Reading Online - New Literacies: Juxtaposing Traditional and Intermedial Literacies

Juxtaposing Traditional and Intermedial Literacies to Redefine the Competence of Struggling Adolescents

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In an earlier article in Reading Online (O’Brien, 2001, online document), I critiqued the notion of “at-riskness” in light of the new literacies or “new times” perspective on literacy (Luke & Elkins, 1998; Moje, Young, Readence, & Moore, 2000; Sefton-Green, 1998), and particularly of multiliteracies related to “struggling” adolescents’ work with media. The focus of the four-year project described in that article was twofold:

To collaborate with school-based colleagues Dave Stith and Rebecca Springs in constructing the Literacy Lab, a program based on multimedia inquiry projects designed for the lowest achieving readers in a comprehensive high school
To look at how work in that program redefined literate competencies as the students moved from print to “intermedial” environments (Semali & Watts Pailliotet, 1999)
Related Postings from the Archives

“At-Risk” Adolescents by David O’Brien
Image, Language, and Sound by Donna Alvermann et al.
The Role of Text in Classroom Learning by Suzanne Wade and Elizabeth Moje

Here I want to extend the earlier work. That first article took a perspective on redefining competence through the lenses of intermediality, creativity, and striving for representation in a world in which adolescents’ voices were usually muted. In this article, I will juxtapose and compare traditional print literacies with multiliteracies that construct and are constructed by media work in order to make the case that engagement with media redefines competence.

Framework and Guiding Question

Traditional, print-based perspectives on reading, writing, and text position adolescents who struggle with literacy tasks in school as illiterate, minimally functionally literate, and incompetent (O’Brien, 1998; O’Brien, Springs, & Stith, 2001). Instructional programs construct deficit profiles of these students, who are characterized as inept in areas such as decoding, fluency, and comprehension -- areas brought newly to the fore in the United States by the National Reading Panel report (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000, online document).

As a result of early identification, labeling, and prolonged placement in corrective programs, the stigmatized students develop early, profound, negative perceptions about their ability. The tragic irony is that we are so preoccupied with fixing deficit skills that we ignore this syndrome of diminished self-efficacy, attribution of failure to factors students perceive as being beyond their control, and learned helplessness (O’Brien & Dillon, 2002, online document)). The key question framing the more current perspective on competence explored in this article is How can we disrupt the cycle of disengagement and diminishing perceptions about ability through the use of media projects?

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Print Text to Media Texts: From Juxtaposition to Transition

Adolescents who disengage from print texts in school remain connected to more popular media texts. Media culture doesn’t merely reflect the broader culture in which it is played out; rather, it serves a cultural teaching and learning function and contributes to “social identity and socio-political values” (Nixon, 1998, p. 22). For example, popular media texts teach us how to understand power relations and dominant discourses (Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999; Kellner, 1995; Nixon). And the content and form of popular media culture also implicitly coaches us on how to act and assume role identities -- how to behave like boys and girls, for example, or men and women (Luke, 1997). Hence, one of the key issues in looking at kids’ use of media is to find out what they are learning from media outside of school, to understand how they view their identities as constructions of this cultural pedagogy and how this understanding relates to their school lives. A relatively underdeveloped aspect of this identity work is how the use of media can reframe the way students usually positioned as incompetent modify their identities of competence -- their abilities to tackle challenging tasks, and to persevere in engaging in future similar tasks.

I take a transitional approach to media literacies. We need to assume that new literacies build on traditional literacies (Leu, 2000, 2002). That is, if we, as teachers, start to make a transition from thinking about mostly single-text print-based literacies to the use of other media texts, we must find ways to ground our understanding of new literacies in assumptions related to print, especially when the new literacies change faster than we can keep up with them (Leu, 2002). What do we gain by making this transition? And how do we change our notions of assessment of literate competence? In the Table, 1 below, I illustrate a transition, going from left to right, from print literacies, through digital literacies (grounded in critical media literacy and media studies), to the merging of print and digital literacies. This transitional grid neither validates new practices by showing that they have the merits of traditional views nor attempts to equate new literacies with print literacy. Rather, I simply want to make the case that the same practices valued within traditional curricula are not only preserved but, in many cases, improved and enriched by the use of print with other media. And I want to do this as a precursor to looking at redefining competence by presenting some cases of adolescents from the Literacy Lab.

