DOUGLAS MCCLENAGHAN* & BRENTON DOECKE**
*Viewbank College‚ Melbourne‚ Australia & ** Monash University‚ Melbourne‚ Australia
Abstract.This chapter explores how a secondary English teacher working with students aged 14-15 enabled them to use their popular cultural practices as a resource for writing. The chapter provides exam- ples of conventional classroom situations in which this teacher created a space for students to bring their own semiotic resources to bear on the curriculum. It argues the need for English teachers to become sen- sitised to the complex literacy practices in which their students engage outside school and to the ways these practices are bound up with their social relationships and sense of identity. The discussion chal- lenges conventional understandings of ‘reading‚’ ‘writing’‚ ‘speaking’ and ‘listening’ as components of the English curriculum‚ arguing that a more contemporary understanding of literacy must take into ac- count the multi-modal practices in which students engage in beyond school.
Keywords: Writing pedagogy‚ English teaching‚ popular culture‚ cultural studies
1. INTRODUCTION
Recent critiques of subject English claim that the subject has become increasingly irrelevant to the needs of secondary school students‚ and that ‘new times’ demand a new kind of English (Sefton-Green‚ 2000; Luke‚ 2001; Sefton-Green & Nixon‚
2003). With respect to the writing curriculum‚ this means enabling students to inves- tigate the formal possibilities of a more diverse range of genres than the school essay (or essay text literacy) (cf. Clyne‚ 1999; Teese‚ 2000: 17)‚ thereby transcending the division between school literacy practices and the popular cultural practices in which teenagers engage outside school.
In the following chapter we discuss ways of using secondary students’ out of school cultural practices as a resource for writing in secondary English classrooms.
We argue that the knowledge of popular culture that adolescents bring with them
McClenaghan‚ D. & Doecke‚ B. (2004). Popular culture: A resource for writing in secondary education.
Rijlaarsdam‚ G. (Series Ed.) & Rijlaarsdam‚ G.‚ Van den Bergh‚ H.‚ & Couzijn‚ M. (Vol.
into class‚ including the information and communication networks in which they operate‚ provides a framework for developing curriculum which they find both rele- vant and challenging. The curriculum development that we are proposing does not mean simply importing popular culture into the English classroom‚ as though any- thing can be gained by substituting Shakespeare with Kylie Minogue or Eminem.
Nor are we suggesting that middle aged teachers should ape the enthusiasms of young people in some last ditched attempt to establish rapport with these ‘aliens’ in their classrooms (Green & Bigum‚ 1993). We are arguing for a more sophisticated understanding of the ways in which popular culture mediates the experiences of young people‚ requiring teachers to reaffirm English language classrooms as sites where students are able to negotiate issues of identity and meaning that are signifi- cant to them. To give adolescents a space to explore the formal possibilities of popu- lar cultural practices is to develop a curriculum that equips them for the future.
One of the authors of this chapter is currently working in a government secon- dary school‚ and our discussion is based on research that he is conducting into his own teaching practice with two Year 9 classes in the middle school (ages 14-15).
The secondary school at which Douglas teaches is located in a middle class suburb in Melbourne (what Australians call a ‘leafy’ suburb). The school population is moderately affluent‚ though some families are struggling. By examining some of the texts that Douglas’s students have produced‚ we shall show how the semiotic poten- tial of popular culture can been exploited in English classrooms‚ and how students’
out-of-school literacy practices can become a valid frame of reference for under- standing and developing their textual knowledge and literacy practices in school.
Whilst there is a growing research literature that acknowledges the significance of popular culture for young people‚ comparatively little of this draws on actual in- stances of classroom teaching. Nor has very much of this literature been written from the point of view of practitioner researchers who are systematically exploring how students might use their knowledge of popular culture within English class- rooms. Accordingly‚ the following chapter comprises theoretical discussion involv- ing the usual protocols for scholarly analysis alongside grounded accounts of class- room situations. The latter will be written in the first person singular and be anecdo- tal in character. We thereby hope to set up a generative tension between the possi- bilities opened up by theory and the dynamic of a classroom filled with adolescents.
We also hope to point beyond the terms of our analysis and to gesture towards rich complexities that we are only beginning to understand.
CLASSROOM VIGNETTE ONE
DOUGLAS MCCLENAGHAN
Early in the semester I invited my Year 9 Literature class to create their own narratives. This was a special elective class for students with better than average language abilities‚ in which they enrolled in addition to their usual English class‚ and my long term goal was to introduce important narrative concepts‚ such as point of view and genre. Most students decided to write
stories‚ but one group opted to produce a version of the television program Xena: The Warrior Princess and to videotape it. They called their version ‘Tina’ (which‚ along with Mandy and Kylie and Sharon and Lisa‚ is a very popular name in Australia‚ conjuring up stereotypical notions of growing up as a girl in the suburbs) and – as their title implies – their video was a parody of the original.
