The Role of Popular Culture in Primary English

Section 10: Conclusion and further reading

There are many other ways in which popular culture can be incorporated into the literacy curriculum and the books below offer further ideas and strategies. However, some of you may be concerned that by drawing on children’s culture in this way, it may lose some of its appeal for children. Numerous research projects have now taken place which indicate that this isn’t the case – in fact, children appear in the main to be thrilled that schools are taking their cultural interests seriously. It is important to conduct work on popular culture in ways which respect children’s own practices and which do not trivialise their interests. This is an area in which they can become the ‘experts’ and there is no need for student teachers to feel that they have to be knowledgeable about every aspect of children’s culture. This would not be possible, nor is it necessary. They should be encouraged to draw on children’s expertise and to be led by their interests. Ultimately, such work can be very rewarding not just for the children, but for the student teachers themselves as they respond to the children’s passions and enthusiasm.

References and further reading

• ALVERMANN, D. MOON, J.S. and HAGOOD, M.C. (1999). Popular Culture in the Classroom: Teaching and Researching Critical Media Literacy. Newark, Delaware: IRA/ NRC.
• ALVERMANN, D.E. and XU, S. H. (2003). Children’s Everyday Literacies: Intersections of Popular Culture and Language Arts Instruction. Language Arts, 81, 145-154.
• BEARNE, E. and WOLSTENCROFT, H. (2005). Playing with texts: The contribution of children’s knowledge of computer narratives to their story writing. In J. Marsh and E. Millard (eds) Popular literacies, childhood and schooling. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
• BHABHA, H.K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
• BROMLEY, H. (2000) Never be without a Beano! ’: Comics, children and literacy. In Anderson, H. and Styles, M. (eds.) Teaching through Texts: Promoting Literacy through Popular and Literary Texts in the Primary Classroom. London: Routledge.
• BROMLEY, H. (1996). Did you know there’s no such thing as Never Land? In M. Hilton (ed.) Potent fictions: Children’s literacy and the challenge of popular culture. (pp 71 –91.) London: Routledge
• DYSON, A.H. (1997). Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press.
• DYSON, A.H. (2002). Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures, New York: Teachers College Press.
• GUTIERREZ, K.D., BAQUEDANO-LOPEZ, P., ALVAREZ, H. and CHIU, M.M. (1999).  Building a culture of collaboration through hybrid language practices. Theory into Practice. 38, 87-93.
• HALL, C. and COLES, C. (1999). Children’s Reading Choices. London: Routledge.
• HALL, N. (1999) Literacy and role play. In J. Marsh and E. Hallet (eds.) Desirable Literacies: Approaches to language and literacy in the early years, London: Paul Chapman.
• KENNER, C. (2005). Bilingual children’s uses of popular culture in text-making. In J. Marsh (ed) Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Technology in Early Childhood. (pp28-50) London: RoutledgeFalmer.
• KENWAY, J and BULLEN, E. (2001). Consuming Children: Education – Entertainment – Advertising, Buckingham: Open University Press.
• MARSH, J. (2000). Teletubby Tales: Popular Culture in the Early Years Language and
  Literacy Curriculum, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. 1, 119 -133.
• MARSH, J. (2004). The primary canon: A critical review. British Journal of Educational Studies, 52, (3) 249-262.
• MARSH, J. (Ed.). (2005). Popular culture, new media and digital literacy in early childhood. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
• MARSH, J. (in press) Popular culture in the language arts curriculum. In J. Flood, SB. Heath and D. Lapp (eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts. Vol. 2. New York: MacMillan/ IRA.
• MARSH, J., BROOKS, G., HUGHES, J., RITCHIE, L., ROBERTS, S. and WRIGHT, K. (2005). Digital beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new technologies. Sheffield: University of Sheffield. Report accessed online at: http://www.digitalbeginnings.shef.ac.uk/, November, 2005.]
• MARSH, J. and MILLARD, E. (2000). Literacy and Popular Culture: Using Children’s Culture in the Classroom, London: Paul Chapman.
• MARSH, J. and MILLARD, E. (2006). Popular Literacies, Childhood and Schooling. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
• MARSH, J. and THOMPSON, P. (2001). Parental Involvement in Literacy Development: Using Media Texts, Journal of Research in Reading. 24, 266 – 278.
• MILLARD, E. and MARSH, J. (2001) Sending Minnie the Minx Home: Comics and Reading Choices, Cambridge Journal of Education, 31,1, 25 –38.
• MILLARD E. (2003) Transformative Pedagogy: Towards a Literacy of Fusion Reading, Literacy and Language, Vol 37, no 1 pp 3-9.
• MOJE, E.B., CIECHANOWSKI, K.M., KRAMER, K., ELLIS, L., CARRILLO, R. and COLLAZZO, T. (2004). Working towards third space in content area literacy: An examination of everyday funds of knowledge and Discourse. In Reading Research Quarterly. 39, 38-70.
• PAHL, K. and ROWSELL, J. (2005) Literacy and Education: The New Literacy Studies in the Classroom. London: Paul Chapman.
• PRIMARY NATIONAL STRATEGY (PNS)/ UNITED KINGDOM LITERACY ASSOCIATION (UKLA) (2004). Raising boys’ achievement in writing. London: HMSO.
• ROBERTSON, R. (1992). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage.
• ROBERTSON, R. (1995). Glocalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In M. Featherstone, Lash, S. and Robertson, R. (eds) Global Modernities. London. Sage.
• ROBINSON, M. & MACKEY, M.  (2003). Film and television. In N. Hall, J. Larson & J. Marsh (Eds.) Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. London, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• TOBIN, J. (2004). Introduction. In J. Tobin (ed) Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and fall of Pokemon. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
• WILLETT, R. (2005). ‘Baddies’ in the classroom: media education and narrative writing. Literacy. 39, 142-148.
• XU, S.H. (2000a). Pre-service teachers integrate understanding of diversity into literacy instruction: An adaptation of the ABC’s model, Journal of Teacher Education. 51, 135-142.
• XU, S.H. (2000b) Pre-service teachers in a literacy methods course consider issues of diversity, Journal of Literacy Research. 32, 505-531.
• XU, S.H. (2001) Exploring diversity issues in teacher education, Reading Online, 5, 1.Online text at:
  http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=action/xu/index.html, [Accessed in December, 2001.]