In this article, we consider the notion of entangled stories to account for ways that young people assemble stories in generative ways. We draw on Tim Ingold's theorising of lines, movement, and storied knowledge to account for the visible/material and invisible/immaterial entanglements that happen when young people design multimodal storied…

Global networks of information and interactions have created new conditions for access to myriad literacies, languages, and communities. Engagements with transnational texts and communities can support the imagination of lives different from one's local context. This article presents data from two qualitative studies of adolescent literacy…

Building upon research exploring adolescent writing in technology-mediated contexts, this article examines writing and sharing in the online space of Fanfiction.net. Drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal inquiry with a 16-year-old who writes in multiple contexts, this study explores the writing opportunities afforded on Fanfiction.net…

Although most teachers realize the potential of using popular culture within the sexuality education classroom, incorporating it successfully is complex. Especially, how can teachers critically analyse the ideology contained in popular culture without lapsing into moralizing and design motivating activities? For teachers in Taiwan, whose training…

As researchers seek to make sense of young people's online literacy practices and participation, questions of methodology are important to consider. In our work to understand the culture of physical, virtual and blended spheres that adolescents inhabit, we find it necessary to expand Gee's (2004) notion of affinity spaces. In this article, we draw…

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,…

This article focuses on learning and identity-related practices of young female fans of a popular British boy band called One Direction. Drawing on qualitative inquiry into a fanfiction community formed around the band, analysis highlights (a) the literate work fans engage in, including writing, reading, critiquing, and collaborating on multimodal…

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"…

The speed with which the technologies of literacy are changing is dazzling and unsettling. Almost every year, it seems a new way of combining words, images, and video emerges and becomes a phenomenon among students. Meanwhile, teachers are left wondering how to respond to these new ways of writing and reading and the identities that students…

The question is not whether literacy practices are present in contemporary popular culture--it is hard not to find a movie or program without some representation of literacy in it. The more important and useful question is, How do we in the audience interpret the literacy practices we find in popular culture? What do such representations tell us…

This article focuses on representations of youth identity and culture that circulated in a long-term teacher and researcher study group. These representations are important to examine because the way that teachers of adolescents envision their students' identities and cultures relative to that of other adolescents is fundamental to how they…

This article presents partial results of an ethnographic study about literacy practices among adolescents living near the United States-Mexico border. The students became involved in literacy practices with their friends and family at home. These practices were related to the adolescents' interests in popular culture such as reading magazines or…

Over the past decade, numerous literacy researchers have investigated the multiple literacies of adolescents. Connecting with adolescents' multiple literacies, including digital texts and high interest print-based texts, holds promise as a way to build bridges to subject area content and academic literacies. Although pre-service content area…

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…

In this article, a spatial lens is used to look at a popular online culture-based writing website as a means of understanding how fan authors' literacy practices and the design features of the site interact to shape a writing space that engenders affiliation with and facilitates access to literacy and language learning. Discussion also focuses on…