Donna E Alvermann
Biographic Data
| ID | 99968 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donna E Alvermann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donna E |
| FAMILY NAME | Alvermann |
| SIGNATURE | ALVERMANN D E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Georgia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6881-0657 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 6 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
What a Genealogical Analysis of Nila Banton Smith's American Reading Instruction Reveals About the Present Through the Past
The authors used a conceptual analysis, following Foucauldian genealogy, to consider the history of Nila Banton Smith's American Reading Instruction. The goal was to make better sense of the challenges and opportunities facing literacy instruction today and to articulate the enormous responsibilities of literacy scholars to critically represent the past in relation to the present. The guiding question for the research was, What enabling condition…
What Are Your Moral Duties as a Reader and as a Teacher of Reading
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
The Optimism of Uncertainty
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
Critical Internet Literacy
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
Move Over, Reading
The M Word
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
Reading Achievement, International Comparisons, and Moral Panic
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
Social Media Texts and Critical Inquiry in a Post‐Factual Era
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
What Is Engagement, How Is It Different From Motivation, and How Can I Promote It
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
Content Area Reading and Literacy
Content Area Reading and Literacy
Adolescents’ Online Literacies
Cautionary Questions
This department column is a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice, remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring dilemmas, debates, and controversies
Blowin’ in the Wind”
Responsibility for the columns included in this department will alternate between the two authors/editors. Donna Alvermann leads off with the first column ( JAAL 60:1). Colin Harrison will take the lead on the second column ( JAAL , 60:2), and so on. We envision this department being a venue for thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues dealing with policy and practice—especially when remixed in ways that generate new insights into enduring d…
Are Computers, Smartphones, and the Internet a Boon or a Barrier for the Weaker Reader
If boys are spending nine hours a day media multitasking and prefer computers to books, shouldn't they be successful at online learning? Yet, it is not so simple. Online learning requires online reading, which means that boys, who are significantly poorer readers than girls in every nation in the world, may well be struggling to keep up. Text‐to‐speech software and many other online tools would seem to offer personalized support for weaker reader…
Being in the Moment
This commentary explores the implications of Douglas Rushkoff's Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (2013) for teachers and the students they teach. In this, his most recent book, Rushkoff argues that in today's digital world all of us are adversely experiencing the effects of technology's capacity to make everything happen faster and to connect more of us to more information on a daily basis than ever before in the history of humankind. H…
Afterword
Questioning the Separation of In‐School From Out‐of‐School Contexts for Literacy Learning
Donna E. Alvermann, Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, received recognitions and honors as a scholar/leader in adolescent literacy. Her thoughts about contexts for literacy learning challenge that the divide between in‐ and out‐of‐school literacy learning is real and needs bridging. Alvermann sees educators creating learning conditions, especially with interactive multimodal…
Comprehension Strategy Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science
This article highlights examples from a middle-school science teacher's instruction using multimodal texts. Its importance lies in reconciling narrowed definitions of reading (and hence reading instruction) with the need to develop students' critical awareness as they engage with multiple sign systems, or semiotic resources, used for constructing meaning. After a brief introduction to the multimodal nature of scientific texts, the authors ground …
Why Bother Theorizing Adolescents' Online Literacies for Classroom Practice and Research
When teachers, teacher educators, and researchers tap into young people's interests in producing online content, they open themselves to appreciating a wide range of skills that might otherwise go unmarked in the everyday routines of the classroom. These skills are central to the development of critical readers and writers that teachers say they value. Theorizing adolescents' penchant for creating online content is merely a start. Educators must …
Reflections on our editorship
o a greater degree than many professions, the professional lives of scholars are characterized by overlapping cycles of beginnings and endings.Each academic year has an overarching rhythm of activities, events, responsibilities, and interactions comprising many smaller units such as courses, committees, and conferences, each with its own beginning and ending.Likewise, doctoral students begin a program and graduate.New students replace them in a c…
