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In this semester-long study in a high school English class that was online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a class of ninth graders engaged in communication with people outside of their classroom about their collectively chosen project topic: racism. The transliteracies framework was used to explore students’ participation in multimodal events and texts, as well as the teacher and students’ views of the projects. This study helps to complicate, contribute to, expand, and bring together the related pedagogies of youth participatory action research (YPAR) and critical literacy. More specifically, the findings of this qualitative study were that students used a variety of transliteracies practices to move with and against the projects. Self love and skepticism were themes that emerged and deepened the projects, while the teacher grappled with issues of control, legitimacy, and representation. More research and collaborative practice is needed that explores limitations and the role of emergence in YPAR.

Early reactions suggest that secondary teachers need support implementing the Common Core State Standards, specifically when teaching close reading strategies with complex disciplinary texts to vulnerable readers. This mixed-methods study conducted in a formative experiment paradigm (Reinking & Bradley, 2008) aimed to provide explanatory theories generated by applying a grounded theory approach to data analysis. An ethnographic case study design framed the grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and the formative experiment. I wanted to understand how two teachers adjusted their curriculum and instruction to create a more rigorous experience for vulnerable readers. I also sought to explore how such an approach affected the academic identities of these students. Teacher surveys, teacher interviews, student interviews, student surveys, student work, reading assessments, classroom observations, and teacher planning sessions provided evidence about how readers in two classrooms make sense of text and the strategies that support their comprehension and engagement during two curricular units that involve close reading of disciplinary texts. The units were used by students in two Special Day English classrooms at two different school sites and were co-designed by each high school teacher and myself. Reflections upon the first curricular unit informed the planning for the second curricular unit in each class. Also, I followed three students into at least one of their other disciplinary classes to understand their experiences with discipline-specific literacy instruction, both in the language arts and their disciplinary classes. Finally, I interviewed students about their in-school and out-of-school literacy practices, again to look for evidence of transfer from the units to their everyday repertoire of practices. Results indicate that both teachers, as they implemented the collaboratively planned lessons, asked predominantly open-ended questions that expected students to include textual evidence in their responses and did not have predetermined answers. This behavior was contrary to what I expected at the beginning of my study because I expected teachers might have predetermined answers. When responding to each teacher’s instruction, students referenced the text in supporting the claims they developed on their own. In both classrooms, some of the students’ academic identities improved during the study. All students reported rich relationships with text outside of school; however, only some students experienced success with reading complex disciplinary text in their English class. Overall findings suggest a positive effect of open-ended tasks that require students reference both the text and the knowledge that they bring to the task in forming arguments and applying understandings gained while reading. Future studies including a greater number of teachers from a range of disciplines who implement instruction with more students over a longer period of time would be beneficial in developing a more robust database about the power and influence of close reading practices.

Close reading is an enigmatic term with a simple definition: special attention to texts. Key shifts in the Common Core State Standards have led to a renewed interest about close reading instruction among researchers and practitioners of K-12 education. Close reading is particularly salient in secondary settings, where calls to raise text difficulty and increase literacy instruction in the disciplines have placed new demands on middle and high school teachers. But even though close reading is now widespread in secondary classrooms, there is very little research to date on close reading instruction. As such we still do not know how these practices will affect students’ reading skills and motivation.In this dissertation, I offer three article-length contributions to the research base on secondary close reading instruction. First, I synthesize practice-based research on close reading instruction with the aim of identifying best practices for close reading in secondary classrooms. I then present two empirical articles that address gaps in the research literature on adolescent close reading instruction.In chapter 1, previously published in Adolescent Literacies: A Handbook of Practice-Based Research, P. David Pearson and I offer a vision for a 21st-century close reading pedagogy. This vision was influenced by a historical account of close reading’s place in adolescent classrooms over the past 75 years and a review of research on secondary close reading instruction. We argue that a 21st-century close reading pedagogy must encompass considerations of the reader and his or her sociocultural contexts, accept digital and everyday texts as candidates for close readings, and include purposes for reading beyond knowledge building. In light of these goals, we suggest five principles of adolescent close reading instruction: background knowledge, authentic reading and writing, metadiscursive awareness, critical literacy, and dialogically organized discussion.In chapter 2, I draw on the principles of close reading instruction outlined in chapter 1 to co-design tests of close reading instruction with a high school chemistry teacher. In this formative experiment, I tested the effect of background knowledge activation on amount and types of questions written about a scientific article; I also tested whether allowing students to choose texts to read about a scientific issue affected the amount of information written on that topic and their motivation to read. In a challenge to Common-Core-era recommendations that background knowledge should be held at bay when closely reading texts, I found that students who had their background knowledge activated with pre-reading activities prior to closely reading an article wrote more argument-generating questions than students who did not engage in pre-reading activities. I also argue that students who were able to choose a text to read closely about a scientific topic online recorded as much accurate information about that topic as students who were assigned a text to read by their teacher.In chapter 3, I explore an understudied area of close reading instruction: students’ everyday digital close reading practices. This article is an ethnographic case study of students’ out-of-school digital close readings and their teachers’ approach to digital close reading instruction in the classroom. By comparing these two realms through the lens of cultural historical activity theory, I am able to surface tensions and synergies that may lead to recommendations for close reading instruction that leverages students’ existing funds of knowledge about digital literacies. Specifically, I found that when teachers designed digital close reading instruction in the service of promoting student-directed learning, it aligned well with students’ goals when they performed everyday close readings of digital texts at home.Together, these three chapters suggest new directions for adolescent close reading instruction and research. In chapter 4, I synthesize across the three articles to highlight common themes and conclude with ideas for future research and lingering questions about the nature of close reading.

