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The purpose of the study is to explore the views of students enrolled at pre-school teaching department regarding kitsch phenomenon handled within scope of "Creativity and Its Development" and "Drama" courses in the context of creativity, mimesis and devolution. This study was designed as a qualitative study and conducted with 38 students selected among 108 sophomore students enrolled in "Creativity and Its Development" course and in the spring semester with the same students enrolled in "Drama". In both courses, kitsch phenomenon was the main focus of the study and the activities were carried out with the students on kitsch phenomenon. After all these activities were implemented in the courses, students' views on kitsch phenomenon were obtained by face-to-face interviews. Finding showed that motivation and moral values of students can be increased by conducting different artistic works in university courses such as creativity and its improvement and drama in pre-school teaching departments. Furthermore, the studies conducted on the "kitsch" phenomenon to increase awareness related to creativity was effective in understanding and internalizing creativity.

This essay explores the intersections between Fandom Studies and Children's Literature, showcasing some of the ways in which "fan" as a keyword can illuminate both problems and potential solutions in children's media and education. Although children have historically been excluded from much of fan-organized fandom, the idea of fannishness is intertwined with that of childishness, raising questions about maturity and seriousness in the fan experience. With the rise of the Internet, children have gained more immediate access to fandom, a phenomenon accompanied both by the potential dangers of children and adults interacting in the same fan spaces and by the opportunity to hear children's thoughts about the media they consume. While some scholars focus on the commodification of children's fannish pursuits, others look at the possibilities that fandom and fan fiction can provide for engaging children in conversations about texts, especially in the classroom. Fans have also started to make appearances in children's literature and media, creating new character archetypes, tropes, and genres. Understanding fannish identities, practices, and communities can provide valuable insight to scholars and educators as fandom continues to move into mainstream popular culture, influencing both children and children's media.

Research on recreational media use among youth indicates young people of color who spend more time with media may also be at higher risk for school disengagement and low personal contentment compared to their white peers. This puts these students in a position to be even more influenced by the themes and messages that abound in pop culture, particularly music and social media. ME: MIM is a multisensory, interdisciplinary, integrated approach to teaching and learning that uses music multimedia to engage students in individual and group activities and lessons that reinforces competencies aligned with positive youth development. Song lyrics, sound recordings and music videos are used as "text" to facilitate deconstruction and discussion of the themes and messages in music and the context. Students also discuss the influence of these themes and messages on their attitudes, beliefs, and choices as it relates to their cultural group identity and individual behavior both in and out of school. ME: MIMM has been facilitated through the Challenging Horizons Program (CHP), an evidence-based, after-school and summer service-learning program for academically and behaviorally challenged students. This study examined key stakeholders' (i.e., parents/guardians, program staff members, and school administrators) perceptions of feasibility and acceptability of ME: MIM.

This paper is based on a neo-functionalist constructivist theory, allowing us to understand that dialogue processes and social participation build culture with a dynamic and civic vision, as opposed to organic and more conservative visions. The main objective is to create a panel analysis of plays, from the point of view of drama (sense) and post-drama (nonsense), introducing cross-cutting concepts such as identity, interculturality and participation. The second objective, as a way to validate these panels, is to comparatively analyze the similarities and differences of two types of post-theater expressions in the Spanish language, European and Andean theater, particularly in Ecuador. This descriptive and qualitative research applies the analytical-synthetic method to approach the study of seven plays, with a dramatic and postdramatic model. As a result, the usefulness of the panels developed for this study on the elements of order and chaos is validated, as well as the ability to understand internal and external participation. As a general conclusion, it is observed that current Ecuadorian plays respond to a post-drama culture that uses elements of the single dramatic stage and distinctive indigenous factors.

Educators are responsible for teaching increasingly diverse students in today's technological society. Changes in students, technology, and community contexts require educators to determine which resources will engage learners. Engagement can be fostered by using educational tools such as popular culture, technology, and differentiated instruction. While teachers must determine which strategies will be effective, they must also overcome barriers put in place by school divisions, communities, and themselves. Being a classroom teacher seems like an almost impossible task, at times, but is necessary to ensure a future full of individuals who are academically, socially and emotionally strong.

This paper focuses on the importance of children's out-of-school experiences as their popular culture and discusses how such experiences contribute to their creativity and critical thinking. In addition to this, the paper also discusses the critical role of researchers' values in terms of how values affect the design and process of research. From this standpoint, it analyses two research articles, namely as: "Popular culture, participation and progression in the literacy classroom", by Parry (2014), and "Ben 10, superheroes and princesses: primary teachers' views of popular culture and school literacy", by Dickie and Shuker (2014). Throughout the analysis, the paper discusses how the values of the authors' of these papers affected their selection of the research topics, as well as the process of research, by bringing out the importance of critical literacy in pre-school curricula.