What are evaluation studies, and should they be published in RRQ
Revealing an exchange between authors and reviewers about statistical significance
Media, Information Communication Technologies, and Youth Literacies
Everyday literacy practices are changing at an unprecedented pace, and speculation as to the impact of media and interactive communication technologies on current conceptions of youth's reading, writing, and viewing is evident on many fronts. The implications of this for teacher educators and classroom teachers are discussed
The RRQ peer‐review process
Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents
This article, written for a general audience, focuses on the importance of keeping adolescents' interests and needs foremost in mind when designing literacy instruction at the middle and high school level. It is a slightly revised version of a position paper that the Board of Directors of the National Reading Conference (NRC) commissioned this past year to underscore the need to continue literacy instruction beyond the elementary grades. Posted o…
Prior Knowledge Activation and the Comprehension of Compatible and Incompatible Text
Donna E. Alvermann, Lynn C. Smith, John E. Readence, Prior Knowledge Activation and the Comprehension of Compatible and Incompatible Text, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Summer, 1985), pp. 420-436
Classroom Discussion of Content Area Reading Assignments
THE AIM OF this study was to examine discussions of assigned readings in content area classrooms at the high school level, and to attempt modifications of these discussions so they would reflect more higher-order thinking and critical reading. The 6-month intervention study began with observation and analysis of existing discussion patterns in five classrooms in the Southeastern United States, focusing on the types of references teachers and stud…
What Teachers Do When They Say They're Having Discussions of Content Area Reading Assignments
Donna E. Alvermann, David G. O'Brien, Deborah R. Dillon, What Teachers Do When They Say They're Having Discussions of Content Area Reading Assignments: A Qualitative Analysis, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4, 25th Anniversary Issue (Autumn, 1990), pp. 296-322
On writing qualitative research
The authors explore the challenges of conducting and writing up qualitative research studies, and discuss four key issues: problems in distinguishing between levels of theory; holistic and microlevel issues in methodology; crises in representation and legitimation; and differences in the writing and write‐up process
Messages That High School World History Textbooks Convey
(1994). Messages That High School World History Textbooks Convey: Challenges for Multicultural Literacy. The Social Studies: Vol. 85, No. 6, pp. 268-274
Middle and High School Students' Perceptions of How They Experience Text‐Based Discussions
S In this multicase study, adolescents at five culturally diverse sites across the United States engaged in face‐to‐face interactions as they reflected and reported on their perceptions of their own and other students' experiences in discussing regularly assigned content area texts. Our decision to consider students' insights into their experiences distinguishes this study from previous work on classroom interaction that has focused primarily on …
The Possible Values of Dissonance In Student Teaching Experiences
Media, Information Communication Technologies, and Youth Literacies
Everyday literacy practices are changing at an unprecedented pace, and speculation as to the impact of media and interactive communication technologies on current conceptions of youth's reading, writing, and viewing is evident on many fronts. The implications of this for teacher educators and classroom teachers are discussed
Teacher-student mediation of content area texts
Sitting in classrooms observing how teachers teach and students learn from their content area texts has been a focus of researchers for some time (Mathews & Toepfer, 1936; McCallister, 1930). Not until Durkin's (1978-79) study of reading comprehension instruction during basal reading and elementary social studies lessons, however, have researchers begun to concentrate on verbal interactions between teachers and students engaged in textbook learni…
Adolescents' Perceptions and Negotiations of Literacy Practices in After-School Read and Talk Clubs
This study reports how adolescents' perceptions and negotiations of after-school talk about a variety of texts in a public library setting were shaped by (and helped to shape) the larger institutional and societal contexts that regularly influence young people's actions and interactions with peers and adults. The study's theoretical framework conceives of literacy and discourse as critical social practices and locates such practices in the interp…
Comprehension Strategy Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science
This article highlights examples from a middle-school science teacher's instruction using multimodal texts. Its importance lies in reconciling narrowed definitions of reading (and hence reading instruction) with the need to develop students' critical awareness as they engage with multiple sign systems, or semiotic resources, used for constructing meaning. After a brief introduction to the multimodal nature of scientific texts, the authors ground …
On metaphors and editing
What a Genealogical Analysis of Nila Banton Smith's American Reading Instruction Reveals About the Present Through the Past
