Papers by Donna Alvermann
This study reveals the affordances and limitations of introducing a new instructional framework—a... more This study reveals the affordances and limitations of introducing a new instructional framework—archival-based pedagogy—into a digital literacies course for English language arts educators in the fall of 2020 in the midst of COVID-19. Its purpose was to document how seven students in the course went about choosing archival content for the podcasts they created as part of their final project. The conceptual framework of artifactual critical literacy guided the study’s methodology, analysis, and interpretation of the participants’ descriptions of how the archival artifacts they selected became centerpieces in their podcasts and reflected their personal and/or professional identities. Findings from the study are presented through the seven participants’ narrative reflections, created during the spring of 2021. Implications are discussed for furthering archival-based pedagogy as a curricular alternative to traditional online teaching and learning.
Routledge eBooks, Feb 11, 2016
Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, 2021
Naming is a curious practice. It entails rudiments, now mostly taken for granted, that serve to c... more Naming is a curious practice. It entails rudiments, now mostly taken for granted, that serve to categorize everyday literacy practices across fields as diverse as cultural anthropology and the management of multiple Git profiles. As a term unto itself, adolescent literacies is not immune to the vagaries of naming. In fact, it serves as an excellent example of how commonly named concepts in education embed the field’s histories, debates, pedagogies, and policies writ large. Conceptualizing literacy in its plural form raised eyebrows among academics, researchers, practitioners, publishers, and indexers concerned with the noun–verb agreement in phrases such as “adolescent literacies is a subfield” of adolescence. For some, the very notion of literacy extending beyond reading and writing is still debatable. With each passing day, however, it becomes noticeably more evident that multimodal forms of communication—images, sounds, bodily performances, to name but a few ways of expressing on...
Literacies, Sexualities, and Gender, 2018
The Handbook of Critical Literacies, 2021
Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 2019
Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures, 2017
Genders, Cultures, and Literacies, 2021
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2017
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with ... more This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2017
Handbook of Research on the Societal Impact of Digital Media
The purpose of this integrative review of theory and research is to assess the economic impact of... more The purpose of this integrative review of theory and research is to assess the economic impact of digital media in ways that are unreached by instrumental means of measuring economic activity. Specifically, we use three overarching arguments identified from a review of the literature that broadly defines the economic force of digital media content in contemporary society. We contextualize those arguments in terms of current issues in the field and gaps in the research base before concluding with a discussion of the implications of what we learned for education, civic engagement, social practice, and policy.
International Encyclopedia of Education, 2010
Primary reading tends to center on decoding (phonemic awareness and phonics) and comprehension. L... more Primary reading tends to center on decoding (phonemic awareness and phonics) and comprehension. Legislative mandates and their associated policies at the national, regional, and local levels have tended to affect the primary grades more than other grades, especially in terms of how reading is taught and the curricular materials of choice. Elementary/middle-grades reading curricula increasingly focus on acquiring subject-matter information from a variety of academic materials (both print and nonprint). An emerging trend worldwide is a call for considering the multiple realities of information communication technologies on teaching reading in the elementary/middle grades.
The Reading Teacher, 2017
There is far more to the digital divide than meets the eye. In this article, we consolidate exist... more There is far more to the digital divide than meets the eye. In this article, we consolidate existing research on the digital divide to offer some tangible ways for educators to bridge the gap between the haves/have nots or "the cans and cannots." Drawing on Huxley's (1932) notion of a "brave new world", there are digital divide approaches and frameworks that require debunking and that are strongly associated with first world nations which fail to take account of the differential access to technologies for people who live in poverty. Taking a closer look at current realities, we send a call out to teachers, administrators, and researchers to think more seriously and consequentially about what the wide-spread adoption of technologies has had on younger generations and the role of the digital on knowledge creation and on imagined futures. 2. How many of your students have high speed Wi-Fi access to do research and to complete assignments? 3. How does access to technology, media and different forms of communication impact academic literacy achievement? 4. Have you ever thought about the kinds of twenty-first century privileges that some students have over others?
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Papers by Donna Alvermann
researchers, and theorists who have grown up in a world radically different from that of the students they teach and study.
disciplines, between high- and low-brow media culture, and within print and digitized text types. Adolescents and Literacies in a Digital World explores the
significance of digital technologies and media in youth's negotiated approaches to making meaning within a broad array of self-defined literacy practices.
Organized around a series of case studies, this book blends theories of an attention economy, generational differences, communication technologies, and
neoliberal enactive texts with actual accounts of adolescents' use of instant messaging, shape-shifting portfolios, critical inquiry, and media production.
"Truly a far-reaching scholarly book which offers readers an array of cases, conversations, and coinages that can only help schools take the measure in
the best educational sense, of the brave new culture, the new literacy, of this digital age." (John Willinsky, University of British Columbia)
"This is exciting volume brings together forward-thinking literacy scholars and educators to think about the impact of digital technologies on the changing
nature of literacy and adolescence. The writing is engaging and maintains a steady focus in both conceptual frameworks and innovative teaching
approaches. This is compulsory reading for educators who wish to move beyond the old literacy and technology debates and engage instead with new
ideas such as shape-shifting practices, attention economy, millennials, digital détente, cross-generational literacies, and zines. It is an important
sociocultural perspective on working with adolescents in the new millennium." (Barbara Kamler, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia)
The authors (educators and researchers who span three continents) focus on ways to incorporate and use the digital literacies that young people bring to school. Connections are made between youth's everyday literacy practices with 21st century texts, digital media, and learning in classrooms and library media centers.
In his afterword, Kevin Leander (Vanderbilt University) states: "The chapters in this book move in exciting directions for literacy pedagogy and unsettle many of our assumptions about teaching and learning with new literacies" (p. 203).
Over half of the chapters in this edition are new to Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, and eight of these new chapters were specially commissioned for this volume. Twenty percent of the chapters from previous editions have been revised by their authors to reflect current research and instructional developments in the field. Questions for Reflection accompany each chapter to assist readers in transforming their current knowledge base through discussion and deeper thinking about theory, research, and instruction."
This edition features heightened attention multimodal meaning construction, more discussion of practical implications of the ideas presented, and co-authored teacher commentaries at the end of each section. A Companion Website, new for this edition, facilitates practical application of the text’s key ideas, with discussion questions, and links to instructional activities, blogs, additional readings and viewings, and interactive web pages, and videos.
Bring It to Class features:
• A researched rationale for using pop culture in middle school and secondary classrooms as well as school libraries and media centers.
• Field-tested teaching approaches that will connect adolescents with school-based learning and motivate their literacy practices in and out of class.
• An easy-to-use format that includes classroom vignettes, sample lessons, and a glossary of key terms.
—From the Foreword by Kylene Beers, President, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE):
“All students—not just the ones who struggle to read, but all students—will benefit from the critical, evaluative, collaborative, and creative thinking activities in this book…. Bring It to Class offers a ‘how-to’ guide about new ways to educate that offer new results. It helps us develop the multiple, dynamic, and malleable literacies our students need. It is a guide on the uncharted waters of this flat world, one I’m glad to hold close.”