This dissertation examines the identities of "marginalized" adolescents as they engage in literacy-based activities. Using ethnographic and qualitative research methods (including surveys/questionnaires, audio recorded interviews, video recorded observations, classroom artifacts, and observational notes), a multi-case study occurred over six months. The study took place at South Bay High, a small public charter school, located in a poor and working class neighborhood of major city in Northern California, serving non-dominant youth. Twenty two juniors, and of these, six focal participants, elected to participate in the study, which took place in their English 11 class. The study utilizes socio-cultural theories of learning and identity, transactional theories of pedagogy, and applies figured worlds and positional identity theory in its analysis. This work is in conversation with a growing genre of scholarship referred to as literacy and identity studies (Moje, 2009). The relative fragility and durability of a student's academic identity is considered. In addition to examining individual identities, this work also takes up the collective classroom identity as a site for examination. By taking into account local histories of cultural and social contextual matters, and by examining classroom culture (i.e., norms, discourses, routines), the classroom studied offers the first case studied. Specifically, I consider the effect of ideologically divergent approaches to literacy instruction on the academic identities of the collective.Adolescence is a time when young people are in search of narratives and discourses to offer understandings of the past, security in the present, and imagined trajectories towards the future. How one comes to see oneself (and one's future) is often determined by the narratives made available - from peers, media, families, schools, and other institutions. Non-dominant youth have less access to identity resources imbued with social and academic capital from which to construct identities or imagined futures. The second findings chapter follows the focal participants as they take up literacy-based resources as they engage in processes of authoring the self.The figured world of the high school classroom has a limited amount of roles for students to occupy. Often students are labeled and treated in ways that position them on a relative scale of academic potential and social behavior. Once students become positioned in particular ways (i.e., as the class clown, teacher's pet, slacker) they often accept these positionings and come to define themselves in relatively fixed terms. However, in an ELA class, literacy can serve as a medium for students to "try on" identities not always available to them in other spaces. The third findings chapter looks at how focal participants were positioned and at the positioning events that serves to either solidify or disrupt seemingly fixed identities.Implications of the study include: Instructional practices that treat ELA classrooms as spaces for interpretations not only of texts but also in ways that provide insights into students own lives. An examination of the multiple competing forces present in classrooms, from federal and state-mandated testing to the teacher's pedagogical stance, illustrates the complexity of classroom spaces, particularly in classrooms for students who have traditionally been underserved by schooling as an institution. The need to examine the spectrum of diversity among non-dominant youth so that young people are not further reduced or essentialized by progressive instructional methods is also considered.

Effective classroom instruction is a critical element to improving outcomes for low performing students and optimizing the effectiveness of multi-tiered systems. Middle school is a particularly important area to address in improving classroom literacy instruction as it becomes a place where students learn skills that allow them to transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." Professional development literature has suggested some effectiveness with the use of coaching, but study results have been mixed. One potential solution is the inclusion of a consultation with performance feedback model into the professional development process. This study proposed to examine to what extent instructional consultation with performance feedback increases teacher behavior in implementing targeted elements of quality instruction as well as student engagement and literacy skill acquisition. Teachers from 6th, 7th, and 8th grades at an urban middle school took part in instructional consultation with weekly performance feedback. Observations were conducted and single case design with combined concurrent and non-concurrent multiple baseline was utilized to determine treatment effect. Results indicated an effect on use of random response in instruction and an overall increase in student engagement. Implications for these findings are discussed as they relate to the consultation literature and practical applications for school psychologists.

Books written for teenagers portray the lives of young people and frequently include depictions of teenagers as readers and writers. From brief mentions of writing to elaborate descriptions of reading, the representations of literacy practices contained in works of young adult literature (YAL) oftentimes bid readers to take notice. This dissertation examines representations of literacy practices in YAL and investigates the meanings that adolescent readers ascribe to them.Through analyzing a set of forty-seven award-winning texts written specifically for adolescents and through convening a book group with high school students, this two-phase research study brings together literacy, literature, and adolescents. In the first phase of the study, each reference to print included in the set of YAL was coded and used to map the range of literacy practices represented in the books. Four types of representations emerged, each functioning differently in the narratives and each providing different information about reading and writing: (a) mentions are short references to literate activities; (b) descriptions are more elaborated and detailed depictions of literacy practices; (c) constitutive events are portrayals of reading and writing that serve as turning points in the narrative and that bring forth literacy as a part of life; and (d) extended articulations are representations of writing and reading that extend across and throughout texts, driving the stories and animating lives that include literacy.With these types of representations forming an analytical framework, the study then explored the literate identities of the characters in the books in more depth, attending especially to connections between literacy practices and adolescence. At the transition from childhood to adulthood, the adolescent characters' many identities are in transition and their literate identities are likewise in flux. Further their identities as readers and writers intersect other identity work that they do. In the second phase of the study, eight teenagers read books from the set of YAL used in the first phase, explicitly focusing on the books' representations of literacy practices. Drawing from interviews, surveys, and discussions, the research reveals ways in which the participants understood the reading and writing depicted in the books. As the teenagers interpret the activities of represented readers and writers, they identify with the characters and negotiate and display their own literate identities.