Dancing With Concentric Circles: A Framework for Integrating Pop Culture Into Digital Classrooms

• In Event: Pop Goes the Culture: Reimagining Childhoods in Digital Spaces

Abstract

The pandemic has invited both adults and youth back to their televisions, computers, and gaming centers—(re)centering social life to digital spaces. While most of us engage with the contours of popular media, conversations around its utility and import for teaching and learning are relegated to the curricular margins (Dyson, 1997). As remote learning has re(located) to homes, how does home life (e.g., watching television, checking social media, connecting with others virtually) change how teachers envision what knowledge is most essential and how this essential knowledge is communicated in digital spaces? What happens when educators take up popular culture resources and themes as pedagogical tools? By tracing how a group of K-12 educators experienced digital tools, we (three teacher-researcher-learners) offer a framework for merging digital life with virtual learning.

Catalyzed by our own TV-related discussions, we emphasize the communal and relational act of discussing popular television shows alongside unpacking conceptions of self and others. Taking up post-qualitative lines of inquiry, we illustrate the interaction among self, others, material culture, and semiotic resources (Pink et al., 2016; Spyrou, 2018), a framework we term Dances with Concentric Circles (Figure 1). Comprising three layers of self-work, we support educators in excavating their personal entanglements with popular culture, critically interrogating their relationships within and outside the classroom, and confronting what/which/whose knowledge is culturally valuable (Apple, 2004). Beginning in the middle, “Dances with Selves” engages the many selves that may synergize or conflict with one another within us. Extending out is “Dances with Others,” which examines how our multiple selves interact with those of others (e.g., students, parents, colleagues). This middle circle probes our affinities and repulsions to certain popular culture characters and invites confessions into how we dance with or negotiate our presumptions with those in our physical lives. The outermost circle, or “Dances with Knowledge,” explores how our different identities interact with the ways of knowing and being of others that shape pedagogy and curriculum. It is through journeying through these interconnected circles that educators can begin to reanimate their pedagogy and destabilize hierarchies of knowledge

During the workshop, 50+ educators engaged with digital spaces (e.g. creating avatars to express digital identities, participating in chat rooms, and connecting across digital texts) using platforms and tools as potential teaching material. An analysis of the workshop experience surfaced two implications: First, the disparate popular culture consumptions among participants served as not only a felt reminder of classroom dynamics but also a catalyst to reimagine pedagogy where the affordances and issues of popular culture are explored. Second, teacher reflexivity is vital to processing the tensions and discomfort felt about digital culture and youth culture more broadly. For example, educators struggled with negotiating their popular culture pleasures with those of their students. Considered together, our inquiry sheds light on how playing with popular culture as educators can be generative in widening the boundaries of curriculum and reanimating pedagogy for digital learning.

Authors

• Lum Fube, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Catherine Yanan Cheng Stahl, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Oluwaseun Animashaun, Teachers College, Columbia University