This article addresses the turbulent relationship that British cultural studies scholars have with the concepts of "class" and "tradition" and the problematic status of these key terms within the cultural studies literature. The authors maintain, in part, that these concepts have been deployed within a center-periphery thesis…

Recent discussions on English as an International Language have highlighted the important role played by English language popular culture for the identities and bilingual development of diverse global citizens who learn and use English. However, there has been little attention to connections between popular culture and "teacher"…

Academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, is a chronic problem. This paper reports the results of a project undertaken at a public funded university in Melbourne, Australia, in partnership with colleagues from a public funded university in Beijing, China, to combat this and other problems associated with academic literacy. The prime focus of the…

As a teaching artist in public schools, the author is paired with classroom teachers to teach poetry and to give students an opportunity to experience their academic curriculum through the arts. At the beginning of the school year, she gave her students the on-going, yearlong assignment to watch the news, to pay attention. Knowing many of them…

This article theorizes empirical data from an ethnographic project conducted in and around the economically disadvantaged suburb of Noble Park in southeast suburban Melbourne (Victoria, Australia). Exploring the politics around gendered identities of young people involved in the research, particularly Australian-Sudanese men, the authors theorize…

Modern critics do not consider science fiction and mystery novels to be "serious reading", but Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis questioned the boundaries between "popular" and "serious" literature. Both Christian writers critically discuss the spiritual crisis of the modern world in each fiction genre. This paper…

Purpose: The present study aims to understand context and dynamics of cognitive learning of students as an outcome of the usage of popular movies as a learning tool in the management classroom and specifically in the context of a course on cross-cultural management issues. Design/methodology/approach: This is an exploratory study based on…

Popular culture includes stories that define and justify the existence of groups and nations. Among those stories are creation accounts, especially stories of the forming of nations through struggles for liberation from oppression. The useful liberation myths are exemplified by two recent films: "V for Vendetta" and "Children of…

This article argues that theoretical understandings of multimodality have enormous potential for assessment purposes in secondary school contexts. Informed by the work of three researchers in three North American high schools, the article offers vignettes of the effective assessment of communicative competence in English classrooms that draws on…

In the past two years, several Latin American nations have begun celebrating their bicentennials of independence, turning attention to questions of national identity and the legacy of independence in the twenty-first century. This reflection is sure to continue into the coming decade. This article offers a few practical suggestions for bringing…

As an approach to literary study, critical literacy is not a widespread practice in New Zealand secondary schools. This article draws on a major project on teaching literature in the multicultural classroom that take place over two years in 2008-2009. In it we report on a case study where a Year 13 English teacher designed and tested a novel…

The purpose of this study was to investigate musical parenting of infants and toddlers in Brazil. Forty-three Brazilian mothers were interviewed on musical experience and preferences, beliefs and uses of music with their children. Results suggest that mothers appear to be caught between two main forces: the natural human urge to interact,…

In 1999, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science introduced a new kind of compulsory arts education in secondary school aimed at stimulating cultural participation among Dutch youth. This article examines whether the course, called "Cultural and Artistic Education," succeeds in doing so. Data on 3,851 secondary school…

The nature of nanoscience and nanotechnology (collectively, nano) are discussed as important examples of the modern sciences and technologies that are having an increasing impact on all aspects of life. In this Position paper, general proposals are made for the levels of understanding of nano that might be attained by whole populations. The ideas…

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…