Today, there is a widespread idea that parents need to learn how to carry out their roles as parents. Practices of parental learning operate throughout society. This article deals with one particular practice of parental learning, namely nanny TV, and the way in which ideal parents are constructed through such programmes. The point of departure is…

Due to its seemingly unclear and ambiguous mission, the community college has somewhat of a stigma attached to it, as the four-year institution defines the American college experience (LaPaglia, 1994). Although only a few studies concerning media portrayals of community college students have been published within the last 20 years, the existing…

Building on qualitative research about sexualisation by media and culture and the impact on girls' development, in this article we present a discourse analysis of three focus groups of teen girls of colour and of diverse ethnicities asked to talk about sexiness. We focus on the ways the girls both support and resist hegemonic discourses about…

There has been much concern about the perceived increase in sexualised media and its potential impact on children's well-being and development. This phenomenon was examined in a four-phase study focusing, specifically on music media. Phase 1 investigated the prevalence of sexualised music media broadcast on Australian free-to-air television in…

Despite a significant increase in gay representation in contemporary television fiction, many media scholars argue that the representation of gay men and women is governed by heteronormativity. They postulate that even rounded and heterogeneous representations of gay men and women are characters that desire to participate in institutions,…

This qualitative study explored diverse college students' perspectives on the portrayal of college life in recent popular films. Results from this study suggest that White college students dismiss stereotypes as comedic satire whereas their non-White peers readily identify the influence of negative media representations upon their academic and…

Young people can be motivated to learn science using the power of various entertainment media. The author states the need to recognise that they are accessing science through informal learning outside school. With children saying they have learnt from cartoons such as Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, it would seem that entertaining animations…

School shootings publicized worldwide inevitably awaken the debate about contemporary communication media and violence. It is often conjectured that regular exposure of young people to countless acts of aggression in contemporary popular media leads them to become more aggressive and, in some cases, to commit violent crimes. But is this claim…

This qualitative dissertation study explores the ways television program content informs the participant's notions of academic and professional achievement and success. I argue that the undergraduate female students who participated in this study, whom I characterize as the post-feminist generation, are imagined as occupying a pivot point in…

This article explores how storied representations of characters with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are typified in a world that is increasingly influenced by popular media. Twenty commercially published children's picture books, popular novels, mainstream television programs, and popular movies from 2006-2012 were selected using purposive,…

Identity formation is a critical process shaping the lives of adolescents and can present distinct challenges for Black adolescent girls who are positioned in society to negotiate ideals of self when presented with false and incomplete images representing Black girlhood. Researchers have found distorted images of Black femininity derived from…

The authors examine the modernist underpinnings of traditional adult learning and development theories and evaluate elements of those theories through more contemporary lenses. Drawing on recent literature focused on "public pedagogy," the authors argue that much learning takes place outside of formal educational institutions. They look beyond…

The purpose of this study was to investigate various textual characteristics of popular children television shows. More specifically, researchers examined both the quantity and quality of question asked (i.e., question training). Furthermore, several readability components among the different shows (e.g., narrativity, syntactic simplicity,…

Adolescents often bring popular culture into school, but often these literacies are not embraced or taught in the English classroom. The author makes the case for using "Glee" in the classroom by demonstrating its persuasive power to disrupt heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality with teens. The author uses a feminist rhetorical…

Children's experiences and understandings are often marginalised in discussions of their own television viewing. Moreover, rarely is attention paid to the meaning children make "from" and "with" the ideas and images in media, much less in horror movies. This inquiry examines the horror media talk of a preschool girl in a poor…