The authors used a conceptual analysis, following Foucauldian genealogy, to consider the history of Nila Banton Smith's American Reading Instruction. The goal was to make better sense of the challenges and opportunities facing literacy instruction today and to articulate the enormous responsibilities of literacy scholars to critically represent the past in relation to the present. The guiding question for the research was, What enabling condition…
Reflections on our editorship
o a greater degree than many professions, the professional lives of scholars are characterized by overlapping cycles of beginnings and endings.Each academic year has an overarching rhythm of activities, events, responsibilities, and interactions comprising many smaller units such as courses, committees, and conferences, each with its own beginning and ending.Likewise, doctoral students begin a program and graduate.New students replace them in a c…
What are evaluation studies, and should they be published in RRQ
Mentoring and Reporting Research
S Mentoring and reporting research: A concern for aesthetics In this article we present the results of two studies on the mentoring of teacher educators in literacy education, and model alternative ways of representing and evaluating research data. The first study is based on a survey of North American teacher educators and their beliefs about how they were mentored as students and how they in turn mentor their graduate advisees. The data from th…
The Possible Values of Dissonance In Student Teaching Experiences
Prior Knowledge Activation and the Comprehension of Compatible and Incompatible Text
Donna E. Alvermann, Lynn C. Smith, John E. Readence, Prior Knowledge Activation and the Comprehension of Compatible and Incompatible Text, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Summer, 1985), pp. 420-436
Classroom Discussion of Content Area Reading Assignments
THE AIM OF this study was to examine discussions of assigned readings in content area classrooms at the high school level, and to attempt modifications of these discussions so they would reflect more higher-order thinking and critical reading. The 6-month intervention study began with observation and analysis of existing discussion patterns in five classrooms in the Southeastern United States, focusing on the types of references teachers and stud…
Teacher-student mediation of content area texts
Sitting in classrooms observing how teachers teach and students learn from their content area texts has been a focus of researchers for some time (Mathews & Toepfer, 1936; McCallister, 1930). Not until Durkin's (1978-79) study of reading comprehension instruction during basal reading and elementary social studies lessons, however, have researchers begun to concentrate on verbal interactions between teachers and students engaged in textbook learni…
What Teachers Do When They Say They're Having Discussions of Content Area Reading Assignments
Donna E. Alvermann, David G. O'Brien, Deborah R. Dillon, What Teachers Do When They Say They're Having Discussions of Content Area Reading Assignments: A Qualitative Analysis, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4, 25th Anniversary Issue (Autumn, 1990), pp. 296-322
Messages That High School World History Textbooks Convey
(1994). Messages That High School World History Textbooks Convey: Challenges for Multicultural Literacy. The Social Studies: Vol. 85, No. 6, pp. 268-274
Getting involved and having fun
It was the purpose of this study1 to discover what five ninth‐graders (labeled “ at risk “ of dropping out of school) and their teacher (who was a member of the research team) would do to bring meaning and life to a basic‐track English curriculum. Dilemmas encountered by the teacher as he worked to involve students in building a literate community are interpreted through a social constructionist frame for what it means to be literate. Findings fr…
Middle and High School Students' Perceptions of How They Experience Text‐Based Discussions
S In this multicase study, adolescents at five culturally diverse sites across the United States engaged in face‐to‐face interactions as they reflected and reported on their perceptions of their own and other students' experiences in discussing regularly assigned content area texts. Our decision to consider students' insights into their experiences distinguishes this study from previous work on classroom interaction that has focused primarily on …
On writing qualitative research
The authors explore the challenges of conducting and writing up qualitative research studies, and discuss four key issues: problems in distinguishing between levels of theory; holistic and microlevel issues in methodology; crises in representation and legitimation; and differences in the writing and write‐up process
Just Girls
Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High. Margaret J. Finders. New York Teachers College Press, 1997. 145 pp
Adolescents' Perceptions and Negotiations of Literacy Practices in After-School Read and Talk Clubs
This study reports how adolescents' perceptions and negotiations of after-school talk about a variety of texts in a public library setting were shaped by (and helped to shape) the larger institutional and societal contexts that regularly influence young people's actions and interactions with peers and adults. The study's theoretical framework conceives of literacy and discourse as critical social practices and locates such practices in the interp…
Critical Media Literacy
(2000). Critical Media Literacy: Research, Theory, and Practice in “New Times”. The Journal of Educational Research: Vol. 93, New Discoveries in Literacy for The 21st Century, pp. 193-205.
