Journal of Research in Reading, ISSN 0141-0423Volume 24, Issue 3, 2001, pp 235±247High school students' literacypractices and identities, and thefigured world of schoolWendy Luttrell and Caroline ParkerHarvard Graduate School of EducationABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that American teenagers do not read or write ± that theyare a media-driven group who prefer movies, television and playing video games.Ethnographic data gathered in the High School Literacy Project, a study of fourNorth Carolina high schools, showed a far different picture of teenage literacy. Thispaper reports on partial findings of the larger study and argues that students use theirliteracy practices to form their identities within, and sometimes in opposition to, thefigured worlds of school, work and family. Many students look to school to provideformal literacy experiences, but find their reading and writing passions at odds withthe demands of the school curriculum.INTRODUCTION`I love to write. I write journals, a diary. . . every day. [I write about] whathappens during the day, how I feel, if I had a bad day. You know, if I reallymeet a cute guy, or if I had an argume nt with a teacher, or anything. [I writepoetry about] mostly how I feel.' (Mindy, an eleventh grader at Central Highwho went on to fail her English class)How can we understand the complex world of student literacy, where an articulateand energetic student, who by her own accounts `loves to write' fails to meet therequired level of standardised literacy to pass 11th grade English? Conventionalwisdom holds that American teenagers do not read or write ± that they are a media-driven group who prefer movies, television and playing video games. One of themost striking things we learned in the High Sc hool Literacy Project is how wrongthis picture of teenage literacy is. We found that many students are engaged ineveryday literacy practices far beyond the school day in ways that their teachers areunaware of.# United Kingdom Reading Association 2001. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road,Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USAThis paper reports on partial findings from a much large r comparative case studyof four North Carolina high schools . We draw upon the concept of `figured worlds'by Holland et al (1998) to understand specif ic contexts within whi ch students carryout and make meaning of literacy tasks and to consider how students' uses of readingand writing are linked to their interests and identities. Of particular concern is how astudent like Mindy, who identifies herself as a `writer' and uses writing as a way toexpress and reflect on her everyday life and feelings, can find herself failing in English.In the first section of the paper we describe the research project as it was imple-mented in the four schools. The second section outlines our theoretical framework oflooking at students' literacy practices as refracted through the figured worlds of onehigh school in the study, `Central High'. The third section considers one student,Alice, and the complex ways in which she understands her literacy practices. Aliceuses reading and writing to make sense of her life and to script an identity that is atodds with her place in the figured world of Central High.1By moving between threecontextual levels of meaning ± institutional, specific school site and individual ± wehope to illustrate how deeply dialogic the relationship is between student identitiesand literacy practices.PROJECT METHODOLOGYThis project was initiated by a university/school district collaboration and wasfunded by state professional development funds. The study was designed to maxi miseteacher input in redefining the problem of low literacy among high-school student s,and, in so doing, to explore new solutions. Rather than assuming that students arenot reading and writing, the project investigated how and why students are doingthe reading and writing that they do. Using ethnographic methods ± includingphotography, classroom observations, teacher and parent surveys, in-depth inter-views with students, and analysis of school records ± the study sought to documentliteracy as a social practice.2The research focused on how student s think and feel,what their purposes and values are, and what rules might govern their literacypractices, as well as how students' literacy practices are supported or hindered byschooling.In each school, a group of teacher s, administrators, and students joined with auniversity faculty member and several undergraduate students to collect and analysethe data. Each inquiry team (consisting of between eight and ten people) began byphotographing literacy events in their school, taking more than one hundred photosof what they thought best represented literacy practices in their school.3The photo-graphs established a rich, comparative visual archive of literacy practices within eachschool context that the four inquiry teams could compare and assess. The photosalso served as a means for each inquiry team to consider what counts as a literacyevent or practice±for example, whether graffiti, written texts on clothing, tattoos ormarks on the body and school banners at prep rallies should be included as examplesof teenage literacy practices.After gathering and analysing imag es of literacy events, a series of researchinstruments were adapted for use in the project. A `Survey for School Staff ' focusedon teacher attitudes and goals. A `Survey for Parents' was designed to gather in-formation about parents' goals, expectations for and assessments of their teenagers'# United Kingdom Reading Association 2001236 LUTTRELL and PARKERschooling as well as how they would rate their child's skills as a reader and writer.An accompanying `Survey for Students' asked, among other things, whether `at thisschool, has any person (student or adult) ever made fun of someone for not knowinghow to say something right, not knowing the right word for something, or not beingable to read somet hing correctly? If yes, would you say that this is a problem at thisschool?' (School staff members were also asked this questi on.) There was also a`Survey on Teacher Instructional Practices'. At each school, 30 ninth-grade studentswere asked to keep diaries of their everyday uses of reading and writing for a week,and in-depth interviews were conducted with twenty students representing differentreading and achievement levels (low, average, high). These interviews