Table 1
Transitioning From Print Literacies to Digital Media Literacies

Practices, Traditional Print Literacies Practices, Digital Media Literacies Transitioning: Ways of Merging Print and Digital Media Literacies

· Critical reading:
Evaluating the source of information and judging authors’ motivations and purposes

· “Higher level” comprehension skills and strategies:
Drawing inferences from texts

· Evaluating audiences:
Thinking about how readers, as writers, judge the audience in composing a text

· Levels of reading and text structure:
Reading the text for literal understanding vs. reading the subtext (the text that isn’t explicit or that holds the meaning “behind” the text)

· Writing with an audience in mind:
Targeting an audience or anticipating an audience’s choices in pursuing a narrative structure or selecting types of information · Critical literacy:
“Reading” and writing as cultural practice
The ability to explore subcultural identities as portrayed in media, the ability to critique and re-represent the representation
Mediacy, the ability to create media texts (e.g., Semali & Watts Pailliotet, 1999)
Awareness and critique of how youth, as users and consumers of media, contribute to the construction of their own identities and develop agency in deciding which positions to assume (e.g., Alvermann et al., 1999)

· Media studies:
The ability to critique the media by engaging in literate activities to make sense of media texts and, hence, the world we live in (e.g., Livingstone, 2002); for example, how do TV or the Web portray adolescents? How do the respective media’s delivery methods and attention-getting capabilities work to shape the way the audience responds? What are our roles as audience and users of digital media?

· Globalization/marketing:
The ability to engage in multiliteracies connected to new capitalism (Gee, 2002) and the ways new technologies and networks work to shape global economic, political, and cultural life; for example, what types of images of youth do the global media create to commodify kids’ values, beliefs, leisure activities (e.g., Nixon, 1998)? How does marketing cause youth to reshape their own images of themselves to feed the global market? · Promoting the use of print text to explain or support the understanding of digital media (e.g., writing about pictures, writing about video clips to explain producers’ intentions and how images work to produce certain responses)

· Exploring and critiquing multiple types of representation (juxtaposition of pictures, video, print, using both print and visual representations to convey an idea; e.g., Semali & Watts Pailliotet, 1999)

· Inquiry projects:
Producing presentations from projects in which print text and media texts are used to explore popular culture topics imported into school as part of academic work
Doing research in the library or media center, doing research on the Web
Planning, storyboarding, and constructing multiple media text presentations that use media to critique media and to show how media constructs who we are

· Opportunities to position, spatially and in terms of relative cultural importance, print texts in relation to other media texts; for example, promoting books with Web-based advertising campaigns, promoting writing that results in Web-based publishing

