I believe popular culture should be used within the classroom. The outcomes of the parent survey supplied me with a range of ideas, positive and negative, towards the perceptions of popular culture. From the results, it is clear that popular culture is supported; with parents agreeing that it should be included within the primary classroom (Arthur, 2005). However, parents did suggest some negatives which will need to be considered.
One parent mentioned how the use of popular culture allows teachers to give children a context for learning, which they are familiar with and can relate to. Therefore, they are more likely to enjoy the lesson and learn. This point can be supported by many key writers such as Gee (2004), Goodwyn (2000), Pahl and Rowsell (2005) who believed that schools must find ways of acknowledging new literacies which offer connections with children’s present and future lives.
A parent brought up a possible issue for the use of popular culture, which I had not considered. Children’s popular culture today generally consists of technological devices; items which can be very expensive for schools and not many have enough for whole class use. This idea was supported on my SE3 where the class only had a small selection of Ipads, a device all children in the class wanted to use. When incorporated into lessons it was clear that the children using them were really engaged however, due to having so little, they were not available for the whole class to access them. This shows one difficulty in the use of popular culture. In contrast to this point, Ofsted (2011) reported that by the end of their survey, a small number of schools were developing a new approach to the provision of equipment. Schools were encouraging pupils to use their own devices. On the Estonian interactive bootcamp I noticed this approach was used. The school had virtually no equipment; the day before a lesson where children needed cameras they were told to bring a device from home to film with. This is a more sustainable strategy for the longer term which would reduce the pressure on school budgets. Popular culture is always changing and schools can never keep up; using pupil’s devices increases the likelihood of children using ‘modern’ and diverse ranges on technological devices, supporting comments made in last week’s blog post.
Another response which surprised me, as I had not considered it, was that some children may not have access to certain types of popular culture; does this put them at a disadvantage? This was also a point raised in the seminar on Tuesday. Yes, these children could be at a disadvantage but it will be no different from the disadvantage which children who have little experience of one text type compared to those who have a vast majority of experience within traditional literacy lessons. Children will then have the opportunity to learn about this ‘item’ (Ofsted, 2011; Pahl and Rowsell, 2005).
My implications for future practice will be to continue using popular culture in the classroom as it is generally seen as a positive idea I will also need to consider the ideas from my previous post and above whilst using them. I now have a strong understanding of why it should be used but I will now need to gain more experience in learning how popular culture could be incorporated within teaching.
Bibliography
Arthur, L. (2005) ‘Popular Culture: views of parents and educators’ in Marsh, J. (2005) Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood. Oxon: RoutledgeFalmer.
Gee, J. (2004) Situated Language and Learning: a critique of traditional schooling. London: Routledge.
Goodwyn, A. (ed.) (2000) English in the Digital Age: Information and Communications Technology and the teaching of English. London: Cassell.
Ofsted. (2011) ICT schools 2008-11 [pdf] Available at: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/ict-schools-2008-11(Accessed: 21.01.2014).
After reading your blog there are many points that I agree with and I, too, have observed schools where children may not have had access to Ipads/laptops etc as the school couldn't afford to equip each child with such technology.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I think you make a valid point about some children not having access to certain types of popular culture as I only saw this as a disadvantage to those children. However from reading your blog entry, I can see how this could be an advantage as we as teachers, can develop children's understanding of the use of popular culture in the classroom.