ABSTRACT
Our purpose in this revision of our 1998 contribution to Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’Lives is to examine adolescent identities in light of new research and theory generated in just the few years since we wrote the 1998 chapter. In particular, we are now interested in examining how content areas represent an environment, or context, that demands that students enact particular identities to make the most of opportunities to learn offered in the curriculum. Although we maintain that it is important that teachers understand the subjectivities young people bring to the classroom, it is equally important that teachers understand how any disciplinary subject area classroom-which constitutes a discourse community where people speak, read, and write in particular ways-demands that students think and act in certain ways to be successful (Lee, 2001). It is also important to understand how the space and relationships of the classroom itself-whether a science, social studies, mathematics, or English classroom-shape the identities that young people enact, particularly as different teachers demand or encourage different kinds of disciplinary and classroom (or student) identities. This chapter examines the interplay of the identities students bring to content-area classrooms and the identities demanded by content-area classrooms.
