Need help with my master's project: your experiences using popular culture in the English classroom

[Bryan Stevens]

Much like many of you here, I am a life-long devotee of popular culture. I have nightmares about my iPod dying, I can relate nearly any mundane occurrence in life to a Simpsons episode and I restlessly await the next opportunity to be completely baffled by a new David Lynch film. Unsurprisingly, when I decided to become a teacher, I envisioned a classroom that embraced popular culture as a means of facilitating critical thought. I wanted to create a learning environment that engaged students by supplementing traditional texts with similarly-themed films, music and graphic novels.

During my studies at Colorado State University in the English Education program, these desires have been reinforced. I’ve had the privilege of observing a teacher use Metallica’s "One" alongside Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun with tremendous success. After listening to the song, students who may not have been engaged with the text were suddenly eager to discuss the tragic accident that had befallen the novel's protagonist. The song had effectively invited these students into a discussion about the text, and encouraged them to read on to learn about the protagonist's fate. Experiences like these encourage me to create the classroom I've envisioned, but I know there will be many challenges ahead.

For my master’s project, I’m researching the experiences of English teachers who use popular culture like film, music and graphic novels in their classrooms. By interviewing teachers about how they use popular culture, why they find it useful, and the challenges they’ve faced with its use, I hope to build a strong rationale for integrating popular culture into my own future English classroom.

To help facilitate my research, I’ve created a short survey that asks about your experiences with and beliefs about popular culture in the English classroom. Would you please take a few minutes to fill out the survey attached to the link below? The questionnaire is brief, and shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to complete.

This project is being conducted purely for master’s credit, and will not be published. You will not be identified and your responses will be compiled with all of the other responses I receive. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to send me a note on MC Pop or at the email address listed below. Thank you very much for your time, and I hope that you have a great summer!

Click Here to take survey

[e-mail]

[Bryan Stevens]

Hi John, many thanks for reading and for the feedback. You're absolutely right - the survey is just a preliminary component of the research. The responses will be used as a sort of barometer to determine teachers' general sentiments about popular culture and their practices with it in the classroom. The last question on the survey asks willing participants to provide e-mail addresses for potential follow-up interviews. It's from these that I expect my own rationale to develop! I certainly will keep you posted on the research - with a bit of luck and an iron will, I hope to have completed everything by early August.

Many thanks to all of those who have participated thus far! I've gotten a great range of responses, and look forward to discussing popular culture in the classroom with you further!

[John Broughton]

Hey Bryan, that looks great -- it's clearly pretty preliminary, and a survey like this often can only get surface content, and even Yes/No type answers. Hard to know what you would do with those data to make them interesting or useful for teachers. But the "Other" responses, the more open-ended stuff might be richer, and more informative. i.e., it might feature ideas, or even foreshadow practices, rather than just information. Many people in this area use interviews rather than surveys, to get to more complex rationales/accounts/practices, but obviously interviews are harder online (though not impossible, and maybe can be used as follow-ups to surveys?) A good example of this is Jackie Simmons online data-gathering on media and pop literacy in her April 09 TC Ed.D. diss. Good luck -- I look forward to seeing the results! Do alert me when you're done -- I would be happy to look at a draft.