The Struggle for Literacy offers an innovative orientation to media education, literacy, media production, and analysis as modes of teaching and inquiry related to students labelled “at-risk.” One of the characterizations of these students is that they possess low literacy levels. These characterizations largely result from assessment practices based almost exclusively on the ability to generate certain forms of print texts. Because these students are not successful in these contexts, assumptions are made regarding their intellectual abilities.

The chapters in this book address traditional, methodological, interpretive, social, and media issues that are inherent in literary practices in classroom settings. At the same time, the chapters provide creative, practical, and tried non-traditional approaches that consider literary practices with an expanded notion of literacy. This book provides both a conceptual and practical bearing on areas such as English language arts methods, multi-media, video production, media text analysis, collaborative learning, and more. The struggle for literacy is one that can often be resolved in unexpected ways.

Irving Lee Rother, PhD, is an award-winning English language arts media education expert with more than 30 years’ experience teaching, consulting, and designing curriculum at the school, university, and provincial levels. Dr. Rother has lectured at McGill University, Bishop’s University, and the University of Hong Kong.

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