Conventional wisdom holds that American teenagers do not read or write ± that they are a media-driven group who prefer movies, television and playing video games. Ethnographic data gathered in the High School Literacy Project, a study of four North Carolina high schools, showed a far different picture of teenage literacy. This paper reports on partial findings of the larger study and argues that students use their literacy practices to form their identities within, and sometimes in opposition to, the figured worlds of school, work and family. Many students look to school to provide formal literacy experiences, but find their reading and writing passions at odds with the demands of the school curriculum. INTRODUCTIOǸ

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Technology applications aligned with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workplace practices can engage students in real-world pursuits but also present dramatic challenges for classroom implementation. We examined the impact of teacher professional development focused on incorporating these workplace technologies in the classroom. Because existing measures primarily use only presence or type of technology as proxies for implementation quality, we developed an expanded framework that incorporated (a) the type of technology used; (b) the degree of alignment to STEM practices; (c) the use of student-centered pedagogical practices; and (d) the degree of relevance to real-world contexts. While our framework successfully described the variation in technology implementation in our study group, we found no statistically significant difference between teachers with and without extensive training on STEM workplace technologies. Our results provide evidence that the framework captures quality of technology use and point to the need for additional research on effective teacher education around technology applications. (Keywords: teacher professional development, STEM workplace technology, measuring quality of technology implementation, technology in classrooms) T echnology use in the classroom has great potential to transform student learning. This is particularly true for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workplace applications of technology, such as robotics, computer modeling and simulations, digital animation, multimedia production, biotechnology, and geospatial technologies. These applications offer opportunities to align classroom activities with real-world STEM practices, while engaging students in authentic investigations and design-based pursuits and promoting student-centered learning and interest in STEM careers (Brophy, Klein,

Most youth in transition services with labels of intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have poorer employment outcomes than their peers with other or without disabilities. One alternative approach to address this challenge provides youth with IDD access to transition services in the context of a college or university campus. College-based transition services (CBTS) provide students with IDD access to college courses, internships, and employment during their final 2 to 3 years of secondary education. A quasi-experimental design evaluation of one college-based transition services model, Think College Transition, found that, after controlling for student baseline scores, the college-based transition services had a significant effect on students' scores of self-determination at post-test. Implications for further refining the model are discussed.