Literacy Matters: Writing and Reading the Social Self (Language and Literacy Series) - Softcover

Yagelski, Robert P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807738921 ISBN 13: 9780807738924

Publisher: Teachers College Press, 1999

Synopsis

Literacy can empower students, but it may also limit their understanding if taught without regard for the context of their lives. Using his encounters with students―in high school, college, and state prison classrooms―as well as his own experience, Robert Yagelski looks at the sometimes ambiguous role of literacy in our lives and examines the mismatch between conventional approaches to teaching literacy and the literacy needs of students in a rapidly changing, increasingly technological world. He asserts that ultimately, the most important job of the English teacher is to reveal to students ways they can participate in the discourse that shapes their lives, and he offers a timely look at how technology has influenced the way we write and read.

The scope of this fascinating book reaches beyond the classroom and offers insight about what it means to be “literate” in an economically driven, dynamic society. Addressing earlier works on the subject of literacy, as well as the ideas of theorists such as Foucault, this perceptive work has much to offer educators and anyone seeking to understand the nature of literacy itself.

About this title

About the Author

Robert P. Yagelski is Associate Vice Provost and Director of the Program in Writing & Critical Inquiry at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, where he also teaches courses in writing, composition theory and pedagogy, critical pedagogy, and qualitative research methods and helps prepare secondary school teachers. Considered a leading voice in composition theory, Professor Yagelski is widely published in the major journals in the field. He is also director of the Capital District Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, and former director of the SUNY-Albany Writing Center. He earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from The Ohio State University.

Review

“Deeply grounded in the real life literacy acts of individuals, Literacy Matters offers a refreshing alternative to some of the professional jargon that has come to characterize the dominant ideologies in classrooms. . . . Yagelski’s stories offer concrete suggestions to make literacy matter to students and teachers and prisoners and all who might find a way to give voice to their individual lives through local acts of literacy.”

―Margaret Finders, Purdue University

“Yagelski helps us see that literacy in all its complexity is not just a means to something else―whether the refinement of taste, personal growth, job mobility, the practice of citizenship―but is itself a sufficient center for secondary and postsecondary studies. To my mind, the major contribution of Literacy Matters is Yagelski’s argument for a curriculum and pedagogy that explore the ambivalent and powerful role that literacy plays in all of our lives.”

―John Trimbur, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Edition details

• Publisher: Teachers College Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807738921
• ISBN 13: 9780807738924
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240