Cultural Capital and Curriculum Remixing

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 ...

So I have also been reading this report by Emma Sims, (2006) around initial ideas for 'Deep Learning' Here she outlines how older school pedagogy focussed on 'Surface learning' Her section around  'Growing learner Autonomy is also interesting as it may be a secondary factor/beneft in my study. 

Today i have been mostly reading.... Learning about learning; What every teacher needs to know,  (2015) Laura Pomerance, Julie Greenberg and Kate Walsh, National Council on Teacher Quality. Report accessed at:  www.nctq.org/dmsStage/Learning_About_Learning_Report   (Embedded below) To save you reading the whole thing, just read the page below. It outlines the main principles of the report in that they found that text books do not adequately advise people on the best 6 strategies for instruction. The best 6 are below. The reason that this is relevant to my project is that perhaps when i am thinking of my solution for this problem i can encorporate some of these strategies into the student blogging process. Certainly points 1 + 2 below are both clearly possible with a online diary type platform.

Just a quick conversation during tutor time with 4 or 5 of my tutees. Interesting to not the wide range of cultural differences, one student had been to the cinema once, one student had never been to an art gallery. All students would consider themselves knowledgeable about music (no surprises!) but not many of them could articulate the usefulness of this to their academic lives. This is probably going to be a recurring theme in this project. Students trying to make sense of their own lives in terms of culture and identifying the links between this and their academic performance. video password: culture Focus Group 1 from Haggerston Media on Vimeo .

Initial research into the 'narrowing; of our school curriculum. Does it exist and how does it impact on teaching and learning and student progress. My initial hunch is that yes it exists! The pressure to make 'progress' is everywhere. This is not progress as defined by the teacher or the parents but progress as defined by the state, (and a clearly ideological department for education), and this creates a huge push towards exam success. Progress is not meant in its vaguest sense but within the clearly defined parameters of the exam board specification and KS2 scores. In my school currently we are urged to complete at least one mock exam per term for exam classes (to measure 'progress') and that time alone adds up to a huge amount of exam based prep and focus. Stories of narrowing curriculum are everywhere (See list below), and it is unlikely to change anytime soon depsite the depth of opposition such as Ken Robinson and many others. I think this animated vid...

This blog is part of the Pedagogy unit of my MA in Creative and Media Education that I am currently studying at the University of Bournemouth. I am hoping to research the problem of cultural capital and background knowledge within, primarily KS5 students at my current place of work;Haggerston sixth form. This will be an action research project and will run for around 6 weeks. Initially I am setting out to address this perceived lack of cultural literacy my using a curation pedagogy that enables students to create online multimedia 'mix tapes' (blogs!) of the cultural texts they think are of value. This will hopefully allow students to compare, view and experience a wider range of cultural texts and background knowledge without teachers falling into the trap of feeling they have to 'hand down' culture of a perceived better quality. To ensure that students step out of their comfort zones and choose cultural artefacts that are genuinly new and relevant there will...