This document discusses the relationship between popular culture and education. It presents different perspectives on how popular culture can be integrated into or separated from education. Some key debates discussed include whether popular culture should be the object of critique or a medium for teaching; how theories of learning like constructivism and play-based learning relate to issues of media effects; and the role of the teacher in navigating different stances like moral, generational, and neutral academic perspectives on popular culture. The document considers a variety of sources and outlines pedagogical options and theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing the intersection of popular culture and learning.

1. popular culture and education:
how it teaches and how we learn
phil benson
http://www.slideshare.net/pbbenson/popular-culture-and-education-how-it-teach

2. integrating popular culture and
education
Popular
Education
culture Integration

3. whatever can be integrated must
first be separated
Separate

4. pleasure and learning
‘Pleasure and learning: For most people these
two don’t seem to go together. But that is a
mistruth we have picked up at school, where we
have been taught that pleasure is fun and
learning is work, and, thus that work is not fun.
(Gee 2007: 10)

5. incommensurate worlds
popular culture education
out-of-school in-school
entertainment teaching
pleasure learning
(passive) consumption (active) study
emotional intellectual
(hidden) ideology critical thinking
sexual / violent asexual / rational
gendered / racialized human / global
transient / here and now cumulative / lifelong
repetitive / addictive progressive / developmental
threat safety

6. power of the media
‘Rather than condemn or endorse the undoubted
power of the media, we need to accept their significant
impact and penetration throughout the world as an
established fact…. The school and the family share the
responsibility of preparing the young person for living
in a world of powerful images, words and sounds….
[M]edia education will be most effective when parents,
teachers, media personnel and decision-makers all
acknowledge they have a role to play in developing
greater critical awareness among listeners, viewers and
readers.’ (UNESCO 1982)

7. moral agendas
‘Media literacy should be a moral agenda…, a
moral discourse which recognizes our
responsibility for the other person in a world of
great conflict, tragedy, intolerance and
indifference, and which critically engages with
our media’s incapacity (as well as its occasional
incapacity) to engage with the reality of that
difference, responsibly and humanely.’
(Silverstone, 2004: 440-1)

8. Losing control of youth
• The imperative for integration…
– ‘In some countries…, children already spend more
time watching television than they do attending
school’ (UNESCO, 1982)
– ‘When children 4-6 were asked in a survey “Which
do you like better, TV or your daddy,” 54 percent
said “TV”’ (Silverblatt 2008: 3)

9. students and participatory culture
• ‘aliens in the classroom’ (Green and Bigum, 1993)
• ‘today’s students are no longer the people our
educational system was designed to teach’ (Prensky,
2001: 1-2)
• university students ‘who have a non-traditional view
of textual interaction and often spend a lot of their
out of class time employed in significantly creative,
narrative-based activities that do not fit the
traditional construction of textual engagement.’
(Urbanski 2010: 239)

10. polarization
Amusing ourselves to death… (Postman, 1985)
Kidnapped: How irresponsible marketers are stealing the minds
of your children (Acuff & Reiher 2005)
Grand theft childhood : the surprising truth about violent video
games and what parents can do (Kutner & Olson, 2008)
Killing monsters: Why children need fantasy, super heroes, and
make-believe violence. (Jones, 2002)
Good video games and good learning… (Gee 2007)
Everything bad is good for you : how today's popular culture is
actually making us smarter (Johnson 2006)

11. stance
• polarization of moral stance
• polarization of generational stance
• the ‘neutral’ academic stance beyond the
moral/generation gap
– Disembedded, ‘cool’ members of our own (older)
generation
– ‘fascinated’ participant observers of new
(younger) generational practices
(cf. Richards 1998)

12. the neutral stance - moral
• a ‘self-reflexive’ approach – ‘a constant
movement back and forth between practice
and theory, between celebration and critical
analysis, and between language use and
language study’. (Buckingham, 1993: 151)
• ‘a balance must emerge so that critical media
literacy is not purely a cognitive experience,
nor is it solely experiencing pleasures without
challenges to extended learning’ (Alvermann,
et al 1999: 28)