Practices, Traditional Print Literacies	Practices, Digital Media Literacies	Transitioning: Ways of Merging Print and Digital Media Literacies
· Critical reading: Evaluating the source of information and judging authors’ motivations and purposes · “Higher level” comprehension skills and strategies: Drawing inferences from texts · Evaluating audiences: Thinking about how readers, as writers, judge the audience in composing a text · Levels of reading and text structure: Reading the text for literal understanding vs. reading the subtext (the text that isn’t explicit or that holds the meaning “behind” the text) · Writing with an audience in mind: Targeting an audience or anticipating an audience’s choices in pursuing a narrative structure or selecting types of information	· Critical literacy: “Reading” and writing as cultural practice The ability to explore subcultural identities as portrayed in media, the ability to critique and re-represent the representation Mediacy, the ability to create media texts (e.g., Semali & Watts Pailliotet, 1999) Awareness and critique of how youth, as users and consumers of media, contribute to the construction of their own identities and develop agency in deciding which positions to assume (e.g., Alvermann et al., 1999) · Media studies: The ability to critique the media by engaging in literate activities to make sense of media texts and, hence, the world we live in (e.g., Livingstone, 2002); for example, how do TV or the Web portray adolescents? How do the respective media’s delivery methods and attention-getting capabilities work to shape the way the audience responds? What are our roles as audience and users of digital media? · Globalization/marketing: The ability to engage in multiliteracies connected to new capitalism (Gee, 2002) and the ways new technologies and networks work to shape global economic, political, and cultural life; for example, what types of images of youth do the global media create to commodify kids’ values, beliefs, leisure activities (e.g., Nixon, 1998)? How does marketing cause youth to reshape their own images of themselves to feed the global market?	· Promoting the use of print text to explain or support the understanding of digital media (e.g., writing about pictures, writing about video clips to explain producers’ intentions and how images work to produce certain responses) · Exploring and critiquing multiple types of representation (juxtaposition of pictures, video, print, using both print and visual representations to convey an idea; e.g., Semali & Watts Pailliotet, 1999) · Inquiry projects: Producing presentations from projects in which print text and media texts are used to explore popular culture topics imported into school as part of academic work Doing research in the library or media center, doing research on the Web Planning, storyboarding, and constructing multiple media text presentations that use media to critique media and to show how media constructs who we are · Opportunities to position, spatially and in terms of relative cultural importance, print texts in relation to other media texts; for example, promoting books with Web-based advertising campaigns, promoting writing that results in Web-based publishing

Space constraints preclude discussing the finer points of why kids who would be classified as incompetent with literacies in column 1 and who engage in digital literacies in column 2 via activities that merge print and digital literacies in column 3 would change their perceptions about their abilities. However, below I present three minicases (considerably pared down from the academic and life histories constructed in the larger O’Brien, 1998, and O’Brien, Springs, & Stith, 2001, study) to illustrate.

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Cases From the Literacy Lab

Greg: An Academic History of Disengagement

In the fall of his first year in the Literacy Lab, Greg, a tenth-grade student who was diagnosed as having a learning disability, scored at grade equivalent 1.8 on the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT) and was rated at less than 50% comprehension in content reading inventories designed for four subject areas (English, math, social studies, and science). During academic history interviews, Greg related that he had been disengaged and negative about school from the early middle grades. He expressed a lot of resentment about the way he perceived he had been treated by teachers and other “insensitive” students.

After three years in the Literacy Lab his actual reading ability, as indicated by standardized tests and content reading inventories, went up about 2 grade equivalents. In short, he made modest gains. He was reading more, writing more, and sharing his writing with teachers. Greg himself estimated that his reading level had risen about four grade equivalents, evidence of his improved perception about his ability.

In spite of his low academic profile, Greg had lots of interests, and the lab provided the climate and structure he needed to become engaged in writing about topics that fit those interests. For example, he worked with lab partners for weeks writing a narrative for a multimedia project on vampires, and he wrote extensive stores about space heroes and heroines, mimicking comic book genres. He really liked to learn various technology tools and he became proficient at the ones he used often. He was adept at using scanning hardware and software and photo editing software. He was constantly excited about the media projects and would give the teachers almost daily updates on his progress.

Andy: Capitalizing on Choice and Interests

In the fall of his first year in the Literacy Lab, Andy, another student who had been diagnosed as having a learning disability, scored at beginning second grade on the SDRT. He coped with difficult school tasks by visiting with friends and wandering around from workstation to workstation to socialize. Like Greg and other peers, Andy had lots of interests, but he was particularly interested in football. Andy was infatuated with Jim Harbaugh, then quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts professional football team. He and a partner, Ron, constructed a project plan to do a website about Harbaugh.

Andy was trying to learn SuperCard, a challenging media-authoring tool. Not only did he learn how to use the application by trying menus and using the documentation, he and Ron planned and storyboarded the website. They then gathered a variety of media, including scans of pictures of Harbaugh (one from the cover of Indianapolis Monthly magazine). They wrote text after researching stories about Harbaugh, and they captured video clips from taped Colts’ games and video documentaries in which Harbaugh appeared.