This article explores the practices and pedagogies of six literacy teacher educators with a critical stance. In this qualitative research study, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant over a three-year period. They were able to negotiate a critical stance into their teacher education courses in several ways: using an expansive definition of literacy; helping student teachers shed deficit perspectives; and integrating popular culture and media in the curriculum. The LTEs conceptualizations of literacy transcended traditional notions such as literacy as a set of autonomous skills (e.g., reading, writing) to include expansive notions of literacy including out of school literacy practices such as home literacies and community literacies. The literacy teacher educators modeled valuing expansive conceptions of literacy by including a wide range of texts in their courses, including: videos, blogs, spoken word, spaces, theatre, and social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). The teacher educators' progressive views of literacy were negotiated into their classroom by creating invitations for student teachers to disrupt their assumptions of literacy. Implications for literacy teacher education courses include incorporating a range of texts and genres, which model expansive understandings of literacy, while modeling for student teachers how to effectively integrate them into literacy teaching. Implications for pre-service teacher education programs include building partnerships in the community including both traditional (e.g., schools) and non-traditional (e.g., community centers) learning spaces.

Popular culture texts, such as texts based on movies, television, sports, and video games are widely desired by elementary students. However, these texts are not always available for students due to limited funding, lack of teacher appreciation for such texts, and sparse quantities of popular culture texts found in classroom and school libraries. Moreover, students who live in low socioeconomic (SES) areas do not have access to many texts in their homes and neighborhoods. Teachers and administrators can bring popular culture texts to low SES elementary campuses by using federal and state funds to purchase texts, writing grants, utilizing community resources, and providing professional development support for teachers about the importance of popular culture.

Many of today's students are left disengaged by the direction of their literacy journey once they reach the middle grades, or at times, before they ever leave elementary school. The once enjoyable process of becoming literate becomes a past memory. Students are expected to take their literacy journey into an academic world that often lacks ways of showing them how to translate the skills they learned in the past to extend their knowledge. Although students often understand and use concepts they were taught, it is the selection of the language and the way teachers approach instruction that often causes a disconnect. By changing the language, teachers can address academic slumps beginning as early as 3rd and 4th grade and cultivate stronger student interest in reading and literacy. This purpose of this paper was to describe ways teachers may change the language with a deeper integration of technology.

This paper reviews two scholars' experiences teaching about the subjects of graffiti and street art to undergraduate students in U.S. universities. Using auto-ethnographical methods, the instructors review the challenges that they encountered and the various strategies they experimented with to overcome these difficulties. Issues discussed include the unique composition of the student body, the methods by which the students were introduced to the subject matter, choice of readings, assignments, and evaluation procedures. The authors progress from a slow and perhaps cautious introduction of the material on graffiti and street art into existing classes, to a full-fledged course on the subject matter. Suggestions are presented for other instructors considering teaching a class or assignments on the subject matter of graffiti and street art.

Fifty years after the birth of hip-hop, Jonathan E. Collins considers how hip-hop can transform U.S. education. Many schools have barred hip-hop and disciplined students who use it. But these restrictions have been built on flimsy premises that ignore the beauty and complexity of the art form. Embracing and incorporating hip-hop can improve student engagement, particularly among Black students, and help schools forge stronger connections with the community.

The documentation of popular music curricula in K12 schools is used to suggest the secondary ensemble directors in schools can learn more about the role of popular music in the lives of students. Further, ensemble directors are encouraged to consider bridging music-making in school to young adulthood by way of providing encouragement and experience playing solo instruments and developing skills on secondary instruments that may lend themselves to inclusion of popular music styles. A list of suggestions is offered for developing confidence and proficiency in individual performance.

