The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the ways in which the primary Discourse and school experiences inform the literate identity of a male teacher, as well as his professional practice. The research looks at the various influences and relationships that come to bear on male literate identity from childhood to professional practice. As well, it responds to the contention of the popular media that boys lagging literacies might be remediated through the presence of more male literacy role models in the classroom. This study suggests that although role models may be influential under particular circumstances, the development of literate identity is far more complex and nuanced.<p> This study focuses on six male teachers and describes their experiences of literacy, particularly reading, from childhood into professional practice. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and informal observations. The interviews revealed that male literate identity is a product not only of parental attitudes toward literacy, but it is also determined by the individuals sense of competence and purpose, as well as sometimes serendipitous encounters with other readers.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the ways in which the primary Discourse and school experiences inform the literate identity of a male teacher, as well as his professional practice. The research looks at the various influences and relationships that come to bear on male literate identity from childhood to professional practice. As well, it responds to the contention of the popular media that boys lagging literacies might be remediated through the presence of more male literacy role models in the classroom. This study suggests that although role models may be influential under particular circumstances, the development of literate identity is far more complex and nuanced.<p> This study focuses on six male teachers and describes their experiences of literacy, particularly reading, from childhood into professional practice. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and informal observations. The interviews revealed that male literate identity is a product not only of parental attitudes toward literacy, but it is also determined by the individuals sense of competence and purpose, as well as sometimes serendipitous encounters with other readers.

I conducted a narrative inquiry with five ninth grade boys in my English class that I identified as displaying multiple literacies. The classes I taught the boys in were two sections of honors ninth grade English. The boys came from a variety of backgrounds and lived in various neighborhoods in the approximately 20,0000-member community where we all live. The site of this research was the junior high school in Utah where the boys attend school and I had been employed for six years. After the research was collected, I conducted several negotiation sessions with the boys and their parents at the school, as well as in their homes. These negotiations facilitated a methodological concept I came to call distillation, which is an interim step for determining which narratives in an inquiry are emblematic. My research centered on how these boys storied their literate identities. A review of literature revealed several lenses for conceptualizing the stories of these boys. An analysis of the stories I collected revealed that the boys' stories moved beyond current conceptions of either identity or literacy alone and instead offered a way of looking at literate identity as simultaneously being and doing literacy. In light of this definition, the boys' stories revealed plotlines that together described literate identity as a form of capital. The question of how the boys story themselves is ultimately answered using a meta-narrative about a boon, of gift, that emerges from mythic/archetypal literary criticism. Distribution of a desirable boon that will help society is the goal of a hero story. The boys narrate the ways in which they distribute literacy as a boon. The implications for this research include a need to examine classroom space in order to facilitate the deployment of literate identity capital, as well as space for living out the meta-narratives that these boys are composing.

The purpose of this study was to examine students' representations of their literate identities in what Gee (2008) calls Discourse that developed among 105 high school students— 103 10th-grade and two 11th-grade students—using a wiki for class work, collaboration, and social interaction. The theoretical frame for the present study was drawn from of four bodies of literature. Through a reciprocal process of positioning self and others (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999), individuals come to form and display their literate identity (Heath, 1991) within a community of practice (Wenger, 1998). Their interactions reflect norms, values, and accepted ways of being within the Discourses to which they belong (Gee, 2008). Data analysis procedures employed in this study were similar to those commonly associated with qualitative data analysis. I used a recursive process of coding and searching for patterns and themes to analyze students' writing on the class wiki. Analysis of the wiki posts revealed that students employed 18 written devices within the Discourse of the wiki. In addition, within the online Discourse that emerged on the wiki, students occupied nine positions in relation to the others in the community. Findings of this study suggest that students developed a community of practice where norms for participation in the Discourse of the wiki were constructed by its members. Students represented their academic and social literate identities online through the combination of devices they used and the positions they enacted in the Discourse of the wiki.