Andy was totally engaged in the project for four weeks. He was so excited during the webpage construction that the teachers in the lab could often hear him shouting out, “Hey look at this!” as he mastered new options on the software. Largely due to increased engagement with these media projects, Andy’s reading achievement increased about two grade equivalents, but the most important change was his increased willingness to engage in projects.

Kim: Motivation and Engagement in Popular Culture

Kim was unlike Greg and Andy. Her achievement profile was more typical of kids who are classified as “capable but unmotivated.” She tolerated school, including the Literacy Lab. She worked when repeatedly coaxed, but only for limited periods. Kim was doing time, just trying to make each day bearable. She was about two grade levels behind her peers -- not a serious lag, and easily attributable to her lack of interest in reading and the little practice she had had over the years.

One day Dave Stith, one of the teachers in the lab, talked with her about a possible media project. The conversation led to music. As it turned out, she was quite a fan of the Grateful Dead, a band introduced to her via her parents’ music collection. Kim became more interested in the Dead, their music and their history, following the death of band leader Jerry Garcia. For weeks, Kim read about the band in Rolling Stone and other music publications. More than anything else, however, she became fascinated with images of the band. She scanned in pictures of Garcia working with the band and relaxing at home. She found all of the symbols used by the band and inserted those into various parts of what began as a “report” but evolved into a media montage. One day when we were videotaping various projects, she presented some of her work, talking very passionately about the band and its music and enthusiastically explaining how she used various hardware and software to create the project.

As might be expected, Kim showed modest achievement gains because her profile showed little actual deficit. However, the connection she made to music and other media texts motivated her to work on projects and changed her overall attitude toward the Literacy Lab.

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Transference of Competence

Greg, Andy, and Kim, along with many others in the Literacy Lab who spent most of their time engaged in inquiry projects, improved their achievement in print literacy, as indicated by both standardized assessments and informal measures. But why did this sort of transference of competence from digital media to print literacy occur? The likely answer is that kids who chose to work on projects were engaged, and the engaged practice led to increased fluency and the development of strategies, self-efficacy, confidence, and self-regulation not experienced in years of struggling with print literacies.

I decided to construct an engagement profile to explain why kids who normally disengage from print tasks find digital media work motivating and engaging. One of the most powerful constructs from motivation research is the significance of learners’ perceptions or beliefs about their abilities. Thes beliefs relate to the value they place on various disciplines and tasks within those disciplines (Anderman, Eccles, Yoon, Roeser, Wigfield, & Blumenfeld, 2001; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996; Weiner, 1992; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).

In Table 2, I summarize some dimensions of an important construct, attribution. Attribution is a person’s belief about causes of outcomes -- that is, to what does one attribute a personal success or failure? Attribution contributes to how one answers the question, “Why am I engaging in this task?” or “Should I continue to work on this?” (Alderman, 1999). The columns in the table contrast the negative experiences the struggling readers in the Literacy Lab experienced in typical print-centered environments with positive media-authoring experiences. Experiences are organized around four key dimensions of attribution: ability, effort, task difficulty, and strategies. I refer to Greg, Andy, and Kim as examples to clarify how the construct of attribution works.

Table 2
Contrasts in Attribution Dimensions Between Struggling Readers’ Experiences With Print and Digital Media

Dimension How It Plays Out in Traditional Print Environments How It Plays Out in Digital Media Work in the Literacy Lab

Ability Ability is recognized early as a factor to which kids attribute success or lack of success in reading. It is viewed as internal, stable, and out of their control. This attribution leads to learned helplessness: Because struggling readers lack ability and see it as stable and out of their control, they disengage -- they give up. Greg, Andy, and Kim assessed the relation between their perceived ability and effort with reference to typical print tasks. Since they had been unsuccessful with print, they believed they lacked the ability to read and understand print. However, in the Literacy Lab, they viewed ability, in terms of competence with media-authoring software, as changeable and within their control. Since they saw improved ability as they worked on tasks, they decided to persevere.