Background/Context: The popularity surrounding culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is notable primarily within language and literacy content areas but is also making its rounds in other disciplines. Because of its assumed objectivity and status, the mathematics discipline has long been a site of disrupting or perpetuating inequity and thus warrants our focus in thinking about how any pedagogical framework influences the success of Black students. We question whether the ideology undergirding CSP is beneficial to the ways in which we seek to educate Black mathematics learners through a philosophy of mathematics education that prioritizes language, and Black English more specifically. Purpose/Objective: The objective of this theoretical paper is to take a closer look at the shift in education research that has drawn attention away from asset-based frameworks, like culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) or culturally responsive teaching, to focus on CSP. We seek to address how Black children may be positioned by the ideologies proposed in CSP, particularly in the way that culture, and Blackness in itself, is performed. Our goal is to highlight potential oversights in this framework and to discuss whether CSP represents a viable solution for Black students, particularly in regard to their mathematics education. Research Design: We elucidate the genesis of CSP and establish its roots as in tension with a Black ontology by tracing the theoretical origins of two scholars known best for its conceptualization. Findings/Results: Conceptualizers of CSP build on Ben Rampton's work using the concept of "language crossing" and "styling the other," to level critiques at CSP based on their studies of ritual insults in battle rap and use of African American Language in schools with multiethnic youth. Although it is true that people engage in language-crossing processes quite often, we question whether these actions of language crossing support claims about the eradication of cultural ownership, and at what cost Black people lose these aspects of culture. Conclusions/Recommendations: There are valuable lessons learned from Paris's undertaking, but what Ladson-Billings provided in her theory of CRP was a more powerful conceptualization of improving education for Black students across multiple content areas because of the ways in which it forgoes the often conservative stance on language proffered in the theoretical ideologies of CSP. Discourse and language are inherently significant aspects of mathematics teaching and learning, and Black English is one possible entry into culturally relevant mathematics.

This article is a philosophical analysis of escapism as a pedagogical possibility, with a particular focus on TV series. Taking my own, as well as students, experience of escapism into TV series as a starting point, that is, their ability take us somewhere far away, something which has become more acute during the pandemic time since we remain more or less self-isolated because of the corona virus COVID-19, the article discusses escapism in relation to distraction and attention in life as well as within teaching, but also in relation to colportage, hope and social justice. According to Ernst Bloch, social justice cannot materialize without regarding things differently. Something that is often dismissed as mere escapism might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, as it can be seen as an "immature, but honest substitute for revolution" (Bloch 1986, p. 368). Drawing on Bloch's understanding of colportage and hope, as well as Walter Benjamin's understanding of mass culture and cinema, the article treats escapism and TV series not as something simple, but rather as possible seeds for a new social order and thus as having pedagogical possibilities (Hållander, 2020).

2020 ushered in the convergence of multiple societal, political, environmental, and health crises. Racial reckoning collided with fearmongering on a national scale and punitive policies targeted non-citizens simultaneous to the global health pandemic COVID-19. COVID-19 required the unexpected pivoting from in-person instruction to what was, for most, an uncharted total reliance on virtual and remote delivery (Lederman 2020). The complexities of crafting content across multiple modalities amid national and global turmoil meant that curricular creativity became paramount (Mishra et. al, 2020). I will begin by discussing why comic books were an ideal medium and how I used them in the midst of curricular and sociopolitical upheaval. Next, I will describe lessons inspired by the issue of the comic book "El peso hero," titled "The Essentials," that were effective to broach politicized topics in class, such as the essentiality of migrant labor, immigration categories, contradictions between labels and policies, and racialized political rhetoric. Finally, to demonstrate how pictorial storytelling lent itself to internalize and eventually narrate what Landis et al. (2008) refer to as "difficult dialogues," I will highlight examples of multi- and single-panel visuals created by students.

The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards released standards for music education in 2014. These standards are guided by artistic processes and measured by performance standards specific to content areas and grade levels. As school districts in the United States adopt the Core Arts Standards for their music programs, it is imperative that modern band teachers demonstrate how their curriculum aligns with this new framework. Modern band is one approach to popular music education that is particularly well suited to address this new framework; the emphases of songwriting, improvising, critical listening, and group work in a learner-centered modern band class/ensemble are associated with a wide variety of standards. This article explores connections between popular music pedagogies and each of the processes in the Core Arts Standards and examines which standards may be most appropriate for modern band contexts.

Anatomy and physiology courses are sometimes seen as difficult, which can lead to a lack of motivation in students to learn and engage in the course material. Students may also see the material as "dry," have issues forming personal connections, or struggle to connect the content to the real world. These issues may lead to students not performing well in the course or feeling that the health field is not ideal for them. Popular culture, especially mainstream superheroes, can serve as an option for mending these gaps by being a gateway to connecting to many students' lives. Superheroes can be integrated into the classroom through relevant, creative, and unique examples that include clinical correlates, modern scientific innovations, and some real-life "supers" living among us. Real anatomy and physiology can still be taught and explained through discussing these "incredible" examples and also present an opportunity for students to be creative in generating their own anatomical and physiological explanations for various superpowers. Superheroes also help open the classroom up to being a place of acceptance, primarily through their secret identities, which cover a broad range of idols that students can look up to, whether it is their career or based on a character's race or sexual orientation. Professors can become the superhero in their classroom and help students become more engaged and interested in the material.

Female and male students perform equally well on science standardized tests, yet there are disparities in gender in most science-related fields. There are far fewer women from underrepresented backgrounds represented in science-related fields, as they are less likely to enroll in advanced science courses because of a perceived lack of positive science identity. Using a framework of cultural community capital, this study suggests that girls of color are able to develop a science identity and a deeper understanding of science content as a result of the implementation of a hip-hop pedagogy in an urban science classroom.

