In this article, Christopher Emdin articulates what he considers a necessary stance on the education of urban youth of color who are deeply embedded in hip-hop. He brings singer/songwriter Stevie Wonder and Maxine Greene into the discussion to highlight the ways that these youth can be imagined differently and taught to their strengths and gifts,…

If an educator is to take a critical stance, teach students to do the same, and design lessons that engage students in thoughtful discussions and actions surrounding issues of social justice, then discussions of politics, race, culture, economics and systems of power are crucial to this work, and the use of hip-hop is a worthwhile endeavour. In…

This article moves beyond book-based school 'wide reading' to propose constellations of multimodal media, including music videos, fashion parades, literary works, online games and material artefacts, along with associated pedagogies, as sponsors of pleasure. The article, based on empirical research with teachers in an Australian secondary school,…

When romantic encounters come to an end they often evoke a plethora of feelings associated with "breaking up". This article explores this issue in relation to a number of adolescent girls' views on this topic which emerged during focus group discussions about Eminem's song "Foolish Pride." The lyrics of this song convey…

In this article, the authors present a literacy research project in which humor, popular culture, and improvisational comedy (improv) are viewed as curricular resources to engage students' minds "and" bodies in multimodal story building, following a posthuman assemblage theory approach to literacy learning. This approach takes students'…

Popular culture is extremely influential in both academe and society at large. However, formal disciplinary study of popular culture lags far behind that influence. Anthropology, film studies, history, musicology, and sociology are only some of the disciplines that frequently include popular culture as a research focus. This article advises on how…

This article shares a literacy strategy to support students' analysis of the theme of text and provide evidence to support their assertion. The strategy is called Visual to Print Transfer (VPT). The VPT strategy leverages students' out-of-school literacy practices involving media images of Hollywood icons as a way to support their understanding of…

Since the 1960's, the transformative power of protest music has been shrouded in mythology. Sown by musical activists like Pete Seeger, who declared that protest music could "help to save the planet", the seeds of this myth have since taken deep root in the popular imagination. While the mythology surrounding the relationship between…

Many educators support the idea that science requires a specific set of literacy skills and that all students should be equipped with those skills to become scientifically literate; however, this challenge requires science educators to develop methods to underscore the building of disciplinary literacy. In the presented curriculum for preservice…

This article models an exercise in media literacy and theological reflection by identifying the Manichean worldview and redemptive violence prevalent in many Hollywood studio films and exploring some of the reasons these stories are told so often. Filmmaker interviews and commentaries reveal ways in which many filmmakers feel compelled by film's…

Taking a lead from recent articles in "The History Teacher," the author placed history, popular culture, and historical literacy at the core of a history course entitled "Enchanted Capitalism: Myths, Monsters, and Markets." Drawing on folklore, literature, popular culture, and economics, the course explored the rise of…

In this pioneering interdisciplinary reader, Hilton Kelly and Heather Moore Roberson have curated essential readings for thinking about black education from slavery to the present day. The reading selections are timeless, with both historical and contemporary readings from educational anthropology, history, legal studies, literary studies, and…

As a unique literary genre, science fiction can serve as a motivating text to develop students' critical analytical skills and to promote critical thinking about new technology and its societal controversies under proper guidance. In the field of English as Foreign Language (EFL) learning, using science fiction films in the classroom affords EFL…

People all over the world are engaging with popular music, particularly through social media platforms, where views are often in the billions and climbing. Sacks (2007), a world-renowned neurologist, coined the term "earworms" to refer to songs that play repetitively in one's head for no apparent reason, sometimes for days, even years,…

In today's society, where the Promethean project of mastering the universe seems to guide the scientific community to its last moment of triumph--human immortality--young people seem to lack curricular opportunities to engage with mortality. This is not surprising, as the legacy of psychology, as far back as the times of Freud and Jung, exposes a…