Only a few minutes into the tape and you encounter numerous intertextual references to Xena: the video uses the voiceover from the original (‘In a time of evil warlords‚ gods and kings‚ a land in turmoil cried out for a hero. She was Xena‚ a mighty princess forged in the heat of battle...’) while presenting small excerpts from the upcoming episode. Xena’s ululat- ing call is lampooned by Tina who gargles and then spits. When the story begins‚ the brave Tina and her sidekick are walking alone through the countryside (my school is located in an area where typical suburban dwellings exist on the fringes of large paddocks that have some- how escaped development). They do battle with an evil demon who challenges them‚ per- forming cartwheels and martial arts in much the same way that their Amazonian originals fight their way through each episode. All the text – characters‚ dialogue‚ action – is only meaningful if you know the original text they are parodying.
The students draw on a range of semiotic resources in their efforts to create a story that their peers might enjoy. They are assuming that their audience has a good knowledge of Xena‚
and so they freely incorporate imagery and other elements deriving from the original. At the same time they also draw on other conventions of film narrative that we have looked at in class – whenever the evil character appears‚ for example‚ eerie music is heard in the back- ground. Xena has clearly been a significant part of their lives‚ including the ritual of viewing and talking about the latest episode each week. But – just as importantly – through their en- gagement with Xena and other popular cultural texts‚ the students appear to have developed a relatively sophisticated understanding of parody as a strategy for making meaning.
When I asked them what they thought they had achieved with the video‚ one student‚ per- haps indicating what she thought I wanted to hear‚ replied‚ ‘We changed the genre from an action adventure into comedy’. Another student said‚ more matter-of-factly: ‘It’s a break from the rest of school. We don’t get much opportunity to do videos and they’re fun’. Another added: ‘Working with friends’.
2. COMMUNICATIONAL WEBS
More often than not‚ teenagers’ popular cultural pursuits remain the subject of an unofficial school curriculum‚ merely the stuff of casual conversations at recess time or breaks during official classroom work. You need only walk around the school- yard at lunchtime to find teenagers talking about the latest episode of their favorite television show‚ swapping opinions about movies or CDs‚ or sms-ing friends at other schools. They are usually engaged in very animated conversations that contrast with the form and content of their exchanges in class. We need to find ways of iden- tifying and using students’ out-of-school literacy practices in class‚ revivifying the classroom as an environment for language and learning.
The concept of ‘communicational webs’ (Kress‚ 2000) is one way of naming the complex network of textual practices in which adolescents operate outside of school.
The term refers to the different modes‚ for instance visual or print modes‚ and me- dia‚ such as magazine or console‚ which teenagers use when they communicate with one another and try to make meaning out of their lives. Popular cultural texts – digi- tal media texts‚ chat groups‚ the Internet – play a particularly significant role in ado-
lescents’ communicational webs. Such concepts are important‚ not simply because they highlight new forms of communication‚ but because they sensitize us to the ways in which literacy practices are bound up with the network of relationships in which people find themselves. Individuals do not simply ‘read’ or ‘write’ or ‘speak’
or ‘listen’ (i.e. the traditional way in which we conceptualize the components of the English curriculum); these acts are social practices‚ embedded in specific sets of social relationships‚ which are mediated in technologically complex ways (cf. Ben- nett‚ 1984; Frow‚ 1995). For adolescents‚ the immediate context for their exchanges is provided by the personal relationships they form at school‚ where expressions of taste and other preferences play a crucial role in affirming their burgeoning sense of identity and membership of a discourse community (Gee‚ 1990‚ 1991; Buckingham and Sefton-Green‚ 1994; Doecke and McClenaghan‚ 1998). But it is also important to acknowledge that those relationships – as mediated by new forms of communica- tion – are part of a larger communicational network‚ involving people they do not know‚ and heterogeneous layers of (unauthored and unanchored) visual and print texts.
We are not making a technologist fetish of these new forms of communication‚
as though digital or silicon literacies have radically altered the consciousness of those who use them. The struggle to make connections between language and mean- ing remains what it has always been (cf. Doecke‚ 2002). Yet we are doing our stu- dents an immense disservice if we refuse to recognize the complexity of the mean- ing-making processes in which they engage‚ and fail to connect with what Julian Sefton-Green calls ‘the incredible potential’ of students‘ out-of-school cultural ex- periences (Sefton-Green‚ 2000). In the first instance‚ this can simply mean giving students a license to draw on the narratives and imagery that constitute their every- day world‚ as in the case of ‘Tina’‚ the Year 9 girl who became a Warrior Princess.
It also means being sufficiently familiar with popular cultural forms to appreciate what students are trying to do when they use them in class and to help them achieve their aims. There can no longer any justification for extolling the value of ‘high’
culture as opposed to ‘popular’ culture – both are ‘regimes of value’ that require equally complex discriminations and judgments (cf. Frow‚ 1995). Sefton-Green tells the story of a student whose teacher was unable to understand a narrative he had written because its characteristic features (sudden shifts in point of view and an ex- cessively complex plot) were completely foreign to him. Whereas they were not strange to the student‚ who had consciously set out to emulate the kinds of adven- tures he experienced when playing computer games (Sefton-Green‚ 2000). As teach- ers we need to recognize the complexities of such forms and their meaning-making potential‚
CLASSROOM VIGNETTE TWO