Textual Tactics of Identification

In this article we merge de Certeau's theory of strategies and tactics with more recent work on socially situated identities to investigate how youth in one eighth-grade reading class withstood and resisted identities of "being remedial." On the basis of observational and interview data collected during a year-long ethnographic study, we illustrate how students used various texts to participate in official school practices while subverting those practices.