Week 3: Pop Culture - That's Literacy?

Janette - this is my reflection on the presentation from last week:

Summary and Reflection: Pop Culture – That’s Literacy?

Kati Roughton-Paré 100362718

I think it is difficult to separate the use of pop culture and the use of digital technology in a pedagogical context. For the most part, contemporary pop culture is accessible via technological platforms whether they are Facebook, YouTube, music, or games. For this reason, the readings I undertook beyond the course readings for this week (week three) focused more on the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in education.

Vines for education?

Vines just for fun.

The title we were provided; “Pop Culture – That’s Literacy?” implies a degree of cynicism, unless perhaps I inferred that erroneously. When I asked friends, family, and colleagues what they understood to be pop culture, I found one consistent assumption and this was that it is often viewed as trivial and over-simplistic. It is interesting and noteworthy that when I brought this idea to the class, during our presentation, there was a general outcry that this position was false. However, when one compares pop culture to high culture, we can make comparisons such as Jane Austen’s work versus a Grand Theft Auto web blogger; or Eminem’s lyrics compared to those of Verdi in La Traviata. Does pop culture seem trivial now? I would argue that it does unless it is used in a meaningful and well-purposed manner in the classroom.

Hughes, King, Perkins, and Fuke (2001) and Frey and Fisher (2004) did just this. Using the vehicle of the graphic novel, these authors “invited students into school literacy” (Frey & Fisher, 2004, p. 24). The goal of each study was to make Language Arts more meaningful and authentic for the students and to ultimately have these struggling readers and writers use a more creative process to develop a product which they could a) complete and b) be proud of. “Rather than the work being a chore (as written assignments are frequently considered to be by reluctant students), it was evident that the students found the work to be exciting and playful”. (Hughes et al, 2011, p. 610). What these studies demonstrate is that the use of the graphic novel as a medium for self-expression increases student engagement as well as perhaps tenacity, as demonstrated by the number of students who managed to complete the assignment they were given.

These studies equally well demonstrate the potential for pop culture and pedagogy to bring students from being consumers to being creators. The New London Group (1996) states that “Critical Framing” is “to help learners frame their growing mastery in practice and conscious control and understanding in relation to the historical, social, cultural, political, ideological, and value-centred relations of particular systems of knowledge and social practice” (New London Group, 1996, p. 21). It is through critical framing that students develop “the necessary personal and theoretical distance from what they have learned, constructively critique it, account for its cultural location, creatively extend and apply it, and eventually innovate on their own” (New London Group, 1996, p. 21). This indeed is transformed practice.

The design of the Hughes et al and the Frey & Fisher studies seem to fit well with the New London Group’s framework of Situated Practice (immersion in meaningful activities with a community of learners), Overt Instruction (scaffolding, collaborating, and building), and Critical Framing, which leads to Transformed Practice (New London Group, 1996, p. 20).

What is crucial to consider however, is how pop culture and technology generally are used for teaching. Rather than a hook, educators need to find ways to make them intrinsic to the learning process so that students may not only consume them but rather become involved in critiquing, manipulating, and remixing them as a means to find their place in our ever-evolving, globalizing society. “Part of being digitally literate is to be aware of and to resist the digital threats to identity and to be able to use digital means to secure and support one’s own identity” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 174). To achieve this, students require teachers who are equipped to develop competencies such as how to collect and retrieve information, to manage information, integrate, evaluate and create (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 158). Students should be invited to author, and remix information using digital tools. Notice that none of these skills or competencies focus on the ability to become fluent with any one tool or phenomenon. Pop culture is in a constant state of change and reinvention. Therefore, we must be careful not to focus on the vehicle or tool itself but on the affordances that digital technologies generally allow in terms of engaging students in the learning process.

Doug Belshaw illustrates concisely how educators can develop digital literacies in the overlap between individual interest and important issues, where important issues may be bullying, Black History month, the problems with junk food or plastics in our society.  

It is important to remember that adopting pop culture as a teaching tool does not equate to entertaining our students. The decision to use it in the classroom should not be considered a gimmick, a hook, or an opportunity for levity. Rather it should be considered as logical manner in which to connect curriculum to student reality. “Children and young people are increasingly active media users as consumers and producers”, therefore absorbing and consuming popular culture, but also contributing to popular culture” (Pedro 2006 in Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 145). This being the case, digital literacy “affects your identity because every time you’re given a new tool, it gives you a different way to impact upon the world” (Belshaw, Ted Talk, 2012). We exist in a world where the classical industrial order is being replaced by a society of uncertainty and risk, a liquid modernity (Bauman 2000 in Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 153). Web 2.0 has created a society where one person can reach millions in a matter of moments and this in turn has created a need, particularly in the younger generation, to stay connected at all times. It helps to understand why our children are so intent on sharing their lives publicly as they try to build, maintain, or change their individual identities. Concurrently, external agencies are covertly and overtly gathering information on us and attempting to both manipulate our actions (through targeted ads for example) and stereotype, or imprint on us, an identity that they prefer. Therefore, we are left with the challenge of controlling the construct of our identities and it is for this reason (among many!) that literacy is so very crucial. “The idea of literacy expresses one of the fundamental characteristics of participation in society, and the widening application of the world has seen it used to characterize all the necessary attributes of social being”. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 155).

Ultimately, it is clear that digital technologies are ever evolving and are almost certainly here to stay. While they are here they are also integral in shaping our social present and future. What I have learned from these readings is that the greatest hurdle to successfully incorporating digital technologies in pedagogy is our educational system itself. “The current generation of decision makers ranging from politicians to teachers sees the world from a different perspective than the digital generation (Green & Hannon, 2007). The young people of today cannot remember a world without the internet, SMS, MSN, iPod, MySpace and Facebook. However, the decision-makers decide how digital media will be used in the schools and the professional world. They make laws and regulations that restrict the potential inherent in digital media. This represents a short-term solution to a long-term challenge. The problem is that schools run the risk of basing their teaching on presentation, communication and assessment methods that are about to become obsolete in both form and content” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 145).

This quote alludes to the problems inherent in attempting to transform current educational systems and systems of pedagogy that have been in pace for many, may decades. “Substantial cultural change in an institution occurs at a glacial pace” (Owen and Demb, 2004, p. 651). Too much, and probably without really paying attention to it, our educational institutions remain steeped in the ideals generated during the Industrial Revolution wherein education was a vehicle for developing economic power through the training and indoctrination of the proletariat, or the working class (Hodgkinson, 1991). It is this legacy that keeps classrooms teacher-centric and, as stated by Mezirow "the very definition of education itself is almost universally understood in terms of an organized effort to facilitate behavioural change".  What we need is a new definition of education, which encompasses the development of individuality, curiosity, and growth through the development of critical literacies including digital critical literacies.     …or something along those lines!

http://archive2.nmc.org/pdf/Global_Imperative.pdf