Adolescent Education: A Reader

Written by a prominent array of scholars and practitioners, this book elucidates the complexities, contradictions, and confusion surrounding adolescence in American culture and education. For too long, harmful public myths and lies have portrayed teenagers as a principal cause of our nation’s social ills. Similar unfair charges have been lodged against America’s teachers and schools throughout our history. This book offers public counterpoints to those simplistic blaming-the-victim arguments. Instead, it traverses a more nuanced and realistic path toward uncovering the developmental, socio-cultural realities faced by today’s teenagers. It also provides rich pedagogical strategies, and educational wisdom for allowing adolescents to grow as worthy human beings. This important and timely book will appeal to preservice teachers, teacher educators, education and social service professionals, policymakers, and all those interested in bettering the lives of adolescents in this uncertain world.

Joseph L. DeVitis is Professor of Foundations of Education at Georgia College & State University. He is a past president of the American Educational Studies Association, the Council of Learned Societies in Education, and the Society of Professors of Education. Recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he is a widely published scholar and public intellectual in social foundations of education and educational policy studies.

Linda Irwin-DeVitis is Dean and Professor of Literacy at the John H. Lounsbury College of Education, Georgia College & State University. She has extensive teaching experience in New Orleans and Jacksonville area middle and high schools and in a literacy program in the Mississippi Delta. Her numerous publications are in the areas of literacy education, adolescent literacy, and teacher education.