Boundary- and Border-Spanning Collaborations of Educators and Youths

Abstract

In this article, the authors report on what began as a series of rather desperate English teacher acts: The authors implemented a youth participatory action research photovoice research project with adolescents in a range of diverse communities that were united by young adults' detachment from their writing processes and products and from their literacy development. This intervention-oriented study had roots in notions of multimodal literacy and in recent scholarship that appealed to young adults' perspectives as valid data on teachers' and teacher educators' literacy pedagogies. This article details findings of these examinations of young adults' points of view on literacy and literacy education. It also introduces the notion that such explorations of literacy and literacy education might best be conducted by collaborations among boundary-spanning university- and school-based literacy teachers and teacher educators.