Why Bother Theorizing Online Literacies?

Donna E. Alvermann (2008) Why Bother Theorizing Adolescents’ Online Literacies for Classroom Practice and Research? Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52(1) September 2008

Teachers, teacher educators, and researchers cannot turn their backs on the inevitable. When school work is deemed relevant and worthwhile, when opportunities exist for students to reinvent themselves as competent learners (even rewrite their social identities), then literacy instruction is both possible and welcomed. But theorizing adolescents’ penchant for creating online content is merely a start—half the task. The other half involves asking the young people whom we teach, conduct research on and with, and teach about in our teacher education classes for their input into how, or for that matter whether, their online literacies should be embraced in the regular curriculum. As Kirkland so deftly reminded us, “The work of [literacy] instruction [is] as much about listening and learning as it is about telling and teaching”

Read Full Text