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Intervention programs designed to improve literacy skills also produce unintended outcomes that sustain a deficit view around some students. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions about learning of a group of 12-14-year-old Australian students assigned to a reading intervention class. The article reports on data collected from students over a six-month period through interviews, including illustrated responses, and classroom observations. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. Findings suggested that the ecology of the classroom was instrumental in how these adolescents determined an economy of effort, oscillated power and control, and positioned themselves as learners. Further research about how to position students as decision makers within the intervention programs to which they are assigned is required to counter the deficit views that surround and are sustained by some adolescents.

Evidence suggests that increasingly young adolescents are finishing school with poor literacy skills limiting their access to further education, training and employment. This has lifelong effects in terms of their economic participation and health and wellbeing. This paper examines the spatial practices of one school's approach to improving literacy outcomes for its Years 8 and 9 students, in order to increase positive pathways after school. It shows how staff at this school have begun to work collaboratively with each other and community members in trying to address the reading needs of their students. Using the conceptual frameworks of spatial theory and reflection the paper will share the conceived and perceived spatial practices of staff identified in interview data. We argue that when ongoing reflective practice occurs potential transformative or "third space", practices result; ensuring positive literacy learning outcomes for all students.

Intervention programs designed to improve literacy skills also produce unintended outcomes that sustain a deficit view around some students. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions about learning of a group of 12-14-year-old Australian students assigned to a reading intervention class. The article reports on data collected from students over a six-month period through interviews, including illustrated responses, and classroom observations. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. Findings suggested that the ecology of the classroom was instrumental in how these adolescents determined an economy of effort, oscillated power and control, and positioned themselves as learners. Further research about how to position students as decision makers within the intervention programs to which they are assigned is required to counter the deficit views that surround and are sustained by some adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]