Explore the outcomes of your parental/student teacher survey. Did any responses surprise or challenge you? What might be the subsequent implications for your future practice? Make links to the in-session discussion and to any relevant readings.
For the purposes of this blog task I contacted an NQT in her first year post-Winchester working in one of my placement schools. I chose her due to the fact that she is of a similar age and is from the same educational establishment, but more importantly that she now has first-hand experience and a class of her own. As there will only be a couple of the points raised used within this blog, I will begin by summarising the overall response of my participant. Whilst she did see a lot of sense in 'keeping up' with popular culture and trends as a tool for engagement, ultimately she viewed this as outweighed by more traditional methods in terms of quality teaching and planning time.
It was felt by my participant that popular culture is useful for engagement as children are increasingly unified within a culture that is accessed through media and that that number of children that access this culture greatly out-weigh those that do not. Marsh and Millard (2012) seem to agree with this point. Using case studies from their research they highlight two types of children, those that engage with home-learning using media at home, and those that use media at home as a distraction from home-learning. Both types of children in the studies use similar technologies and engage in multi-tasking, home learning that incorporates the use of these media could increase engagement. The same could be said for school-based learning. During another study levels of engagement were monitored in groups of children learning with and without a popular-culture theme, the results show a considerable increase in engagement (Marsh, Brooks, Hughes, Ritchie, Roberts & Wright, 2005). My participant also mentioned that it is nice once in a while to teach the lesson in such a way, not only for the children, but to let your hair down and enjoy yourself as a teacher, Marsh et al. (2005) seem to agree as they mention the increase in morale for the staff. There were, however, concerns expressed by my participant as to the longevity of this effect of popular-culture infused teaching over sustained periods of time.
According to Lambirth (2003) it seems that a key cause for teachers feeling uncomfortable with using popular-culture in lessons, especially literacy, is that to do so would be to challenge the literacy curriculum and therefore the educational establishments that they depend on for their livelihood. This is certainly something that my participant agreed with as she felt that she would be entirely uncomfortable incorporating 'too much' popular-culture as an NQT due to observations and meeting the targets of the school. She also mentioned that she would worry about how parents would interpret the recalling of their children's days at school.
I personally find the topic of 'cultural capital' in relation to popular-culture in schools, as discussed by Lambirth (2003) and Marsh and Millard (2012), to be a topic that is fascinating. I can see potential in uncovering the talents and interests of children with low cultural capital and allowing them to apply that at school in front of their peers. Whilst I see the needs of the children and the benefits of meeting those needs though popular-culture, I must mention one point raised during the seminar discussions; that teachers have a responsibility to educating children to the manipulative nature of most forms of popular-culture in the media. Arthur (2005) highlights the dangers of allowing children to mediate their own understandings, that if used by the teacher, it then becomes the teacher's responsibility to teach children to critique what they see or hear and employ multiple perspectives.
Bibliography
Arthur, L. (2005)‘Popular culture: views of parents and educators’ in Marsh, J. (2005) Popular Culture, New Media & Digital Literacy in Early Childhood. Oxon: RoutledgeFalmer.
Lambirth, A (2003) “They get enough of that at home”: understanding aversion to popular cultures in schools.” Reading 37(1) pp.9-13.
Marsh, J. Brooks,G. Hughes,J. Ritchie, L. Roberts, S. Wright, K (2005)Digital beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new Technologies University of Sheffield (Section 2.10 p.46; Sections 3.2 & 3.3 p48/49).
Marsh, J. & Millard, E. (2012)Popular Literacies, Childhood and Schooling. London: Routledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment