Cultural Capital and Curriculum Remixing

So that is it, all fininished! Now just to try and use this to take down the government's lacklustre approach to education and remix the whole curriculum!

Short Video here explaining the main outline of my intervention aimed at raising cultural access and awareness in our students: Password : culture Cultural Capital Movie from Mr Sloan on Vimeo .

As all staff were notified of the changes to displays in the school and were given some idea of the intervention. I decided to get some feedback from two senior leaders in the school to enquire whether they thought the project had any value or impact. Rachel Ray Chouduri - Assistant Head and Leader of the Faculty for Teaching and Learning. Head of Expressive Arts. Lead practicioner.  "What i didnt realise was how much impact its had.. the schools strategic plan and one of the key areas we are working towards is the creative use of technology and if ever there was an example of creative use of technology then this is it" Also mentioned: Its widened their learning.. so students arent limited to just learning about their own subject specialisms. The enthusiasm that she has seen for independent learning is excellent. Embedding this lower down the school Does 'museum culture' impact on students. Ray said yes i think its a starting point..so even that is...

As I have now run my first week or two of the Haggerston Cultural Capital Go game. I have posted below some of the interview / focus groups I had with students after the event to see if they thought it was useful or valuable and if they did indeed feel that it had made them aware of the need for more background knowledge.  "Very interactive" Students agreed that they were engaged more with the displays as a result. They also suggested ways in which this technology could be used by their subject teachers, which shows that they are aware of the possibilities for this interaction. "When we did our blogs.. it (the app) helped a lot "If you made it more specific to lessons then we would definitely go and find them" "the treasure hunt brought it back to games when we were young which was fun" Improvements:  Students thought that staggering the release of them out would be a good idea and that they could be linked to questions about this person...

So for my final staff interview I have interviewed Rachel Ray-Chouduri who is the Head of Expressive Arts, Assistant Head Teacher and Lead Practicioner for the Teaching and Learning Faculty! Do our students have Cultural Capital? "When I first started at Haggerston (15 years ago) there was a huge gap, especially in the Arts" "In the arts there is a history out there (that is impossible to teach) that makes their vocabulary their understanding and their connections so much easier (if they knew about it)". Ray interestingly highlighted the recent change in the demographic of our school due to gentrification of Hackney and the explosion of the arts in Shoreditch and East London: "What we have now is that we have a different type of middle class young person due to their culturally knowledgeable parents "(what i was used to was) trying to teach drama to people who had never been to the theatre" "the head of music used to teach music whe...

Hannah is the Head of Sixth Form and member of the Senior Leadership Team at the school. She is also a subject teacher in Psychology and Maths. Do students lack cultural capital?  "Yes some of our students, and not just our students but my experience in previous schools,  they know a lot about the now and different strands of culture and celebrity culture, but its often historical references they lack". Is cultural capital useful?  "it might be that the only use it serves is to enable them to move on to the next level (in society)" Hannah also explained using an example around the topic of conformity on the psychology curriculum that Cultural capital is useful in the contextual sense around historical time periods. How are we tackling background knowledge in the sixth form currently: - Giving wider reading - Prior knowledge needs to be considered as part of the curriculum in the planning stage. Has the curriculum changed?  "(Maths) Its harde...

Interview with former Literacy Coordinator, Lead Practitioner in the Teaching and Learning Faculty member, Homework coordinator, English teacher and long serving teacher (since 1997) at Haggerston School; Nancy Matthews. Is there a Gap between student knowledge and what they are expected to know? "Yes!... it becomes very obvious when you teach a student with cultural capital.. they stand out" Nancy exemplified her point of view through a student she taught who gained their cultural capital : ..Through parents jobs, political leanings, reading culture at home led to students having a huge advantage when it came to analysing a text for context. ....Many of our EAL students experience issues because at home their talk is all in other cultures... Nancy talked about the positive impact of the old AQA anthology 'poems from other cultures' and the way in which this opened up a cultural dialogue for many EAL students and students from a wide range of backgrounds. ...

This student interview is with an extremely high achieving student who many teachers would consider to be one who definitely has 'cultural capital'. He is from a very well educated family of Irish/ British heritage. Interestingly this student feels that their cultural capital is "a bit unfair" Why is having cultural capital an advantage?: When referring to feminist texts and the issues around them the student points to examples of how reading the guardian has helped him understand the wider context to books he read in English. "I have an advantage for whom my parents are.. they both went to oxford and are both knowledgeable guardian readers" He also pointed to the experience of reading from a very young age.. but also points out how he is "ignorant of a lot of popular culture" so feels he has gaps in his knowledge here. The only thing he watches on TV however is Eurovision! Its not clear whether this can be considered 'cultural ca...

4 more students this time, from a range of backgrounds, 2 males and 2 females. 3 are from working class Irish and British backgrounds and 1 is from a middle class Indian household. The students are all fairly high achieving in  terms of their GCSE grades and AS level target grades. Findings:  1 student had visited an Art gallery in the last week and saw some usefulness in going One student identified going to cultural places as useful in that: "I think it can give you context to the things you are studying" However she quickly realised that "its not really a priority" although she expressed a willingness to go to these places if she had the time. Internet changes:  "Art galleries and theatres are outdated.. you can find films on your phone" "I think students get the wrong culture too easily" (because of the internet) "The reason people use the internet (for access to culture) because its accessible" Do you have cultu...

