Literacy and Popular Culture

Book excerpt: Most children engage with a range of popular cultural forms outside of school. Their experiences with film, television, computer games and other cultural texts are very motivating, but often find no place within the official curriculum, where children are usually restricted to conventional forms of literacy. This book demonstrates how to use children's interests in popular culture to develop literacy in the primary classroom. The authors provide a theoretical basis for such work through an exploration of related theory and research, drawing from the fields of education, sociology and cultural studies. Teachers are often concerned about issues of sexism, racism, violence and commercialism within the disco