13. the neutral stance - generational
Prensky: how can ‘immigrants’ presume to teach
‘natives’ new literacies?
‘Fortunately, media educators have long ago crossed
this threshold. In fact, recognition that the media
educator can never know everything about evolving
media discourses and practices is a central truism in
the field…. The media educator, thus, needs to bring
strategies, concepts, and frames to the teaching
context, but with an open mind towards media content
that is often better known by young learners.’
(Hoechsmann and Poyntz 2012: 8)

14. pedagogical options…
Popular culture as…
–motivational stimulus / reward
–medium of teaching and learning
–‘literary’ text
–resource for text production
–object of teaching and learning
–object of critique

15. …how do we choose?
• positions are often based on moral /
generational stance
• less frequently on theories of learning applied
to engagement with popular culture…
• public pedagogy (Sandlin, et al 2010)
• …how popular culture teaches and how we
learn

16. theories of learning
theory learning is… examples
cultural acquisition of the higher forms of culture, Pre-media
transmission rejection of popular culture education
behaviourism a conditioned response to popular culture Media effects
stimuli literature
constructivism making meaning out of engagement with Alvermann (2002)
popular culture
play-based stimulated by the pleasures and safety of Jones (2002)
learning play involving popular culture texts
cognitivism cognitive development through engagement Johnson (2006)
with complexity of popular culture
situated learning development of identity through situated NLS literature
engagement with popular culture
emancipatory developing critical awareness of dominant Media literacy
learning ideologies carried by popular culture texts literature

17. theories of learning and
moral stance – media effects
Cultural transmission – emphasis on sex and violence is
evidence of the ‘low’ character of popular culture
Behaviourist – pleasurable emotional stimulus of media
violence leads to imitation / real-life reenactment
Constructivist – ‘What all this means is not that I will
run out and pretend to be a S.W.A.T team member…
[but] that S.W.A.T. 4 is primarily a tool for
understanding.’ (Gee 2007: 16)
Play-based learning – engagement with media violence
is cathartic (Jones, 2002)

18. Theories of learning and generational
stance – teacher roles
• Cultural transmission - teacher as demagogue
– differentiating ‘good’ from ‘bad’ culture
• Behaviourism – teacher as manager/operator
of selected popular culture teaching texts
• Constructivism – teacher as guide/co-
interpreter of student-selected texts
• Play-based learning – teacher as co-
participant/conversational partner in play
with texts

19. references
cuff, D. S., and Reiher, R. H. (2005). Kidnapped: How irresponsible marketers are
stealing the minds of your children. Chicago, IL: Dearborn.
lvermann, D., Moon, J., and Hagood, M. (1999). Popular culture in the classroom:
Teaching and researching critical media literacy. Newark, DE: International Reading
Association.
uckingham, David (1993). Going critical: The limits of media literacy. Australian Journal
of Education, 37 (2), 142-152.
ee, J. P. (2007). Good video games and good learning: Collected essays on video
games, learning and literacy. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
entile, D. A. (2003). Media violence and children: A complete guide for parents and
professionals. Westport, CT: Praeger.
reen, B., and Bigum, C. (1993). Aliens in the classroom. Australian Journal of
Education, 23 (2), 119-141.

20. Jones, G. (2002). Killing monsters: Why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-
believe violence. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Kutner, L., and Olson, C. K. (2008). Grand theft childhood : the surprising truth about
violent video games and what parents can do. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Postman, N. (1994). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show
business. New York: Penguin.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5), 1-6.
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20imm
Richards, Chris (1998). Teen spirits: Music and identity in Media Education. London:
UCL Press.
Sandlin, J. A., Schultz, B. D., Burdick, J. (Eds.) (2010). Handbook of public pedagogy:
Education and learning beyond schooling. New York, NY: Routledge.
Silverblatt, A. (2008). Media literacy: Keys to interpreting media messages. 3rd Edition.
Westport, CT: Praeger.
Silverstone, R. (2004). Regulation, media literacy and media civics. Media, Culture and
Society, 26(3), 440-449.
UNESCO (1982). Grunwald declaration on media education
http://www.unesco.org/education/pdf/MEDIA_E.PDF
Urbanski, H. (2010). In H. Urbanski (Ed.), Writing and the digital generation: Essays in
new media rhetoric (pp. 239-251). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.