Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and Juvenile Court Communities: Crip 4 Life / Edition 1

ISBN-13: 9780805855982 Publisher: Taylor & Francis Publication date: 11/11/2005 Pages: 230 Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) The goal of this book is to encourage educators and researchers to understand the complexities of adolescent gang members' lives in order to rethink their assumptions about these students in school. The particular objective is to situate four gang members as literate, caring students from loving families whose identities and literacy keep them on the margins of school. The research described in this book suggests that advocacy is a particularly effective form of critical ethnography. Smith and Whitmore argue that until schools, as communities of practice, enable children and adolescents to retain identities from the communities in which they are full community members, frightening numbers of students are destined to fail.The stories of four Mexican American male adolescents, who were active members of a gang and Smith's students in an alternative h