This article problematises a broad consensus in favour of importing popular culture into classrooms as a means of engaging pupils, transforming interactional norms and facilitating pupil understanding. A literacy lesson in which an English primary school teacher invoked the televised talent show, "X factor", in organising the class to…

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular…

This paper concerns the popular cultural representation of English rurality. It focuses upon "Postman Pat", a popular cultural phenomenon which has come to be routinely cited as exemplary and iconic of contemporary imaginings of the English countryside as "idyllic". The idea that Anglocentric popular culture (re)produces this…

A number of previous studies have examined both the overall level of belief expressed by young people in the paranormal and the major demographic predictors of such belief. Building on this research tradition, the present study examines how one specific paranormal belief concerning contact with the spirits of the dead integrates with the wider…

It is, by now, well accepted that those of us who live with/in contemporary Anglocentric popular culture are presented, from birth, with manifold icons and imaginings of the English countryside as "idyllic". Indeed, the idea that, through such popular representations, we encounter and "consume" this sense of "rural…

Despite receiving an unprecedented level of government funding to ensure young people have two hours of high quality physical education (PE) and sport, physical educators in the UK continue to decry poor motivation levels and disengaged youth in PE. The major purpose of this paper is to achieve a greater understanding of the factors that motivate…

Recounts the life of John Newbery, the 18th-century London bookseller who did more than anyone to establish the children's book trade, and for whom the prestigious Newbery Award is named. States that Newbery published many books, including a line of books called the Juvenile Library, entertaining but also didactic, in the manner of the times. (PA)

The history of pirate radio--radio broadcasts offered by unlicensed broadcasters as alternatives to licensed, commercial radio programming--is difficult to trace, both in America and the United Kingdom (UK) since mention of pirate broadcasts of a less-then-thrilling nature are rarely found. Also, until 1927, the U.S. government did not formally…

Examining the attitudes and behaviors of his adolescent students in rural Yorkshire, the author finds in them a strange lack of respect for adults, which he attributes to disruptions of consciousness caused by the constant bombardment of pop music and television. Two other authors comment on pp128-30. (SJL)

This case study investigated the introduction of a theme from popular culture into a sociodramatic role-play area in a northern England Nursery Infant school, focusing on its effects on 6- to 7-year olds' literacy activities. Findings indicated that the incorporation of themes from popular culture into the curriculum motivated children whose…

This paper begins by discussing the difference between genre and gender, defining the former as the study of a systemic totality, and the latter as the split in the totality, reversal, upturning, and break-up of any systemic logic. Also discussed are (1) the difference between nature and culture, and the quarrel between essentialist and…

Based on the premise that preschool and school settings fail to take into account children's popular cultural interests when developing curriculum content, this study explored the potential of popular culture for motivating young children to engage in literacy and oracy practices. Participating were 94 three- and four-year-olds in two nurseries in…

Smelzer's book deals with the institutional provision of education, rather than education as in and of society, arguing that the relative strength of competing interest groups concerned with popular education determined how rapidly a state-controlled system came to win out over a denominational one in England. (SLD)

The origins and history of the skinhead movement in the United States are traced, beginning with their links with skinheads in England and focusing on racist skinheads rather than the less-well-known nonracist skinheads. How skinheads have developed within the larger youth group scenes, their ideas and activities, the role of music in their…