Research shows that stigma toward mental illness prevents a large percentage of college students from seeking help. Finding pedagogies that can be utilized in the classroom to reduce stigma is important. The present study replicated previous research that utilized celebrity case material in the teaching of abnormal psychology for the purpose of reducing public stigma toward mental illness and help seeking. The present study also examined whether stigma reductions would persist beyond the initial post-testing. Data were collected using a pre-post design from 48 (experimental group) and 23 (control group) college undergraduates enrolled in an abnormal psychology course. Compared to the control group, the use of celebrities as narratives to teach about mental illness resulted in reduced public stigma toward mental illness and reduced stigma toward seeking help which persisted over a 6-month time period.

When the author began teaching in Paraguay, he ran into a series of classroom challenges familiar to English teachers around the world: a classroom overflowing with students, a large range of English abilities, and insufficient textbooks and traditional teaching resources. The activity described in this article is a one-size-fits-all activity that spurns textbooks and expensive materials in favor of creativity, dynamism, and fun. Students work together to design a creative project and present the final product to the class. The activity usually lasts a little over an hour, depending on the number of students and groups participating, and the gist is as follows: Students form groups, work together to create a poster and presentation, and present before the class. Each group in the class designs a creative example within a shared category. This streamlined format offers endless opportunities for experimentation and innovation.

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 can provide support through student-created fan fiction. By allowing students to use their existing knowledge of popular characters and settings to generate new narratives, struggling readers can transfer their understandings of literacy concepts and skills to traditional, in-school literacies.

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 schools in Burdur province which were selected randomly. The music lesson attitude scale was used for both groups by the researchers before the experiment. The "syncopation/off-beat" topic chosen by the researchers was taught to the experiment and control groups for four weeks. While the song teaching related to the topic was taught traditionally to the control group, examples of songs from Turkish pop music chosen by the researchers were taught to the experimental group using prepared karaoke recordings. After the experiment, the music lesson attitude scale was applied to both groups again by the researchers, and an attempt was made to identify whether there was a significant difference in the attitudes of the students to music lessons. The research concluded that the use of popular music examples in song learning caused a general increase in attitudes of students to music lessons. Additionally, when the differences in mean attitude points for items are examined students had more enjoyment from music lessons where pop music samples were used for song learning. It was identified that their motivation for the lesson and their desire to participate in activities in class and outside of class increased.

Since the early nineteenth century, western governments have expected history education to play a vital role in the formation of a national identity and the pursuit of national cohesion, by fostering shared knowledge and a shared (master)narrative of the national past. This article reports on a qualitative study that examines which narratives young adults construct about their national past, to what extent those narratives are underpinned by existing narrative templates, whether they reflect on the fact that the national past can be narrated in different ways, and to what extent they share a common reference knowledge. The study addresses the Flemish region of Belgium, a case characterized by a specific context of a nation state in decline, wherein diverse and often conflicting historical narratives coexist in popular historical culture and where the national past is almost absent from history education. A total of 107 first-year undergraduate history students were asked to write an essay on how they saw the national past. The influence of both history education and popular historical culture was reflected in the reference knowledge as well as in the (absence of) templates that students used to build their essays. Templates were not critically deconstructed, although some students nevertheless were able to discern and criticize existing "myths" in the national past.

A very important parts of TV commercials are the messages and how they convinced people. In addition, the information given in commercials may contain messages that seem like a fact however, they may not be true. To understand these commercials it is more beneficial to observe how they say instead of what they say. In many studies (Ferreira, et al. 2006; Muratovic, et al., 2014; Pyun, et al., 2012) it is stated that consumers positive attitudes are developed to products which are in the commercial that use sports image. In this context, the purpose of this study is to criticize the TV commercials that use sports image by using semiotics-analyzing method. Clear Men, Türkiye Finans (Turkish Finance Bank ) and TEB economy commercials that are broadcasted on television channels in Turkey were chosen by using purposive sampling. Selected commercials are analyzed by semiotics-analyzing method. The result of this study indicated that these companies are using sports image effectively in TV commercials with various advertising strategies to achieve their marketing objectives. Using sports image in TV commercials does not only contribute the companies but also contribute sports image and popularity of the athletes. This relationship between sports and commercials has a crucial effect on development of each other. In light of this information, it can be state that researches on sports related commercials are so useful for sports managers and advertisers.

