David O'Brien
Professor
Ph.D., University of Georgia
literacy education
Curriculum and Instruction
Room 358 Peik Hall
159 Pillsbury Dr S E
Tel: 612/625-5337
dobrien@umn.edu
Office hours:
by appointment
Areas of Interest
Adolescent literacy, literacy across disciplines, digital literacies: construction of supportive programs for adolescents and struggling adolescent readers, using literacy across the curriculum; using digital literacies to engage adolescents; bridging traditional print literacies with multimodal literacies and new media
Research Interests
My scholarship and teaching focus on the literacy practices of adolescents. I study how adolescents use literacy in support of learning across the disciplines and also how their teachers learn to engage students in disciplinary literacy practices in middle and high school instruction. I also explore how to motivate and engage “struggling” adolescent learners using computers and related technologies and multimodal texts. I am currently collaboating with colleague Rick Beach exploring how apps and other digital environments can be used to support the literacy learning of students in various disciplines. This work is unfolding in an Apple iBook (under development) with key features highlighted at Apps for Learning with Literacy
Selected Publications
O’Brien, D. G., (2012). “Struggling adolescents’ engagement in multimediating: Countering the institutional construction of incompetence. In D. E. Alvermann & K. A. Hinchman (Eds.), Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents’ lives (3rd ed.) (pp. 71-91). New York: Routledge
Beach, R., Hull, G. & O’Brien, D. (2011). Transforming English language arts in a Web 2.0 world. Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (3rd. Ed). New York: Routledge
O’Brien, D., & Voss, S. (2011). Reading multimodally: What is afforded. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55 (1), 75-78.
O'Brien, D., & Scharber, C. (2010, April). Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: The Luxury of Digital Abundance. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(7), 600–603. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.53.7.7
Dillon, D. R., O’Brien, D. G., Sato, M., & Kelly, C. M. (November 2010). Professional development and teacher education for reading instruction. In M. L. Kamil, P. D. Pearson, E. B. Moje, & P. Afflerbach(Eds.), Handbook of reading research( Vol. 4, pp. 629-659). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.
Revised April 2011