Effort Success or failure can be attributed to effort in mastery-oriented tasks (meeting one’s goals) rather than performance or ego-oriented tasks (performing to an externally imposed standard, such as those expected in tests or by being compared to others’ performance) (Nicholls, Cheung, Lauer, & Patashnick, 1989). In mastery tasks, effort can be perceived as related to self-improvement: If you try, you see results and improved competence. Generally, the learning mastery orientation seems to promote a more positive ability belief, which improves the likelihood of engaging in an activity and in more help-seeking behavior. However, performance or ego-oriented tasks are more typical. Greg worked hard on stories about topics of interest; the more effort he exerted, the more competent he felt, and his perception about his ability exceeded his actual achievement. Andy was engaged because through effort, he learned to use a tool (SuperCard) that continued to respond to his perseverance. This success, coupled with his interest in the topic (Jim Harbaugh) kept him working. Kim was simply not interested in schoolwork, in schooled literacy. But when she found a topic tied to popular media that was important to her, she could see daily progress on her documentary and enjoyed how the montage text was evolving as she worked -- she liked the evolving project and saw a payoff from her efforts.

Task difficulty Like ability, task difficulty is typically given by kids as a reason for success or failure. Tasks are viewed as relatively stable and beyond the learner’s control. For example, tasks are typically constructed by teachers and textbook publishers for a sort of generic learner at a certain developmental level. Perception of task difficulty is inextricably linked to attribution of effort or ability. If the task is perceived to be too difficult, based on past performance in meeting academic goals, then students attribute failure to lack of ability on tasks that are too difficult. In English class, Greg read assigned stories he had trouble understanding. In the Literacy Lab, the assignment broadly defined the task as writing something you chose as interesting. Greg spent time selecting topics that he wrote about, and he read his own writing. From this, Greg could construct a doable task and viewed his success as attributable to effort.

Andy avoided most typical literacy tasks (e.g., reading assigned stories, writing reports). However, in the Literacy Lab he could choose the topic (Jim Harbaugh), the way he approached the task (SuperCard stacks), and the final outcome (a webpage). The task of constructing the webpage he perceived as challenging but within his control -- that is, picking the topic and medium and realizing he was learning new strategies with the software gave him control over the difficulty with reference to his choices.

Kim viewed reading as sitting and staring at print while wishing she could just be done with assignments. This perception of herself as having little autonomy made tasks so tedious as sometimes to be impossible. In the Literacy Lab, the task difficulty evolved. She started doing a report but later constructed the task as the creation of media montage, which included creative use of fonts intermingled with scanned images. Instead of the task being viewed as a stable entity assigned to her, Kim viewed both the task and product as her own -- which improved her perception about her ability to engage in the work.

Strategies Unlike the dimensions of ability, effort, and task, strategies are not typically mentioned by students as a reason for success of failure. With print tasks, children tend to believe that they either have the ability or lack the ability to read. Struggling students are less likely than more competent peers to have strategies for tackling words, using cues above the word level, or regulating their cognitive processing to make sense of print texts (Pressley, 1998). The task of dealing with print is perceived as being more stable than it really is. Therefore, the likelihood of someone thinking about, and making explicit, various strategies for making sense out of individual words and connected text is slim. With media work, the key attributions of failure due to lack of ability or task difficulty is shifted. The tasks, which have more flexibility, give the learners a sense that ability is less stable and more dependent on specific strategies. For example, students believe they have strategies for learning incremental steps in producing media texts. The tasks of media authoring and reading multimedia texts are more complex than reading and writing print, but they are also more conducive to self-efficacy. At any given point, authors of media texts can select a form of representation; they can choose or develop strategies for constructing meaning by juxtaposing or hyperlinking media forms; and they can choose various tools within an application to lead to a desired outcome.

Greg developed the strategy of writing and then using peer input to refine his texts. He and his coauthors would read the text simultaneously or alternately and critique the text as it unfolded. Greg also sought help frequently from the preservice teacher candidates working in the Literacy Lab as part of their field experiences.

Andy developed a sort of hit-and-miss, hit-and-succeed method of using SuperCard. He realized that the more he used the software menus and figured out the logic, the better he got at predicting where to find the right tools to do what he wanted.