The purpose of this article is to provide teachers and students useful methods for utilizing the power of comic books as literacy sponsors in ELA classrooms. Given the continued boom in the popularity of comics in popular culture, this provides a relevant way to introduce students to visual and critical analysis. Engaging in meaningful analysis of comic superheroes can help students develop the skills required to critically analyze the stereotypes and social issues both within comics and within the world that surrounds them. Through the study of traditional and contemporary comic book heroes, students can critique society and begin to develop voices for social change. In this article, we discuss one way we have implemented comic books into literacy instruction in high school English language arts classrooms to help students practice and develop visual literacy skills and to scaffold students' entrance into the weighty conversations that accompany relevant social issues. Using four comics, "Gotham Central," "The Shadow Hero," "The Authority," and "Ms. Marvel," we offer teachers examples and guidance for incorporating this approach into their own classrooms.

Background: Much of the research literature on sexual consent and sexual consent education has been focused on college students, providing a significant gap in our understanding of high school students, especially ethnic minority youth, who are at greatest risk for unwanted sexual contact and sexual activity. Furthermore, recent research suggests that music with sexually suggestive and misogynistic themes influence sexual communication and consenting behaviors. An analysis of rap music produced after the year 2000 is necessary to identify themes that may influence sexual communication among youth. Methods: A thematic analysis was conducted to examine the lyrics of mainstream rap music songs. Songs from the Billboard Hot Rap Singles Year-End Charts for the years 2001 through 2011 served as the data corpus for thematic analysis. Results: Each year, an average of 18 songs in the top 25 rap music hits included some level of sexual content. Overall, approximately 74% of the 244 songs made references to sex, sexual expectations and/or relationships. Three major themes emerged from the analysis: (1) It's Really About Sex or Nothing At All, (2) Substances as the Precursor/Enhancer, and (3) Performance, Parts & Brand. Conclusion: The major themes found here highlight the prevalence of norms that perpetuate non-consensual sex and non-verbal sexual communication in a dominant musical genre. Each theme presented in this study represents rules and expectations related to sexual interactions that could influence an adolescent's view of sexual communication and consent. Findings here should be further examined to identify how adolescents may perceive them and resonate with their meanings.

This article uses the translingual turn in composition/rhetoric studies as a springboard to argue for the development of students' meta-linguistic and meta-rhetorical awareness as it took place for first-year college writers in the local context of a SEEK classroom at a branch college of the City University of New York. I theorize and describe a semester-long assignment sequence that positioned students' ordinary language repertoires as the primary site of academic inquiry. Students collected linguistic ethnographic information and synthesized it with related research to write case studies that interpret their everyday language and literacy practices from a variety of perspectives. The article offers a close-up on the work of one student in particular.

As researchers encourage teachers to bring fanfiction into classrooms, questions remain about whether online fanfiction communities are accessible to all students. This paper presents results from a practitioner-oriented usability inspection of FanFiction.net, investigating challenges students with disabilities might encounter as they participate. Operating this website with screen reader assistive technology reveals navigation, social connection, and reading barriers users may face when trying to engage in typical fanfiction practices. This study offers implications for media literacy educators to consider as they work to bring online media into classrooms without further marginalizing students with disabilities

Although we live in a global society, educators face many challenges in finding meaningful ways to connect students to people of other cultures. This paper offers a case study of a collaboration between teachers in the US and Turkey, where 7th grade students interacted with each other via online social media as a means to promote cultural understanding. In a close analysis of a single learning activity, we found that children had opportunities to share ideas informally through social media, using their digital voices to share meaning using online writing, posting of images and hyperlinks. This study found that students valued the opportunity to develop relationships with each other and generally engaged in sharing their common interests in Hollywood movies, actors, celebrities, videogames and television shows. However, not all teachers valued the use of popular culture as a means to find common ground. Indeed, teachers had widely differing perspectives of the value of this activity. Through informal communication about popular culture in a "Getting to Know You" activity, students themselves discovered that their common ground knowledge tended to be US-centric, as American students lacked access to Turkish popular culture. However, the learning activity enabled students themselves to recognize asymmetrical power dynamics that exist in global media culture.

In recent years concern about Mexican reading habits has increased. Statistics show short reading interest; an average Mexican reads 3.8 books a year [1]. As teachers, reading habits are important and reflect students' skills and academic performances. Many teachers would complain about students reading habits; it is considered to be non-existent. Teachers might say "students neither read nor write." Students lend and borrow books; questions rely on what are students reading? How do students understand what they know? A survey was carried out on a random sample of students from "Centro de Estudios Científicos y Tecnológicos" (CECyT) campus 11 "Wilfrido Massieu" and campus 15 "Diódoro Antúnez Echegaray" belonging to Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), to know readings and motivations. Quantitative methodologies with an exploratory range were applied. Results; students mostly read books from which North American movies based on, best and long seller books and pdf formats. A workshop was brought about, four sessions per month, to discuss each book, themes, and students' perceptions. Monitors were teachers from different areas and school subjects. Teacher's prejudices interfered on student's discussions and opinions. Reading is a complicated process; it is developed from previous stages. Resume doing, as the primary objective, impedes students from comprehending all information.