Justin Harvey - Head of R.E at Haggerston School: Overall comments highlight these areas:  - R.E: students bring significant prior knowledge due to the demographic make up of our school (most families are Muslim or Christian). Syllabus changes: KS4 - The new spec is nowmore traditionalist, liturgical and textual background of the new course. Students who are actively religious and visit places of worship might have a greater advantage. A third unit at KS5 gives a priority to a set of scholars from a historical christian background. The New specification moves the knowledge away from contemporary issues and prioritises lists of key texts and scholars. There are pre-identified religious texts that students must know about. Many students will have gone through the learning of texts before, pedagogically they will have an advantage in that they are used to learning religious texts already before they approach the exam and the course.

So in these series of interviews I am trying to find student approaches to background knowledge and wider cultural exposure. Do they think it helps, do they attach importance to it, or is there a disengagement with wider cultural work generally? These two students represent students who are from Immigrant families who speak a different language at home and represent students without a wide range of 'high culture' background knowledge. They are both very able academically and have achieved well in most areas at GCSE and at AS level. However they generally seem quite reticent to acknowledge both the need for or the use of wider cultural capital. They also highlight: - Wider knowledge is necessary for coursework and their lessons. Teachers do ask for independent research for example. - They said that often their courses do have words or phrases that they find difficult or understand but in the event of that happening they "just google it or just ask their teache...

Do students lack cultural capital?  "By and large our students do lack cultural capital" "I feel the lack of it more the older they are.. that might be because of the demands of the exam" New changes to the English Curriculum: "It definitely gives an advantage to the more well read student... why else would you broaden that scope of context?" Alice talks about an excellent example of the new specifications requirement for context around Macbeth as a hero in relation to other Hero characters (see below) Alice referred to the changes to the new English specification that has made a concerted effort to broaden the "scope and range" of the marks awarded for context. A couple of screenshots from the new document are below. But this clearly highlights some of the cultural capital that students may need in order to tackle the new curriculum.  AO3- Context is now 15% of the marks for the overall qualification. A significant amount. ...

A phrase used often in Sociology to discuss the idea of social mobility Meritocracy is the idea that your place in life is linked to how hard you have worked for it. Your success in life is decided on Merit. You get what you deserve. Now its fairly obviously the case that we don't currently live in a Meritocracy. However there are still plenty of media texts and cultural items that try and pretend we do. Nearly all sports films for instance show the main protagonist as someone who conquers all due to their determination. This ideology is fairly prevelenat despite a world that is more and more ruled by inequality. In your blog posts you could discuss the idea of meritocracy and whether you think it exists or not but try and find a media text that shows some element of this. One of the best scenes from the Movie version is below in which Alec Baldwin's character tries to 'incentivise' his work force. The stage play and film both depict a world in which meritoc...

Here is a spreadsheet of the results collected from the first questionnaire. I am not going to go into the full breakdown of conclusions just yet but it was extremely interesting to see what the cultural background of our sixth form looks like. I have attempted to ape the style of Pierre Bourdieu's data collection for his book 'Distinction', just perhaps without the 'rigour'!

So just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Modernist water.. Good old Post modernism rears its self relflexive head. The big problem you are going to have with postmodernism is that its very difficult to define: But its a hugely influential term that encompasses Art, critical thought and philosophy and also its a favourite word of Shoreditch hipsters and Arty types;"thats so postmodern bruh"etc A postmodern text: to choose your postmodern text you could do worse than visit the V& A museums website for an old exhibition they had on this topic:  http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/p/postmodernism/ But the choice is yours. I'm going for....... Scream (Wes Craven, 1996): Everything about this film is an 'in-joke' its a reflexive self pastiche of the horror genre that gleefully plays with the audiences expectations and is aware of their knowledge of the genre in very scene. This is postmodern because it sees the Art form outside of ...

Please attempt the following questionnaire as best you can. It is anonymous so please answer honestly as your responses will be used to inform a serious and valuable cause! There are 93 questions and it should take your around 15 -20 minutes. Part 1: (please remember to send / complete it at the end!) Loading... part 2: Loading...

So a slightly different theme this week as we tackle MODERNISM. You could look at this from the point of view of modernism as an artistic style. Or you could approach it as a branch of philosophy. So what is Modernism and how can you find a text that will fit these ideals? Modernism  is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in  Western society  in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of  World War I . Modernism also rejected the certainty of  Enlightenment  thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism Historic Dimensions of Modernism (esp. in literature) Modernism begins in the late 1800s or early 1900s, climaxing in the 1910s-30s as writers and artists t...

Ok this weeks theme is Feminism (i'm sure you all know what this is!) . Wikipedia: Feminism  is a range of  political movements ,  ideologies , and  social movements  that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social  rights for women  that are  equal  to those of men. [1] [2]  This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. Feminist movements  have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to  vote , to hold public office,  to work , to earn fair  wages  or  equal pay , to  own property ,  to receive education , to enter contracts, to have equal rights within  marriage , and to have  maternity leave . Feminists have also worked to promote bodily  autonomy  and  integrity , and to protect women and girls from  rape ,  sexual har...