Kim, who didn’t like to work on “reports,” developed a strategy of working on the aesthetics of the text and spending more time on how the interesting fonts and symbols interacted with pictures of Jerry Garcia and the band. However, she read and reread the text through the process to make sure the storyline matched her scanned pictures.

Dimension	How It Plays Out in Traditional Print Environments	How It Plays Out in Digital Media Work in the Literacy Lab
Ability	Ability is recognized early as a factor to which kids attribute success or lack of success in reading. It is viewed as internal, stable, and out of their control. This attribution leads to learned helplessness: Because struggling readers lack ability and see it as stable and out of their control, they disengage -- they give up.	Greg, Andy, and Kim assessed the relation between their perceived ability and effort with reference to typical print tasks. Since they had been unsuccessful with print, they believed they lacked the ability to read and understand print. However, in the Literacy Lab, they viewed ability, in terms of competence with media-authoring software, as changeable and within their control. Since they saw improved ability as they worked on tasks, they decided to persevere.
Effort	Success or failure can be attributed to effort in mastery-oriented tasks (meeting one’s goals) rather than performance or ego-oriented tasks (performing to an externally imposed standard, such as those expected in tests or by being compared to others’ performance) (Nicholls, Cheung, Lauer, & Patashnick, 1989). In mastery tasks, effort can be perceived as related to self-improvement: If you try, you see results and improved competence. Generally, the learning mastery orientation seems to promote a more positive ability belief, which improves the likelihood of engaging in an activity and in more help-seeking behavior. However, performance or ego-oriented tasks are more typical.	Greg worked hard on stories about topics of interest; the more effort he exerted, the more competent he felt, and his perception about his ability exceeded his actual achievement. Andy was engaged because through effort, he learned to use a tool (SuperCard) that continued to respond to his perseverance. This success, coupled with his interest in the topic (Jim Harbaugh) kept him working. Kim was simply not interested in schoolwork, in schooled literacy. But when she found a topic tied to popular media that was important to her, she could see daily progress on her documentary and enjoyed how the montage text was evolving as she worked -- she liked the evolving project and saw a payoff from her efforts.
Task difficulty	Like ability, task difficulty is typically given by kids as a reason for success or failure. Tasks are viewed as relatively stable and beyond the learner’s control. For example, tasks are typically constructed by teachers and textbook publishers for a sort of generic learner at a certain developmental level. Perception of task difficulty is inextricably linked to attribution of effort or ability. If the task is perceived to be too difficult, based on past performance in meeting academic goals, then students attribute failure to lack of ability on tasks that are too difficult.	In English class, Greg read assigned stories he had trouble understanding. In the Literacy Lab, the assignment broadly defined the task as writing something you chose as interesting. Greg spent time selecting topics that he wrote about, and he read his own writing. From this, Greg could construct a doable task and viewed his success as attributable to effort. Andy avoided most typical literacy tasks (e.g., reading assigned stories, writing reports). However, in the Literacy Lab he could choose the topic (Jim Harbaugh), the way he approached the task (SuperCard stacks), and the final outcome (a webpage). The task of constructing the webpage he perceived as challenging but within his control -- that is, picking the topic and medium and realizing he was learning new strategies with the software gave him control over the difficulty with reference to his choices. Kim viewed reading as sitting and staring at print while wishing she could just be done with assignments. This perception of herself as having little autonomy made tasks so tedious as sometimes to be impossible. In the Literacy Lab, the task difficulty evolved. She started doing a report but later constructed the task as the creation of media montage, which included creative use of fonts intermingled with scanned images. Instead of the task being viewed as a stable entity assigned to her, Kim viewed both the task and product as her own -- which improved her perception about her ability to engage in the work.
Strategies	Unlike the dimensions of ability, effort, and task, strategies are not typically mentioned by students as a reason for success of failure. With print tasks, children tend to believe that they either have the ability or lack the ability to read. Struggling students are less likely than more competent peers to have strategies for tackling words, using cues above the word level, or regulating their cognitive processing to make sense of print texts (Pressley, 1998). The task of dealing with print is perceived as being more stable than it really is. Therefore, the likelihood of someone thinking about, and making explicit, various strategies for making sense out of individual words and connected text is slim.	With media work, the key attributions of failure due to lack of ability or task difficulty is shifted. The tasks, which have more flexibility, give the learners a sense that ability is less stable and more dependent on specific strategies. For example, students believe they have strategies for learning incremental steps in producing media texts. The tasks of media authoring and reading multimedia texts are more complex than reading and writing print, but they are also more conducive to self-efficacy. At any given point, authors of media texts can select a form of representation; they can choose or develop strategies for constructing meaning by juxtaposing or hyperlinking media forms; and they can choose various tools within an application to lead to a desired outcome. Greg developed the strategy of writing and then using peer input to refine his texts. He and his coauthors would read the text simultaneously or alternately and critique the text as it unfolded. Greg also sought help frequently from the preservice teacher candidates working in the Literacy Lab as part of their field experiences. Andy developed a sort of hit-and-miss, hit-and-succeed method of using SuperCard. He realized that the more he used the software menus and figured out the logic, the better he got at predicting where to find the right tools to do what he wanted. Kim, who didn’t like to work on “reports,” developed a strategy of working on the aesthetics of the text and spending more time on how the interesting fonts and symbols interacted with pictures of Jerry Garcia and the band. However, she read and reread the text through the process to make sure the storyline matched her scanned pictures.

