Flexible literacies, cultural crossings and global identities: Three Singaporean adolescent boys' reading and identity practices' in a globalized world

This case examines the reading and identity practices of three highly literate adolescent boys from an elite all-boys school in Singapore, focusing on how they constructed their identities as global and local citizens through their reading practices. There have not been any studies examining the reading and identity practices of adolescent boys who have had every access to literacy, and this study contributes to much-needed research on youth literacy, identity, and globalization. The data consist of survey and interview data, classroom observations and email reading logs collected from September 2008 to September 2009.;The findings demonstrate that these boys exercise considerable flexibility in their reading choices and practices, both in the school and out-of-school contexts. The boys' immersion in reading as everyday practice were supported by a complicated network of invisible resources in their home, school and peer settings that allow them to "find" books and to see reading both fiction and non-fiction as a natural part of their identity. Reading choices and practices were neutralized, masked with evaluative criteria of what makes for good literature or for satisfying entertainment. Reading constituted a cultural crossing for these boys, where global cosmopolitan identities are projected through knowledge of texts and knowledge of the world through texts. They exercise their flexibility through their ability to cross linguistic and geographical borders, as well as multiple genres and media in their reading practices. Flexible literate identities are constructed not just through the knowledge they possess, but through their relation to knowledge, which is the ability to read different texts in different ways for different situations. These boys' abilities to project themselves as flexible readers provided them with the intercultural capital necessary for mobility in a globalized world.;Viewing literature study as identity play may help educators to see textual spaces as spaces for engaging in conversation about various worldviews and trying on different stances. In addition, re-visioning curriculum construction as cultural crossings may allow for a more nuanced approach to designing curriculum as it takes into account the worldviews of both student and text to cultivate criticality in literature study.