It would seem that there is a perpetual literacy crisis presented by politicians and the media (Brock, 1998; Williams, 2007), one that is widespread and powerful in its effect on discourses of literacies learning. As Williams (2007) states, “it’s not difficult to look back over the past 150 years and find a constant and consistent level of concern about the abilities of young people to read and write” (p. 178).  This is consistent with Deleuze’s (1992) concerns that “we are in a generalised crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure – prison, hospital, factory, school, family”. Luke and Luke (2001) contend that this supposed literacy crisis results in part from adult anxiety toward new forms of youth identities and changing life options in an attempt to understand the complex milieu of young people taking on subject positions within particular discursive spaces. These spaces are largely unmapped, and perhaps the mapping of some of the complex lines of flight made available to us would work in some way to addressing these anxieties, destabilising normalising assumptions and problematising the everyday, thus making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.

            Whether the literacies debate focuses on the current state of education, teacher quality and training, or popular culture, this is a complex debate that cannot be resolved through simple calls to revert to a supposedly former golden age nor via unhelpful political hyperbole and rhetoric. It is within a context of debate, political hyperbole and rhetoric that a study was undertaken to investigate the literate lives of teenagers, in and out of school. A particular focus was placed on musicking, which Small (1998) describes as any act that engages with, is transformed or influenced by music as it is such a ubiquitous part of many teenagers’ lives (North, Hargreaves, & O'Neill, 2000).

The following research questions informed this study: 

1. What connections can be mapped between musicking, schooling and literacies learning for teenagers?
2. What are some of the available storylines for teenagers to take up through possible subject positions as musickers, schoolgirls, schoolboys, and literacies learners?
3. What lessons can be learnt from sharing these storylines for literacies educators?

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