The article is written within the framework of a broader study investigating school and university representation in the Soviet/Russian and foreign audiovisual media texts. The research outlines that in Soviet cinema the image of the female teacher was transformed in the following sequence: a heroine-revolutionary; a heroine of hard work; an intellectual; an educator-innovator; a victim; a bureaucrat-administrator. In the Soviet audio-visual texts of the 1930s-1940s, the heroic image of a teacher-fighter for revolutionary ideals ("Alone," 1931), which gradually softens, acquires the aspect of labor heroics ("The Village Teacher," 1947). Teachers become good-looking, attractive ("The Village teacher, First-grader"). The cinema of the Stalin era is characterized by the image of the teacher as an indisputable perfection, the embodiment of tranquility and justice. The theme of motherhood for female teachers in Soviet/Russian cinema is either not raised at all, or is sublimated into maternal care as a quality characteristic of a woman in general, revealing the essence of the heroine, but directed not at her own child, but at a pupil. Often screen teachers are childless women with a failed personal life, single mothers, or mothers who conceal their motherhood. The image of the male teacher was transformed in the Soviet/Russian cinema in the following way: the ideological organizer of the labor commune; a teacher by vocation, an enthusiast; an intellectual-humanist; a loser who finds himself at school due to unfortunate circumstances; an idealist, an ascetic, a self-sacrificing teacher, first and foremost a professional in his field. In Soviet cinema, for many years, the masculine image of a teacher-the creator of a new man worthy to live under Soviet power-was being formed. In perestroika and in the Russian periods, images of male teachers, who have not found another road in life, began to appear on the screen more often. For all that, it is with the male teacher that the theme of innovation in education is connected in feature and documentary films, although this aspect is rarely shown on the big screen.

The study of popular culture is now becoming an emerging research area within education. While many studies have confirmed that students' interest in anime has driven much of enrolment in Japanese language courses, the impact of using anime as a teaching tool has not been studied thoroughly in the teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) classroom. This article attempts to propose a model that can be used to plan lessons by using anime as a teaching tool in JFL classrooms. By introducing the teaching idea of using anime in a Japanese language classroom, this article is hoped to be able to encourage more Japanese language teacher to consider the use of anime in teaching JFL.

How can teachers integrate rap and technology strategies to teach students with learning disabilities the art of persuasive argument writing? This teacher research study presents creative new approaches for teaching argument writing. Strategies used in the study helped college freshmen with learning disabilities (LD) succeed in developing persuasive argument writing skills. Key strategies used in the study were: The Argument Rap, The Rap Protocol, A Multimodal Technology Approach, A Peer Observation Feedback Strategy, and Argument Prompts. Each strategy was aligned with The Common Core State Standards (see Introduction, this issue). Results of the study indicate that these strategies were effective in helping first year college students with LD develop successful argument writing skills. Results suggest that the strategies could be adapted to teach secondary students with LD the skills of effective argument writing. Results also suggest that some of the strategies could be modified to teach middle grade students how to write effective opinion essays.

This article provides a narrative overview of research on online fan practices for language and literacy learning, use, and identity work. I begin with an introduction to online fan communities and common fan practices found in these online affinity spaces, the best known of which is fan fiction, fictional writing that reinterprets and remixes the events, characters, and settings found in popular media. I then look to other online fan practices that have been explored in language and literacy learning research such as fan-subbing and scanlation, amateur subtitling and translation of popular media carried out by individual or teams of fans. Finally, this article concludes by looking to research that has begun to explore the integration of fan practices found in the digital wilds into the language classroom as a way to illuminate how our growing understanding of online fan practices can motivate the design of computer-mediated tasks or the integration of social media into formal language teaching.

This article reports on the student benefits of a school-based Hip Hop and beat making program. While a significant amount of literature has reported the benefits of Hip Hop programs in North American schools, comparatively little is known about the benefits of such programs in the Australian context. Using an ethnographic approach, this study explored a two-day intensive Hip Hop music program delivered to nine secondary students in a Melbourne school. The study took an intentionally open and emergent approach in order to avoid preconceptions of potential benefits, and allow any unexpected benefits to emerge. Analysis also explored the elements of the program that appeared key to fostering identified benefits. While time limitations where seen to limit the potential of the program, results identified a number of student benefits, including school engagement, social connection, and personal development. Factors that were seen as key to these benefits included the presentation of facilitators, the ability for the program to link to students' musical preferences, the equipment and space, as well as the focus on Hip Hop culture itself. While more research is necessary to further explore these findings, they provide important evidence for the potential role that Hip Hop and beat making programs can play in Australian schools.

