David O’Brien’s scholarship and teaching focus on the literacy practices of adolescents. He has studied how adolescents use literacy to learn content across the disciplines and also how their teachers learn to integrate literacy practices into various disciplines in middle and high school instruction. His research is collaborative, conducted within a community of practice with the intent of improving adolescents’ literacy skills and practices concurrently with improving their teachers’ abilities to meet the needs of a range of learners. In a recent project, he collaborated with colleagues at an urban high school in Minneapolis to set up academic literacy support for struggling adolescent learners.
