Citation

Johnson E. Journal of adolescent and adult literacy 2014; 57(7): 575-583.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014)

DOI

10.1002/jaal.287

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Through a student/teacher classroom conflict, the author explores ways adults produce student writers as vulnerable. Drawing on post-structural concepts of adolescence, identity production, interrogation, and vulnerability, the author details how an English teacher invited students to perform vulnerability in personal narratives about issues like pregnancy, drug use, or domestic violence. As the context for the writing project shifted in the media and the local school community, so did ways their teacher produced students' personal narratives asking writers to re-edit personal narratives to protect themselves from adult scrutiny. However, students interrogated this vulnerable identity, prompting their teacher to rethink her conception of vulnerability. The article closes with Judith Butler's reconceptualization of vulnerability as an active performance through which adults might turn fearful responses to students' personal disclosures into opportunities to engage more deeply with students, their families, and their own personal histories with norms for personal disclosure.

Language: en