The English language day by day is becoming ever increasingly important in the world. Music in foreign language education can be seen as a helpful method that spontaneously livens the learning atmosphere. In this paper, we are arguing for (the use of) songs that stir and inspire "social change" and that are an "authentic" part of pop culture as being an effective means of teaching English. We recommend that the songs used in this paper be for intermediate and advanced-level students and/or high school students in grade 9 and above. The researcher behind this paper had 18 years of experience teaching English in every sort of institution within the Turkish National Ministry of Education as well as five years of experience of teaching Turkish abroad. The researcher aims to show--through examples--the benefits of using this all-stirring and inspiring protest music in the English language classroom alongside the opportunity within for students to study a county's social movements. Students' renewed enthusiasm as well as what language instruction gains through this enlivened classroom is also defended.

Project-based learning and artistic creation provide future secondary teachers with an opportunity to experience and to reflect on the importance of including a gender perspective in education. This article describes a case study where students of the Postgraduate course in Secondary Teacher Training explore the image of the female body in comics, publicity, beauty contests and the world of fashion with the aim of planning and designing a project that can be undertaken by school-age children and promoting the discussion of issues such as equity and equality of rights and opportunities for women and men in subjects they will later on have to teach in a secondary school classroom.

This study has set out to investigate bumper stickers in Jordan focusing mainly on the themes of the stickers. The study hypothesized that bumper stickers in Jordan reflect a wide range of topics including social, economic, and political. Due to being the first study of this phenomenon, the study has adopted content-based analysis to determine the basic topics. The study has found that the purpose of most bumper sticker is fun and humor; most of them are not serious and do not carry any biting messages. They do not present any criticism to the most dominant problems at the level of society including racism, nepotism, anti-feminism, inflation, high taxes, and refugees. Another finding is that politics is still a taboo; no political bumper stickers were found in Jordan. Finally, the themes the stickers targeted are: lessons of life 28.85%; challenging or warning other drivers 16%; funny notes about social issues 12%; religious sayings 8%; treating the car as a female 7%; the low economic status of the driver 6%; love and treachery 5.5%; the prestigious status of the car 5%; envy 4%; nicknames for the car or the driver 4%; irony 3%; and English sayings 1.5%.

As popular music education programs become more common, it is essential to determine what kinds of professional development experiences that are designed to help teachers include popular music into their music education classrooms are effective--keeping in mind that the inclusion of popular music in K-12 classrooms requires a change not only in instrumentation and repertoire but also pedagogical approaches. This study examined the effects of a popular music professional development initiative on more than 600 New York City urban music teachers' musicianship, their pedagogy, and their leadership skills throughout one school year. Results revealed increases in all three areas, most notably in teachers' musicianship. The study also showed an increase in teachers' positive perceptions about their music programs, specifically, their level of excitement about the state of their music program and that their music program was more effective at meeting their students' needs than it had been previously.

Multiliteracies has been incorporated in the curriculum of many education systems around the world. Beyond the broadening of focus in literacy to include multimodal meaning-making, multiliteracies pedagogies are also associated with certain pedagogical shifts, such as a focus on bridging the students' out-of-school literacy practices with what and how they are learning in school. This often involves appropriating social media as well as introducing popular culture topics in the classroom. This article discusses the students' perspectives of these ideas to inform the teacher's design of multiliteracies learning. Drawing on data collected through surveys and focus group discussions from a multi-phased research project on multiliteracies in Singapore, we reflect on the students' expressions of their experiences and expectations on multiliteracies learning. In particular, we surface an instrumental view of learning where concerns over examinations and future career prospects cloud the students' learning. We also identify a desire among the students to keep their worlds of home and schools separate. While the discussion of the students' perspectives is anchored in the context of Singapore, the implications contribute to the global discourse among curriculum planners, educational researchers and teacher practitioners who are interested in improving the design of multiliteracies learning in their contexts.

Online collaboration has become a regular practice for many Internet users, reflecting the emergence of new participatory cultures in the virtual world. However, little is yet known about the processes and conditions for online collaboration in informally formed writing spaces and how these create opportunities for participants' identity work. This ethnographic case study explores how four young adults, fans of the show "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" (bronies), negotiated a dialogic space for their online collaboration on a fan translation project and how this created opportunities for their identity work. After a year of participant observation, we collected interviews, ethnographic diaries and participants' chats, which were analysed with qualitative content and discourse analysis methods. The findings showed how the Etherpad online writing platform used by the participants facilitated the construction of dialogic space through the visualization of a shared artefact and adjustable features. It was in this dialogic space where the participants negotiated their expert identities which furthered their discussions about writing, translating and technological innovations. The study advances present-day knowledge about online collaboration in affinity groups, engendering the construction of a dialogic space for collaborative writing and participants' identity work.

