Cultural Capital and Curriculum Remixing

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previous schools,  they know a lot about the now and different strands of culture and celebrity culture, but its often historical references they lack".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...