Adolescent Literacy (HER Reprint Series)

Adolescent Literacy initially appeared as a special issue of the Harvard Educational Review. It explores key issues and debates in the adolescent literacy crisis, the popular use of cognitive strategies, and disciplinary and content-area literacy. Also examined are alternative forms of literacy, afterschool interventions, new instruction models for African American males, and the experiences of educators.

Jacy Ippolito (EdD, Language and Literacy, Harvard University) is an assistant professor in the Adolescent Education and Leadership Department of the School of Education at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts. His recent research and teaching focus on the intersection of adolescent literacy, literacy coaching, teacher leadership, and school reform. He is specifically interested in the roles that teacher leaders, principals, and literacy coaches play in helping institute and maintain instructional change at middle and high school levels. Dr. Ippolito’s work has appeared recently in Best Practices of Literacy Leaders, The Elementary School Journal, TheCEDER Yearbook published by the Texas A&M University Corpus Christi’s College of Education, the Harvard Educational Review, and the Massachusetts Reading Association’s Primer.

Jennifer L. Steele (EdD, Administration, Planning, and Social Policy, Harvard University) is a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation in Washington, DC, where she studies teacher quality, education reform, and data-based decision making in schools. Her recent research includes a study of charter and traditional schools’ policies and practices in post-Katrina New Orleans, a multistate study of veterans’ access to education benefits on college campuses, a project to develop educational technology usage indicators, and several studies examining the distribution of effective and academically talented teachers. Dr. Steele’s work has appeared in such publications as Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Teachers College Record, and The Future of Children.

Jennifer F. Samson (EdD, Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University) is an assistant professor in the graduate program in learning disabilities at Hunter College, City University of New York. Dr. Samson studies teachers of students at risk for reading difficulties due to disability, language minority status, and low socioeconomic status. Her previous work includes a nationally representative study of disproportionality in special education, longitudinal studies of reading development, and a report on teacher quality for language minority students in the United States. Her research has been published in the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Teaching Exceptional Children, and Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal.