Clip from Vivian Stebenne’s You Tube Channel – You Tube
Imagine yourself standing in front of Year 9 English class comprised of 17 students with learning disabilities and teaching the concepts of imagery and metaphors. These students are disengaged and struggling with the concepts contained within the unit. The high culture examples using the works of Owen Wilson and Siegfried Sassoon are failing to engage the students. Behaviour is problematic and retention of the learning experience is minimal.
It is at this point that I, as the teacher, must recognize that I need to do more than teach the facts and the formula to ensure students develop true and applicable understanding. My role is to provide the means that allow students to not only learn but also retain and apply their learning. The Guideline for Students with Disabilities P-12 Curriculum Framework (Queensland Government Department of Education and Training, 2009) determines that all 17 of these students should be provided with the opportunity to engage in their learning and that I, as the teacher, must consider each specific learning need and plan accordingly to increase the capacity of each student to access, participate and achieve in the intended learning goal. It is at this point I must examine my own cultural assumptions- those that have determined that the only way learning is activated is through exposure to high culture concepts. It is this assumption that stymies my student’s connection to the learning experience and thus impacts on their understanding. It is at this turning point that I must come to a realization and begin to look beyond the concept that high culture is the only valid interpretation to ensure academic success. To engage the students and create a worthwhile and valid learning experience I must use what is relevant to them and their understanding- essentially I must use the strengths, awareness and knowledge they bring with themselves to school every day.
Students, despite their differences, all share a knowledge and interest with popular culture. Their lives outside of the schooling environment is permeated and at times defined by popular culture (Buckingham, 2007)and thus by incorporating it into the lesson I can open opportunities for the students to engage in their own education and learning. By using popular culture, a concept familiar to ALL students, I will be able to provide students with an opportunity to grasp concepts and make sense of the ideas contained within the curriculum.
But, I hear you ask, aren’t you just dumbing down the curriculum and perpetuating the intellectual laziness of the student?
My answer to your query is thus: while many perceive popular culture as an insipid and superficial construct, the reality is that the concepts contained in high culture where once created for consumption by the masses- essentially making it yesteryears popular culture. I believe that if having Katy Perry sing about a firework helps my students perceive the imagery and garner a deeper understanding of metaphors then popular culture has achieved where Owens, Sassoon and high culture failed. Essentially the effective use of popular culture to support the constructs of high culture in the curriculum enables students to understand and participate and ultimately helps them in developing positive self-perceptions of themselves as students (Black, 2004).
Educational psychology details that a positive attitude and a positive self-concept are necessary for student engagement and achievement, and only by fostering these will students have a chance to succeed. The development a teaching experience that accepts and respects the language and culture of the student allows them to feel confident enough to risk getting involved in the learning process (Cummins, 1991). Although this is a construct that details the effect of familial cultural language and identity it can be just as relevant when used to describe the student’s popular cultural paradigm. Essentially, as argued by Henry Jenkins, popular culture can be used as a tool and a resource to enable the student to think about their learning as the youth of today gain the majority of their information regarding the world through popular culture. While the schools traditionally seek to exclude popular culture the reality is that only through the judicious use and incorporation of popular culture into our pedagogy can the teacher engage the learners and endure true and deep understanding (Buckingham, 2007).
As an educator I need to harness the power of popular culture to ensure the development of learning in my students for the extent to which language and culture are incorporated into the lesson is significantly related to academic success (Cummins, 1991). By incorporating popular culture in a manner that is able to support and expand on the content and concepts of high culture contained within the curriculum I can ensure my students actively engage in generating their own knowledge and learning. Using popular culture develops an interactive and experiential pedagogy that will encourage students to express and share their experiences and knowledge whilst facilitating the creation of connections in their understanding and ultimately empowers the student by allowing them to negotiate their understandings and make meaning of the curriculum through the use of popular culture (Doecke & McClenaghan, 2010). Using the knowledge of social, cultural and even the language backgrounds found in popular culture means my students’ academic achievement increases (Cummins, 1991). Essentially popular culture becomes the platform that allows me to identify my students understanding and thus facilitates their engagement in their own learning experiences (Carrington, n.d.). Popular culture provides a pathway for students to make connections between the teaching and learning and ensures the student constructs their own knowledge development and ultimately supports them in achieving academic success (Beach & O’Brian, 2008).
So- back to standing in front of the year 9 class… The question I need to ask myself: Do I continue to follow the traditional constructs that reference high culture in the lessons in an attempt to develop in their understandings an appreciation of cultural life- OR – Do I engage the students, make the learning enjoyable and relatable to their knowledge and understandings while explicitly teaching the connections to high culture through the use of popular culture in their learning experiences?
I always did enjoy listening to “Life is a Highway” (Cochrane, 2006)!
Works Cited
Beach, R., & O’Brian, D. (2008). Ch 27 Teaching popular- culture Texts in The Classroom. In J. Coiro, & et al, Handbook to Research on new literacies (pp. 775-804). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Black, S. ( 2004). Teachers can engage disengaged students. The Educational Digest 67 7, 39-44.
Buckingham, D. (2007). Digital childhoods? In D. Buckingham, Beyond Technology (pp. 75-98). Cambridge UK: Polity Press.
Carrington, V. (n.d.). The Contemporary Gothic: Literacy and childhood in unsettled times. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.
Cochrane, T. (Composer). (2006). Life is a Highway. [R. Flats, Performer] United States of America.
Cummins, J. (1991, #E500). Empowering Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students with Learning Problems. ERIC Ec Digest.
Doecke, B., & McClenaghan, D. (2010). Ch 14 Reconceptualising Experience. In S. Gannon, M. Howie, & W. Sawyer, Charged with Meaning: Reviewing English Third Edition. Putney:NSW: Phoniex Education.
Jenkins, H. (2010, June 3). TED lecture on Particapatory Culture. (H. Jenkins, Performer) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v_AFCLKaOXRlwparticapartoryculture.
Queensland Government Department of Education and Training. (2009). Guidelines for Students with Disabilities. P-12 Curriculum Framework . Brisbane , Qld, Australia: Queensland Government.
Stebenne, V. (2013, Feburary 23). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN104uji–Y, You Tube.
Engaging Diverse Learners- A teachers journey 
This post raises many interesting points about the relevance of popular culture texts in the curriculum. One aspect that resounded with me is your view that “schools traditionally seek to exclude popular culture”. Can I ask, what have been your experiences of this?
In English departments, I have often found teachers very willing to use song lyrics to explore poetic devices – have you in contrast seen resistance to this? Or do you think your post represents your journey of challenging your own assumptions?
I would argue, however, that schools definitely still categorise texts as ‘high’ or ‘popular’ and make judgements about them based on their supposed category. I’d wager that every high school English student at some time will be forced to write an essay on Shakespeare! So many questions arise from this relating to: the prevalence of the essay as a prized text-type; the quasi-mandatory study of Shakespeare; pedagogical choices about reading the play vs watching a film adaptation.
I wonder what teachers from other subjects could add to this discussion…anyone?
” …schools definitely still categorise texts as ‘high’ or ‘popular’ and make judgements about them based on their supposed category. I’d wager that every high school English student at some time will be forced to write an essay on Shakespeare! …. the prevalence of the essay as a prized text-type; the quasi-mandatory study of Shakespeare; pedagogical choices about reading the play vs watching a film adaptation.”
It is this comment that begins to articulate what I was attempting to say with my clumsy statement that “schools traditionally seek to exclude popular culture”. While it is true that many teachers use modern texts, you tube, music, videos etc to give students an opportunity to connect to the curriculum, the reality is that this is a somewhat encumbered attempt to use popular culture in the classroom. Ultimately schools/ teachers are limited in their attempts to use the resources offered by popular culture effectively, especially in the public sector- an example of this can be seen in Education Queensland’s censorship/ blocking of many sites and applications that can be found on the internet. Even the use of games, TV shows and movies which offers many opportunities to develop our students is stymied- to show a clip longer that 5 mins or alternatively allow game playing in the classroom setting is seen as not valued and many teachers hesitate to use these applications that are essentially emerging as a new pedagogical tool. This is not a reflection on the teacher just a statement of the way social views on teaching and learning colours our practise.
While in this post I have discussed using a clip of modern songs to support student understanding in poetic devises it is important to note that I believe that using popular culture in the classroom is more than a movie clip, modern text etc. I perceive that effective use of popular culture in all its forms will support teachers to effectively differentiate to their student’s levels and guarantee true and deep understanding. Essentially due to the socioeconomic/ sociocultural impacts found in my present context many students with or without a learning disability are limited in their success through the continued use of using a traditional ‘written’ assessment piece. Does it really matter that much about the format the knowledge is assessed with or the fact that the students understood the concepts and are able to apply the knowledge they have been taught.
Primary schools effectively use alternate methods of assessment but it seems that high school success is bound by the student’s ability to write the answer in a formalised essay/report/composition format. My personal belief is that students should be given the opportunity to show their understanding in a manner that they are competent in- examples of this could be a ‘you tube’ style clip or developing a rap to show their knowledge, or using applications such as Fakebook to explore character analysis, or My Sweet Twitter to help them develop an understanding of Romeo and Juliet’s universal messages or seeing the student apply knowledge learnt about the medieval social structure through them designing a setting in Minecraft/ SIMS etc – the list is endless. Even allowing the students to refer to popular cultural texts and formats, rather than Shakespeare etc , to explain their understandings of the concepts taught instead of being hung up on the content. The list is limited only by the teacher’s unwillingness to allow the students to engage in these and other formats.
Unfortunately I perceive that some teachers, despite their introduction of popular culture into the lesson are not embracing the realm as the assessment demanded of the students is for them to respond in the traditional manner. While I realise that moderation and the ability for the students to articulate in a more ‘mature’ manner is important to the driving needs of the curriculum and the department I still question why these requirements overshadow the needs of the student. Am I better off with 20 students who remain engaged and learning or risk the disengagement of the 15 to assess the 5 who can write an essay/ connect with Shakespeare ect?
