This paper draws on positive youth development theory to highlight the significance of Horizon Youth Service (HYS) participants' hip-hop music production, focusing on three HYS organizational features that supported participants' growth. The author's findings lead to recommendations for out-of-school time (OST) programs that combine creativity…

Addressing students' mental health needs has become a growing concern amongst educators and school leaders, as 25% of adolescents are known to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Moreover, students in urban contexts are more likely to experience mental health challenges as they face environmental stressors in their communities that stem…

This article aims at taking a look at a genre that is popular with both children and adults, yet mostly neglected in curricula: animated films. As a study conducted in a German secondary school demonstrated, the potential of this genre for Teaching English as a Foreign Language lies mostly in its strong visual language as well as its connection to…

Music education research on popular music can be characterized by its emphasis on adolescent experiences and performance practice. In contrast, this study explored the ways in which popular music listening fostered deliberation and dialogue within a group of New York City elementary school children. Recognizing that popular music listening is a…

Although most teachers realize the potential of using popular culture within the sexuality education classroom, incorporating it successfully is complex. Especially, how can teachers critically analyse the ideology contained in popular culture without lapsing into moralizing and design motivating activities? For teachers in Taiwan, whose training…

Adolescents often bring popular culture into school, but often these literacies are not embraced or taught in the English classroom. The author makes the case for using "Glee" in the classroom by demonstrating its persuasive power to disrupt heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality with teens. The author uses a feminist rhetorical…

Culturally relevant pedagogy is a framework that conceptualizes the process of student learning as contingent upon educators' deep understanding of students' cultural backgrounds to co-construct knowledge and develop academic skills. Concurrently, there are a growing number of studies that explore hip-hop as a culturally relevant curriculum for…

This paper compares two forms of sexual socialisation to which learners are exposed: the sexuality education components of the Life Orientation (LO) manuals and the lyrical content and videos of popular songs. We performed a textual analysis of the sexual subject positions made available in, first, the LO manuals used in Grade 10 classes and,…

In this paper, I trace three traditions and bodies of work: The Chicago School of Sociology, the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and the New Sociology of Education. Each of these traditions evolved in distinct though overlapping ways. Taken together, they offer a productive set of resources for thinking through the complexities of popular…

This article focuses on learning and identity-related practices of young female fans of a popular British boy band called One Direction. Drawing on qualitative inquiry into a fanfiction community formed around the band, analysis highlights (a) the literate work fans engage in, including writing, reading, critiquing, and collaborating on multimodal…

Videogames, such as "The Sims," are a digital media passion drawing adolescents to online spaces where they create and share content. This article explores how discourses and expectations are taught in one online, videogame-related fan site of adolescents who read and write "Sims" fan fiction. Using Bernstein's pedagogic…

The messages students receive through popular media such as movies, television, the internet, and music videos have a powerful influence and can shape their thinking. A national survey of media use by 8- to 18-year-olds found the average adolescent spends over seven and a half hours daily with entertainment media (KFF 2010). Rather than viewing…

Illuminating hip-hop as an important cultural practice and a global social movement, this collaborative project highlights the emancipatory messages and cultural work generated by the organic intellectuals of global hip-hop. Contributors describe the social realities--globalization, migration, poverty, criminalization, and racism--youth are…

Expanding the definition of literacy and using visual strategies comprehensively can strongly affect student learning. Educators can contribute to the growth and understanding of the world of nonprint text by helping students learn to read and create visual products critically. When educators bridge popular culture and traditional texts, students…

This article explores English-language-learning (ELL) youths' engagement with popular media through composing and publicly posting stories in an online fan fiction writing space. Fan fiction is a genre that lends itself to critical engagement with media texts as fans repurpose popular media to design their own narratives. Analyses describe how…