Preservice teachers (PSTs) come to teacher education programs after many years as students in the K-12 school system--a system that is focused on standardized testing and inauthentic literacy practices. These experiences have shaped PSTs' personal literacy identities and their view of reading pedagogy, many times for the negative. In an effort to…

As a literacy instructor at a university, I regularly administered a questionnaire on reading habits and attitudes as part of the teacher education program. The findings from the surveys aligned with the results of extant literature on the prevalence of aliteracy among pre-service teachers (Applegate & Applegate, 2004; Applegate et al., 2014;…

In order to succeed in college, students need to be able to read closely, critically, and independently. Unfortunately, large scale studies of graduating high school students in the United States have indicated that many are underprepared for college and career reading. When these students enter college, they often find themselves in a space that…

In this research, literacy scholars present the voices of the people who live in the parks near their state capital and university in a south-eastern city in the United States. Through the recorded, transcribed and analyzed conversations, we report the literacy practices of the people in the parks and their insights into the nested state and…

Art literacy refers to achieving artistic knowledge, evaluating this knowledge and integrating it with experiences. The aim of the study is to examine the ''art literacy'' levels of the students attending the educational faculty in terms of grade level, gender, the fact that they love art books, the fact that they love doing research in library,…

The purpose of this study is to examine the art literacy levels of fine arts education students. The study group consists of 111 music teacher candidate and 90 art teacher candidate, 201 students in total from Nigde Omer Halisdemir University, Fine Art Education Branch. The data of the work were collected by "Art Literacy Scale." The…

The influence of motivation on readers' behaviors has received wide attention in literacy scholarship. The importance of readers' motivations for reading becomes critical when considered in relation to readers' engagement with reading activities and their perceptions of themselves a competent. This article presents a qualitative study of…

This article describes our collaborative inquiry, three teacher educators/researchers of literacy from different institutions who shared a concern about how few teacher candidates in our programs neither viewed themselves as readers nor possessed a love of reading, qualities we view as key to supporting all children as lifelong readers, writers,…

Web skimming may be a kind of literacy but it's not the kind that matters most. In this article, the author contends that web skimming indicates a decline of literacy. The author discusses research conducted by Jakob Nielsen, a Web researcher, on how users skim web pages. He shows how the web is damaging the right way to read.

The theme for the 58th annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) was Bridging Cultures Through Literacy. In the first section of the Yearbook, Parker Fawson's presidential address captures the unique nature of ALER and its role in his professional development, and then moved beyond to capture the changing…

This article describes a questionnaire survey of 747 students enrolled in a graduate school of education, who are currently teachers or prospective teachers. The Literacy Habits Questionnaire, developed by Applegate and Applegate, was administered in September 2006. Findings suggest a high prevalence of aliteracy, the ability to read but a…

The purpose of this study was to develop a profile of the literacy histories of developmental reading students enrolled in a South Texas college. A literacy history questionnaire was used to collect written responses regarding the students' early literacy experiences prior to entering the college setting. Analysis of the written responses…

A report from the National Endowment for the Arts, among much other such research, reveals that literacy is in serious decline in America. Ramifications of this decline extend beyond English and language departments to affect all other disciplines, ultimately raising the question of how a democracy can function when its citizens abandon the…

New Literacy Studies is the theoretical basis for this research, providing a social view of literacy. Recent work in New Literacy Studies has extended further the notion of literacy and demonstrated the ways in which people engage in practices in their everyday lives that do not always get translated into their studies. This article draws on…