Literacy And Popular Culture

Most children engage with a range of popular cultural forms outside of school. Their experiences with film, television, computer games and other cultural texts are very motivating, but often find no place within the official curriculum, where children are usually restricted to conventional forms of literacy. This book demonstrates how to use children′s interests in popular culture to develop literacy in the primary classroom. The authors provide a theoretical basis for such work through an exploration of related theory and research, drawing from the fields of education, sociology and cultural studies. Teachers are often concerned about issues of sexism, racism, violence and commercialism within the discourse of children′s media texts. The authors address each of these areas and show how such issues can be explored directly with children. They present classroom examples of the use of popular culture to develop literacy in schools and include interviews with children and teachers regarding this work. This book is relevant to all teachers and students who want to develop their understanding of the nature and potential role of popular culture within the curriculum. It will also be useful to language co-ordinators, advisers, teacher educators and anyone interested in media education in the 5-12 age-range.

This book is written for teachers, researchers, and theorists who have grown up in a world radically different from that of the students they teach and study. It considers the possibilities involved in teaching critical media literacy using popular culture, and explore what such teaching might look like in your classroom. Published by International Reading Association

Literacy and popular culture are intrinsically linked as forms of communication, entertainment, and education. Students are motivated to engage with popular culture through a myriad of mediums for a variety of purposes. Utilizing popular culture to bridge literacy concepts across content areas in K-12 settings offers a level playing field across student groups and grade levels. As concepts around traditional literacy education evolve and become more culturally responsive, the connections between popular culture and disciplinary literacy must be explored. Disciplinary Literacy Connections to Popular Culture in K-12 Settings is an essential publication that explores a conceptual framework around pedagogical connections to popular culture. While highlighting a broad range of topics including academic creativity, interdisciplinary storytelling, and skill development, this book is ideally designed for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, administrative officials, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.

This book examines the powerful role of popular culture in the daily online literacy practices of young people. Whether as subject matter, discourse, or through rhetorical patterns, popular culture dominates both the form and the content of online reading and writing. In order to understand not only how but why online technologies have changed literacy and popular culture practices, this book looks at online participatory popular culture from MySpace and Facebook pages to fan forums to fan fiction. Interviews and observations reveal the skills and practices students develop, as they sit multitasking at their computers, across popular culture genres and electronic media. For educators, the book provides significant insights into popular culture literacy practices, thus illuminating how students are making meaning and performing identity every day as they read and write online.

In 1750, half the population were unable to sign their names; by 1914 England, together with handful of advanced Western countries, had for the first time in history achieved a nominally literate society. This book seeks to understand how and why literacy spread into every interstice of English society, and what impact it had on the lives and minds of the common people.

How do students' online literacy practices intersect with online popular culture? In this book scholars from a range of countries illustrate and analyze how literacy practices that are mediated through and influenced by popular culture create both opportunities and tensions for secondary and university students.

This bold, forward-thinking text offers a clear rationale for the development of curricula and pedagogy that will reflect young people’s in-school and out-of-school popular culture practices. By providing a sound theoretical framework and addressing popular culture and new technologies in the context of literacy teacher education, this book marks a significant step forward in literacy teaching and learning. It takes a cross-disciplinary approach and brings together contributions from some of the world’s leading figures in the field. Topics addressed include: children’s popular culture in the home informal literacies and pedagogic discourse new technologies and popular culture in children’s everyday lives teachers working with popular culture in the classroom. This book illustrates the way in which literacy is evolving through popular culture and new technology and is an influential read for teachers, students, researchers and policy makers.

Literacy education has historically characterized mass media as manipulative towards young people who, as a result, are in need of close-reading “skills.” By contrast, Pop Culture and Power treats literacy as a dynamic practice, shaped by its social and cultural context. It develops a framework to analyse power in its various manifestations, arguing that power works through popular culture, not as everyday media. Pop Culture and Power thus explores media engagement as an opportunity to promote social change. Seeing pop culture as a teaching opportunity rather than as a threat, Dawn H. Currie and Deirdre M. Kelly worked with K-12 educators to investigate how pop culture can support teaching for social justice. Currie and Kelly began the research for this project with a teacher education seminar in media analysis where participants designed classroom activities using board games, popular film, music videos, and advertisements. These activities were later piloted in participants’ classrooms, enabling the authors to identify and address practical issues encountered by student learners. Case studies describe the design, implementation, and retrospective assessment of activities engaging learners in media analysis and production. Following the case studies, the authors consider how their approach can foster ethical practices when engaging in the digital environment. Pop Culture and Power offers theoretically informed yet practical tools that can help educators prepare youth for engagement in our increasingly complex world of mediated meaning making.