Liminal Spaces of Writing in Adolescent and Adult Education

Mellinee Lesley, Rene Saldana, Julie Smit, Jin Kyeong Jung

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978796041
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

Liminal Spaces of Writing in Adolescent and Adult Education addresses the persistent gap in writing reform at the middle, secondary, and post-secondary level. Through an examination of "useful" and "liminal" writing, the book explores the intellectual and creative space where structured expectations verge with individual imagination in writing. The premise of the book is built around a multiplicity of ways to invite adolescent and adult students to enter into states of liminality where they are encouraged to experiment with style, form, genre, and voice. Through research featuring the perspectives of adolescents, classroom teachers, teacher educators, graduate students, and literacy researchers, the book offers numerous insights into fostering a liminal and useful approach to writing instruction. Each author takes the reader through a journey of finding the liminal as teachers, writers, and researchers. Taken together, this tapestry of perspectives puts forth the argument that liminal moments are necessary caveats to explore in order to cultivate fully actualized writing where students are in control of structures and traditional writing expectations but also free to imagine new ways of breaking with conventions and being as writers. Thus, the book argues liminal writing is critical in bringing about sustained writing reform.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: More than the Second ‟R”: Revisiting Writing Instruction for Young Adults
• Chapter 2: Why We Write: The Scribal Identities of Adolescents Working against Standardization
• Chapter 3: The Shifting Identities of Literacy Graduates: From Learners of Writing Instruction to Novice Teachers of Adolescent Writers
• Chapter 4: In Search of the Aesthetic: An Arts-based Approach to Writing Up Our Research
• Chapter 5: Literacy Legacies
• Chapter 6: Creating a Liminal Writing Class for Multilingual Adolescent Writers
• Chapter 7: Video Games in the Middle School Reading Classroom: A Cultural Canon or a Social Bomb?
• Chapter 8: Writing Interviews
• Chapter 9: Writing Catharsis: Inviting Students to Think and Then Write Outside the Box
• Chapter 10: “I Really Wish More Girls Would Tell their Story”: Adolescent Girls’ Composing for Advocacy in the Liminal Space of Digital Media
• Chapter 11: Voices from an “Underperforming” English Class
• Chapter 12: “Places so far that I Could Only Dream”: An Interview with Cameron James
• Index
• About the Contributors