Significant Texts and Generational Trends: Late Teens' Memories of Valued Literacy Learning in the Digital Age

In the past thirty years, new technologies and communication systems have shaped social practices, literacy learning, and ways of interacting with texts in profound ways. However, scholarship in the dawn of the digital age neglects large-scale glimpses of people's important literacy memories. Deborah Brandt's (2001) influential Literacy in American Lives remains a unique model of holistic inquiry into the significant experiences and range of texts generational cohorts hold as most meaningful to their lives. This dissertation study built on Brandt's approach to explore the key moments that occur to first-year college students as they reflect on the texts that influenced them strongly during their primary and secondary grades-- including digital, print, and oral texts. Methods included surveying and interviewing first-year students at the University of Wyoming. Article 1 presents the findings from survey and interview data for students' important texts and the contexts and people who played a role in their engagement. Three types of texts emerged as particularly important to this generation of late teens: heirloom, through-line, and generational marker texts. Article 2 offers a conceptual model of social media literacies based on teens' descriptions of their encounters with social media during middle and high school. Both articles help teachers, literacy scholars, librarians, and parents gain critical insight into late teens' memories of significant texts and avenues for supporting their literacy learning. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]