Please feel free to have a read of my final submission for this MA action research project: 'Mixtape Habitus' and Independently Curated Culture. A really enjoyable project that I felt really benefitted my students as they have all been consuming and discussing curriculum relevant culture as part of it. I have also posted up the marking feedback underneath.  

Week 1: Theme - Capitalism (Teacher text: Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations) My Text: The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorcese, 2014) How this relates to the theme? So this film is all about the excess of capitalism and one man's desire to exploit the system. Although everything he does is illegal, Jordan Belfort constantly enjoys success after success and enjoys the best of what America has to offer. This shows how Adam Smith's ideas around 'The Invisible Hand' don't necesarily work when applied in such a crazed and self obsessed way. If people act in their own self interest so much that they do so to the detriment of others and they exploit holes in the system then the economic system does not work in the interest of everybody. Jordan Belfort became extremely rich but also ripped off many people in the process, this is something the film rarely focuses on and many of the economic points in the film are kept in the sidelines, instead the director...

Week 1 - Theme: Capitalism (Economics) Teacher Text:  Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations (1776) You can read the full text here http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html The Invisible Hand The core of Smith's thesis was that man's natural tendency toward self-interest - in modern terms, looking out for No.1 - results in prosperity. By giving everyone freedom to produce and exchange goods as they pleased (free trade) and opening all markets to competition (international as well as domestic - Smith lived in the age of government chartered monopolies ), people's natural self-interest would bring about universal opulence with very little effort from a nation's government. This free-market force became known as the invisible hand , but it nee...

That tash! Who is this guy?! His name seems to appear in a lot of the reading I have been doing. He has created a test (PISA) that will test students across the globe and compare them equally regardless of culture. Lots of data. Lots of data. And he certainly accounts and champions the creation of new knowledge and skills.  However despite many people loving him, including michael gove,(strangely?)  he still has many critics: " But does Pisa have sufficiently robust data to justify its growing weight? Many critics think not. For one thing, the tests don't work as people think they work. You would expect all pupils to answer the same questions. In fact, according to an analysis by Copenhagen University in Denmark, only 10% of those who took part in Pisa 2006 were tested on all 28 reading questions, and about half weren't tested on reading at all. The  OECD  feeds real scores into a statistical device called the Rasch model so that it can work out "plausib...

Interview 2 from Haggerston Media on Vimeo . Password: culture Really interesting interview with Mr J Hanna today who made several key point about student background knowledge and cultural literacy in light of the new curriculum changes. Towards the end especially where Jon eludes to the fact that its not a particular set of prescribed cultural ideas or set list of culture thats important, but more the culture shift towards reading more from a variety of sources that is important

So today I welcomed my year 12s back into the lesson after their exams and we started thinking about some critical theory work and culture in general. As we all know the true best test of how cultured you are is to do a pub quiz, so thats what we did. I asked the following questions to a small class of 9 students aged 16-18. Some of these questions are deliberately bad (by that i mean poorly phrased). There is no 'best' TV show, for example, but I was trying to stimulate some response and light hearted nature around this. 1: What do you understand by the term culture? 2: What are the best TV shows? 3. Name, in your opinion, the best movies ever made 4. Name some 'classic' albums and great songs that you have heard 5. What are the top 5 books you have ever read 6. What is your favourite painting and favourite artists 7. Name a great piece of classical music/opera or jazz 8. From where do you think you get most of your cultural knowledge? 9. Would you say that...

So i have also been reading about David Buckingham and his ideas around media in the classroom and as part of media literacy across schools generally.  Books like this:           But also his blog https://davidbuckingham.net/blog/    which also contains some really interesting insight on these issues. For Example: Learning Media Theory: What Is It Good For? So what’s the alternative? I don’t believe the government documents really offer us one – and apparently the awarding bodies, who are currently drawing up the detailed specifications, have been told that the List (the canon of theorists) is not negotiable. One can imagine classroom activities that would involve applying theory to particular media phenomena or issues. What would Stuart Hall or Paul Gilroy say about diversity in the Oscars? How would Judith Butler or bell hooks interpret Rihanna’s latest video? How would Curran and Seaton help us to interpret the government’s ...

A Rich Seam : How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning; Fullan, Michael & Langworthy, Maria, (2014) A really long but interesting report here (full report embedded below) that despite feeling a little too biased and a little too much like it was desperatley trying to sell these new pedagogies at all costs, does actually help me think that part of my project can use this type of 'deep learning' pedagogy as there is significant overlap with what i am trying to do with elements of curation pedagogy and independent background culture work. Highlights:  pgii "Increasingly, digital access is freeing teaching and learning from the constraints of prescribed curricular content. These forces drive changes in the roles and relationships of students and teachers, among teachers, and within organisational systems...   Helping students learn about themselves as learners and continuously assess and reflect upon their own progress is essential to this process. The new ...