Gender differences in adolescents’ out-of-school literacy practices: A multifaceted approach Asli Ünlüsoy * , Mariëtte de Haan, Paul M. Leseman, Claudia van Kruistum Faculty of Social Sciences, Langeveld Institute, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands article info Article history:Ć Received 3 August 2009 Received in revised form 10 March 2010 Accepted 11 March 2010 Keywords: Media in education Secondary education Gender differences Literacy practices abstract The present study examined the out-of-school literacy activities of 70 students in 7th grade of prevo- cational training schools in the Netherlands. Guttmann’s Facet Theory was applied to study literacy as a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. With the increasing influence of digital technologies, the facet design approach was found especially suited to track the many changes occurring in presentation modalities, functions, and productive versus consumptive uses of literacy. The study shows that the facet approach was useful in pinpointing how these shifts in literacy engagement turn out differently for boys and girls. Based on self-reports via an Internet questionnaire, the study shows that girls outscored boys in every aspect of literacy, including computer and Internet based literacy practices. However, while among girls a more balanced profile was found regarding the engagement in traditional and new literacy practices, the boys reported a high preference for the new digital media. Moreover, we found that girls, compared to boys, used new literacy activities more often for educational purposes. The findings suggest that, given this more balanced profile, girls, compared to boys, are less at risk of losing touch with traditional print-based educational literacy in school. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction: a shift in literacy practices along multiple dimensions With the rise of the digital media, the options for literacy engagement have expanded enormously. Traditional print-based literacy practices have moved to the new media that allow for multimodal forms of presentation and expression. Traditional newspapers can now be read online. Traditional texts can be combined with animations, video clips, and web fora. The new technologies have increased the diversity of ways to engage in literacy. Media productions (i.e., books or TV shows) used to be created by a limited number of professionals, obtained from a small number of sources, and broadcasted to a large audience. Today ‘user generated content’ is rapidly growing on the Internet, turning audiences into producers (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robinson, & Weigel, 2006). New media offer more possibilities to integrate different functions of literacy in the same activity, whereas the older media tended to be used more exclusively for one particular function. A seminal study by Heath (1984) into print-based literacy practices (i.e., reading and writing) distinguished broadly four types of functions of literacy: entertainment, instrumental, social, and education-related. For new media, however, relating a particular function to a particular medium or form of engagement is becoming more and more difficult, as the boundaries between, for example, entertainment and education are increasingly blurred (Livingstone, 2007). The changes described here lead to a need to rework the concept of literacy in such a way that it captures the new complexities of today’s literacy practices. This study aims to contribute to this attempt from an empirical angle, focusing on the uptake of the new literacies by particular groups of youth. As the options for literacy engagement are shifting, we expect corresponding shifts in how youth are engaging in literacy. In particular, we are interested in the question if girls have developed a different pattern of uptake of the new possibilities of literacy engagement than boys. A related goal of this study is to explore a methodology that is able to reveal how the multiple dimensions of literacy influence the literacy engagement of these groups. Even though the focus of this article is on the gendered nature of literacy engagement, the methodological approach that is presented here can be used more generally to capture the multidimensionality of present literacy engagement of any specific group of users. * Corresponding author. Tel.: 31 30 253 3054. E-mail addresses: A.unlusoy@uu.nl (A. Ünlüsoy), m.dehaan@uu.nl (M. de Haan), p.p.m.leseman@uu.nl (P.M. Leseman), c.j.vankruistum@uu.nl (C. van Kruistum). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers & Education journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu 0360-1315/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.03.007 Computers & Education 55 (2010) 742e751