Learning from Our Lives
Mentoring and Reporting Research
S Mentoring and reporting research: A concern for aesthetics In this article we present the results of two studies on the mentoring of teacher educators in literacy education, and model alternative ways of representing and evaluating research data. The first study is based on a survey of North American teacher educators and their beliefs about how they were mentored as students and how they in turn mentor their graduate advisees. The data from th…
Teaching as Persuasion
2001). Teaching as Persuasion: The Worthiness of the Metaphor. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 40, Teaching As Persuasion, pp. 278-283
Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents
This article, written for a general audience, focuses on the importance of keeping adolescents' interests and needs foremost in mind when designing literacy instruction at the middle and high school level. It is a slightly revised version of a position paper that the Board of Directors of the National Reading Conference (NRC) commissioned this past year to underscore the need to continue literacy instruction beyond the elementary grades. Posted o…
The RRQ peer‐review process
On metaphors and editing
Media, Information Communication Technologies, and Youth Literacies
Everyday literacy practices are changing at an unprecedented pace, and speculation as to the impact of media and interactive communication technologies on current conceptions of youth's reading, writing, and viewing is evident on many fronts. The implications of this for teacher educators and classroom teachers are discussed
What are evaluation studies, and should they be published in RRQ
Revealing an exchange between authors and reviewers about statistical significance
Reflections on our editorship
o a greater degree than many professions, the professional lives of scholars are characterized by overlapping cycles of beginnings and endings.Each academic year has an overarching rhythm of activities, events, responsibilities, and interactions comprising many smaller units such as courses, committees, and conferences, each with its own beginning and ending.Likewise, doctoral students begin a program and graduate.New students replace them in a c…
Why Bother Theorizing Adolescents' Online Literacies for Classroom Practice and Research
When teachers, teacher educators, and researchers tap into young people's interests in producing online content, they open themselves to appreciating a wide range of skills that might otherwise go unmarked in the everyday routines of the classroom. These skills are central to the development of critical readers and writers that teachers say they value. Theorizing adolescents' penchant for creating online content is merely a start. Educators must …
Questioning the Separation of In‐School From Out‐of‐School Contexts for Literacy Learning
Donna E. Alvermann, Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, received recognitions and honors as a scholar/leader in adolescent literacy. Her thoughts about contexts for literacy learning challenge that the divide between in‐ and out‐of‐school literacy learning is real and needs bridging. Alvermann sees educators creating learning conditions, especially with interactive multimodal…
Comprehension Strategy Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science
This article highlights examples from a middle-school science teacher's instruction using multimodal texts. Its importance lies in reconciling narrowed definitions of reading (and hence reading instruction) with the need to develop students' critical awareness as they engage with multiple sign systems, or semiotic resources, used for constructing meaning. After a brief introduction to the multimodal nature of scientific texts, the authors ground …
Psychology (32 works) · Pedagogy (29 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Mathematics education (22 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Literacy, Media, and Education (14 works) · Linguistics (13 works) · Column (typography (9 works)