In my introductory blog I mentioned the QSA participant from a number of years ago who used the text speech to respond to his stimuli… and again I ask the question – what exactly are we measuring? Is it the ability to present knowledge in the traditional manner or the ability to articulate knowledge and understanding?
I’ll get off my soap box now. 🙂
“Unfortunately I perceive that some teachers, despite their introduction of popular culture into the lesson are not embracing the realm as the assessment demanded of the students is for them to respond in the traditional manner.”
Oh, I agree with you so much on that! Feel free to stay on that soapbox…I’m often up there too!
What better way is there to engage a student’s learning and passion than to appeal to their interests and current understanding. By using popular culture the student can relate to the work more readily, they are often more ICT literate than the teacher and can express their understanding and demonstrate their knowledge and skills more thoroughly using media they are familiar with.
Working with students with disabilities myself, I know all too well the struggles within the classroom, not only struggles with behaviour but those of engagement and curriculum content and delivery as well, especially working in a rural state high school. As you said you need to ‘create a worthwhile and valid learning experience’ and to do so you must ‘use what is relevant to the students’. I could not agree more with this statement, and what better way than with popular culture, something which can be accessed and relate to the majority of the class population (Hall, 2011). Students with disabilities require real world examples to solidify their understandings in a more concrete way (Dodd, 2005). Popular culture relates directly to the real world, it engages persons in activities and dialogue (Burnett & Merchant, 2011) which supports learning experiences as text books cannot. Through engaging students with use of their prior knowledge, you are also allowing students to feel engaged and supporting content with foundation knowledge (Dodd, 2005).
For example, in my year 9 English class when working on speculative fiction texts students I found that when we were discussing movies such as E.T (Spielberg, 1982) with my class, I was receiving no feedback other than blank expressions. It was at this point that I decided to use a movie from current popular culture to discuss; Harry Potter (Yates, Columbus, Cuaron, & Newell, 2001). Each student in my class had, if not seen the movie or read the books, at least heard of them and knew the general storyline, characters and setting. This created a more interesting, engaging and exciting topic to discuss and as it was an element of popular culture, which drew on all student prior knowledge, my students not only felt more success when discussing and working on tasks, but their grades reflected their success as well.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is, go for your second option; engage the students, make the learning enjoyable and relatable, and enjoy teaching with popular culture… I enjoyed watching Harry Potter (Yates, Columbus, Cuaron, & Newell, 2001) with my students smiling faces much more than I enjoyed watching E.T (Spielberg, 1982) with their blank, tired, bored expressions.
Works Cited
Burnett, C., & Merchant, G. (2011). Is there a space for critical literacy in the context of social media. English Teaching: Practice and Critique (10), 41 – 57.
Dodd, S. (2005). Understanding Autism. New South Wales: Elsiever.
Hall, L. A. (2011). How popular culture texts inform and shape students’ discussions of social studies texts. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (55), 296 – 305.
Spielberg, S. (Director). (1982). E.T The Extra-Terrestrial [Motion Picture].
Yates, D., Columbus, C., Cuaron, A., & Newell, M. (Directors). (2001). Harry Potter [Motion Picture].
I have found this post really interesting as you have dealt with a topic that is really is very important, which is teaching students with disabilities concepts that included imagery and metaphors (Madden, 2012). Unfortunately, when I look back at the pedagogy in my home country Saudi Arabia, I discover that education program did not take into consideration that students present different level of skills and abilities (Samuel & Gloria, 2013). I definitely believe that more research is required in this area, especially when it comes to establishing a new pedagogy that answers all students’ abilities including the ones with disabilities (Alexis, 2011).
In addition, regarding the final question, I also found myself questioning myself regarding my method of teaching. Should we keep following the traditional methodology of teaching that depends on the high culture or should I adopt a more enjoyable way of teaching through he use of popular culture? I found that making the process of teaching more enjoyable is very important and this can be achieved through the use of popular culture. For instance, the use of ipads in the classroom and the use of social media help in facilitating the interactions between the students.
References
Alexis, L. (2011). The importance of making education fun with digital technology. Journal of Children and Media, 5(4), 461.
Madden, K. (2012). Teaching Students with Disabilities Literacy through Technology. Language and Literacy Spectrum U6 – ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Teaching+Students+with+Disabilities+Literacy+through+Technology&rft.jtitle=Language+and+Literacy+Spectrum&rft.au=Madden%2C+Kaitlyn&rft.date=2012-01-01&rft.pub=New+York+State+Reading+Association&rft.volume=22&rft.spage=30&rft.epage=42&rft.externalDocID=EJ991807¶mdict=en-US U7 – Journal Article U8 – FETCH-eric_primary_EJ9918071, 22(Journal Article), 30-42.
Samuel, R. H., & Gloria, E. (2013). Physical Education Majors’ Judgments about Inclusion and Teaching Students with Disabilities. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 1(1), 151-157.