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The Social Production of Adolescent Risk and the Promise of Adolescent Literacies

Within the past decade, adolescents have become an increasingly scrutinized age group in the United States and abroad (Maira & Soep, 2005; Nayak, 2003; Nilan & Feixa, 2006; Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1998; Vadeboncoeur & Patel Stevens, 2005). They are often the focus of attention across disciplines when references are made to youth, although the concept, youth, encompasses a much broader age range and range of experiences than adolescence alone. The stereotypical image of youth and of adolescence by extension—as a boisterous embodiment of the “unruly” stage of life between childhood and adulthood (G. S. Hall, 1904)—has long dominated discussions about definitions of and subsequent policy regarding adolescents (Skelton & Valentine, 1998). The advent of compulsory schooling (Varenne & McDermott, 1998) and the establishment of the Juvenile Court (Platt, 1977) have influenced further discourses about adolescents, which quickly became steeped in containment, control, punishment, and remediation. These narratives persist and are reflected in the practices and policies of schools, afterschool programs, youth development organizations, the criminal justice system, and many other institutions that youth negotiate on a daily basis. This chapter focuses on a particular subset of educational issues, the literacies of adolescents, which in the past 10 years have become the focus of critique and concern in educational research, practice, and policy (Jetton & Dole, 2004; Patel Stevens, 2008; Vacca, 1998). Academic journals have devoted whole issues to the topic (e.g., special issue of Harvard Educational Review, Spring 2008—“Adolescent