Hip-hop began in the 1970s as an artistic response to social, political, and economic oppression within African American communities in the United States. This artivist movement allowed community members to convey social inequities through music. Decades later, educators have begun using hip-hop as an educational tool. Our study examined whether hip-hop, as an educational pedagogy, could be a catalyst for perceived community change, inside and outside a collegiate classroom. Results suggested that hip-hop pedagogy can be a positive tool in student learning and community change, creating a safe educational space encouraging inclusion, self-expression, and student/instructor engagement.

Race for the Red Planet was designed by Daphne Fauber to teach engineering design principles through the contextualization of popular culture, science fiction, and the current race for Mars. The goal of the lesson was for students to learn how people may be living on Mars in the future through a variety of interdisciplinary sources and various mediums. Specifically, students were meant to understand how different subject areas, such as biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering, intertwine in order to give innovators more holistic views of problems and how that informs the design of Mars habitats today. The lesson was designed to last four 50-minute class periods and follows the Modified Five E model for engineering design-based lessons. Students will develop skills associated with "Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy" 7Y, "Optimize a design by addressing desired qualities within criteria and constraints" (2020). As per the Modified Five E model, the lesson has an Engage, Explore, Explain, Engineer, and Evaluate section. The lesson was designed to be adaptable to different classrooms. Due to the nature of the lesson, the Explore stations can be altered to better reflect other lessons and subject matter that have been taught in the classroom. This lesson provides a unique opportunity to collaborate between departments and make an inter-classroom project that engages all types of students. By connecting science fiction, popular culture, current events, and engineering grand challenges, Race for the Red Planet provides context to the engineering design process in a way that fosters creativity.

In this article, Kate Collins begins by explaining how she discovered that "Hamilton: An American Musical," a Broadway show that incorporates a mix of musical genres: hip-hop, jazz, classic show tunes, and show-stopper numbers based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, could be brought into her teaching as a rich resource for her high school American literature classes. She provides an outline of what she named The "Hamilton" Listening Project in action, highlights key elements that make hip-hop music useful in teaching elements of poetry, and recommends using hip-hop to open the door to conversations about racial justice and antiracism in today's America. Overall, she makes the case that by including hip-hop music in English Language Arts (ELA) teaching, educators can make portions of American literature more engaging through the Listening Project unit she designed, and also energize both the teaching of poetry and conversations about topics such as diversity, history, race, and silences with their students.

This research is an exploration of my evolving relationship with popular culture: as an activist, an educator, and a self-described pop-culture geek. As a biracial and queer woman working in the field of education, I am motivated to examine my own experiences with formal and informal methods of learning, addressing the social and political gaps in each. In exploring my own experiences growing up racialized, queer, and lower-class, I am making a clear case for the value of popular culture as a site of learning about aspects of identity that were often not discussed or were ignored entirely in the classroom settings to which I was exposed. Combining aspects of critical analytic autoethnography (Taber, 2012) with feminist discourse analysis (Lazar, 2007), I examine three key films: "Scream" (Craven, 1996), "Practical Magic" (Dunne, 1998), and "Disturbing Behavior" (Nutter, 1998), as well as three characters in these films whom I identify as having had a large influence on me as a teenager, particularly in fostering my ongoing (un)learning surrounding the willful subject (Ahmed, 2014). These three characters are Sidney Prescott from "Scream," Sally Owens from "Practical Magic," and Rachel Wagner from "Disturbing Behavior."

According to former National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) president Cathy L. Seeley (2014), students experience more success when they engage in doing mathematics (i.e., writing about or discussing mathematics, modeling situations, or exploring ideas in the classroom). She further recommended that teachers pose challenging problems or tasks that are related to real-world and compelling mathematical contexts as a way to spark student interest. Involvement in a task does not imply true engagement, which is much deeper--it is "in-task" behavior that includes a deep understanding of mathematical concepts, active participation in relevant classroom activities, and a genuine value and enjoyment of mathematics (Attard 2018). Popular media (i.e., movies, television shows, plays, books, songs, and social media) offer opportunities for teachers to engage students in challenging and authentic tasks that relate to real-world culture. Media resources can be incorporated into the classroom to increase student interest in mathematics by providing tasks that are relevant and motivating. Within the last three decades, the study of mathematics and work by mathematicians have been portrayed in the media with greater frequency. This article examines how mathematics is found in popular media and shares examples of how teachers can portray an image of mathematics that is both beautiful and powerful within the classroom.