Grounded Literacy: a Longitudinal Study of Young People¿s Everyday Media Practices

Recent years have seen enormous interest in the nature of literacy within modern societies. Several studies have focused on the literacy practices of young children, but detailed longitudinal work with adolescents is relatively rare. This book attempts to understand the nature of young people¿s literacy through a cultural study of the media practices of a group of young people living in an English coastal town. The author was the students¿ teacher for two years preceding the project and visited them periodically over more than three years to conduct small-group interviews. Previous studies of young people¿s cultural practices have frequently focused on the use of specific media forms, such as television or information technology, at a specific point in time. This work focuses on the students¿ use over time of a range of media, including moving image, sound, print and ICT, arguing that the youngsters¿ practices should be viewed less as discrete competencies than as processes of multi-modal literacy. It will be of interest to educators, parents and everyone who wishes to grasp the nature of contemporary literacy.