Emirati high schoolers and their literacy journeys through their engagement in various on- and offline affinity spaces. Their stories illustrate how Emirati youth assume identities and manipulate pop culture within these spaces. Underpinned by conceptualization of affinity spaces,…

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 study examines the resources related to science that African American young men learn and develop by playing a card game called Spades, a common cultural practice in African American communities that dates back to the Civil War Era. The qualitative study examines what the Spades players at a local high school consider when making decisions…

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…

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 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…

The purpose of this study is to examine an Africentric rite of passage program's impact on African-American male high school students. It is intended to determine whether a rite of passage program will affect attendance, discipline and achievement. The study also investigates the development of a school-based Africentric program as well as its…