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Implications for Instruction and Assessment

Greg, Andy, and Kim, based on traditional assessments from print literacy, could be portrayed as struggling: Greg and Andy because their achievement profiles showed that they were lagging behind their peers, and Kim because she was unmotivated and disengaged from most literacy tasks. Not long ago they were considered “remedial” kids. But based on their work with digital media, they are engaged and competent. The contrast in how these kids and their peers in the Literacy are positioned within the dominant print-based curriculum and how they are repositioned and reposition themselves as capable, interested students is compelling.

From the point of view of curriculum design, it makes sense to provide opportunities for these “at-risk” or “struggling” students to explore topics of interest through the use of, and with inquiry into, popular media. The use of technology tools to make the media work possible is also motivating, since it improves the students’ perceptions about their competence. As we move forward and accept these new hybrid forms, we will have to adjust the beliefs about literacy, text, literature, reading, and writing that are grounded historically within the field of English and language arts teaching and learning.

From both engagement and curriculum design perspectives it is imperative that we define what is engaging about the media projects and figure out assessments to accompany student learning and reassess literate competence. The work in the Literacy Lab is based on the premise that we are increasingly moving toward the use of nonprint media and hybrid literacy forms that include both print and visual expression, and that we will never return to the classic notion of literacy based only in print (Stroupe, 2000). We talk a lot about the necessity of bringing curricula and assessment up to date to address the emerging and rapidly changing new literacies; we acknowledge that schools are lagging behind the experiences adolescents have in the media sphere outside of school; we admit that we are failing to address in schools the new critical literacies kids need to use tools like the Internet. Nevertheless, even though we are definitely transitioning to “new times,” print still dominates, single texts are still the primary artifact of instruction in most content disciplines, and struggling learners’ competence is still defined by their facility with print.

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References

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About the Author

portrait of David O'Brien David O’Brien has been a junior high reading teacher, a Title I teacher and project director, and a high school teacher-researcher with at-risk students. He is currently a professor of literacy education at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA, where he teaches literacy and qualitative research courses. His recent work focuses on how “at-risk” or “struggling” adolescent learners become disengaged from literacy participation in school and examines ways these students can be motivated to engage in literacy tasks. Most recently, he has constructed frameworks for defining struggling learners’ literate competence in media-rich environments. David O’Brien can be contacted at dobrien@umn.edu.
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Citation: O’Brien, D. (2003, March). Juxtaposing traditional and intermedial literacies to redefine the competence of struggling adolescents. Reading Online, 6(7). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=obrien2/