What is Popular Culture?
Click on the image to visit Initial Teacher Education (ITE) homepage to find more wonderful information about using popular culture in literacy.
Since the onset of learning about popular culture, I have been really interested in how I can actually incorporate these great ideas into my own classroom. I know, from having discussed this with my Year 5 students, that they would love for popular culture to be used in the classroom. I guess that there is the danger of trivializing their interests by over exposing them to certain aspects of popular culture. According to numerous studies, this is not true. We need to acknowledge that they are the ‘experts’ in this area and that we don’t need to know it all, as teachers responding to children’s passions can be very rewarding for both students and teachers.
There a many reasons to use popular culture in the classroom:
- Gives the students the reassurance that we, as educators value their interests and that they can make valuable contributions to their own learning.
- It has the potential to be highly motivating, especially for the more reluctant learners in the classroom.
- Popular culture encourages the students to engage in the learning as it provides common and shared interests.
According to Ronayne, Shane & Nguyen (2012) “Traditional teaching methods, … are the antithesis of “user oriented” and “participatory” realities of life.” We are therefore obligated to making learning more meaningful for our students by bringing their interests into school.
Youth Popular Culture and Text 