Popular culture references have demonstrated usefulness as a pedagogical tool as they enhance student engagement and information retention. Use of the American version of the hit mockumentary TV series "The Office" has demonstrated pedagogical effectiveness in management, organizational behavior, and human resources courses. The show…

The refashioning of popular cultural resources has become a salient strategy for the construction of "hyper-real" spaces of cultural consumption worldwide. Taking Lefebvre's triadic model of space as the anchorage, this study proposes an analytical framework to examine the affective production of space. Ethnographic fieldwork was…

Fandom practices are often considered meaningless and unnecessary. However, the use of social media carries the potential for positive as well as negative impact on the users. Using the framework of Community of Practice, the latest theory addressing community formation and interaction, as its theoretical framework, the study explores the…

Pop songs have been claimed to provide a noteworthy source of second language (L2) input. While listening to songs in English is one of the most commonly reported out-of-class activities among EFL learners, little research exists as to how different teaching approaches to the use of songs in the EFL class can enhance students' vocabulary learning.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes, values, and beliefs of New York music teachers towards the inclusion of popular music in the classroom. This research was guided by the following questions: (1) To what extent are K-12 teachers interested in teaching a variety of popular music instruments and styles?; (2) What attitudes and…

Informed by ecological approaches to second language development (SLD), the current study looked into three adult English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners' quests of engaging in lifelong, informal language learning in the digital age. Data from in-depth interviews revealed that popular culture presented in different media forms offered…

This article explores international students' experiences in their graduate STEM programs at predominantly white US institutions through in-depth qualitative interviews and thematic analysis. International students reported encountering social and cultural barriers with American peers and sometimes even with other international students. These…

We review the film "Wonder Woman" as a teaching tool for leadership. The film illustrates transformational leadership, bases of power, and servant leadership while considering how gender plays into leadership. The approach we suggest is through a "movie club" activity in which the entire film is viewed, students are given…

Research highlights that early childhood teachers (ECTs) hold varied opinions on the value of superhero play (SP) to young children's learning and development. This study sought to investigate how ECTs in Victoria are responding to superhero play, and to examine the beliefs that underpin their responses. Interviews were conducted with eight ECTs…

Teaching race and ethnicity in various sociology courses, we found students in our classes can be very reluctant to approach the subject of race, discrimination, and racism. Moreover, during class discussion, they often have a hard time defining and analyzing these concepts. In this study, we examine how popular culture can be a useful tool to…

Traditional literacies centering on effective reading and writing remain a focus in Texas schools. However, students come to our classrooms with a variety of experiences in new literacies, particularly those based on students' interests in popular media. In an effort to bridge students' digital media experiences with in-school literacies, teachers…

This article explicates the ways that the popular television series "Sons of Anarchy" in conjunction with our content analysis coding tool can be used to teach theories and concepts central to Sociology of Deviance courses. We detail how students learned to understand deviance as a social constructed phenomenon by coding and analyzing…

Recent research into Japanese as a foreign language education has strongly emphasized the link between Japanese popular culture and learning Japanese. However, these studies have only targeted Japanese language learners in formal education contexts and have largely ignored those who are not studying Japanese or studying Japanese informally. This…

This mixed-methods study explores how the use of satirical news videos contributes to student engagement with information literacy (IL) instruction. The sample was drawn from first-year undergraduate students in for-credit IL courses. Overall, the use of satirical news videos improved student engagement with, and enjoyment of, IL topics. Given the…

This study aims to identify whether the use of popular music in teaching song creates a significant difference in attitudes of middle school students to music lessons. "Pretest-posttest design" from experimental models was used. The experimental and control groups consists of 8 classes of continuing education from four different middle…