This book argues that the mythic figure of the zombie, so prevalent and powerful in contemporary culture, provides the opportunity to explore certain social models – such as ‘childhood’ and ‘school’, ‘class’ and ‘family’ – that so deeply underpin educational policy and practice as to be rendered invisible. It brings together authors from a range of disciplines to use contemporary zombie typologies – slave, undead, contagion – to examine the responsiveness of everyday practices of schooling such as literacy, curriculum and pedagogy to the new contexts in which children and young people develop their identities, attitudes to learning, and engage with the many publics that make up their everyday worlds.

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Education in Popular Culture explores what makes schools, colleges, teachers and students an enduring focus for a wide range of contemporary media. What is it about the school experience that makes us wish to relive it again and again? The book provides an overview of education as it is represented in popular culture, together with a framework through which educators can interpret these representations in relation to their own professional values and development. The analyses are contextualised within contemporary, historical and ideological frameworks, and make connections between popular representations and professional and political discourses about education. Through its examination of film, television, popular lyrics and fiction, this book tackles educational themes that recur in popular culture, and demonstrates how they intersect with debates concerning teacher performance, the curriculum and young people’s behaviour and morality. Chapters explore how experiences of education are both reflected and constructed in ways that sometimes reinforce official and professional educational perspectives, and sometimes resist and oppose them. Education in Popular Culture will stimulate critical reflection on the popular myths and professional discourses that surround teachers and teaching. It will serve to deepen analyses of teaching and learning and their associated institutional and societal contexts in a creative and challenging way.

The integration of popular culture into education is a pervasive theme at all educational levels and in all subject areas. Popular Culture, Pedagogy and Teacher Education explores how ‘popular culture’ and ‘education’ come together and interact in research and practice from an interdisciplinary perspective. The international case studies in this edited volume address issues related to: how popular culture ‘teaches’ our students and what they learn from it outside the classroom how popular culture connects education to students’ lives how teachers ‘use’ popular culture in educational settings how far teachers should shape what students learn from engagement with popular culture in school how teacher educators can help teachers integrate popular culture into their teaching Providing vivid accounts of students, teachers and teacher educators, and drawing out the pedagogical implications of their work, this book will appeal to teachers and teacher educators who are searching for practical answers to the questions that the integration of popular culture into education poses for their work.

This book focuses on the rapidly changing sociology of music as manifested in Chinese society and Chinese education. It examines how social changes and cultural politics affect how music is currently being used in connection with the Chinese dream. While there is a growing trend toward incorporating the Chinese dream into school education and higher education, there has been no scholarly discussion to date. The combination of cultural politics, transformed authority relations, and officially approved songs can provide us with an understanding of the official content on the Chinese dream that is conveyed in today’s Chinese society, and how these factors have influenced the renewal of values-based education and practices in school music education in China.

Young People, Leisure and Place reports on cross-cultural research into the personal geographies of young people. It explores young people's leisure and recreational pursuits, including favourite places, and.offers a tentative theory of adolescent thinking and development. The major themes explored are the impact of globalisation on young people, their reference systems and their use of private and public spaces. Evidence is presented of global, national and local dimensions of growing up in different countries in a post-modern world. The book contributes to a better understanding of issues of contemporary citizenship in a globalised world where the commodification of knowledge blurs boundaries and values. Effective citizenship in a world of time-space compression and instant access to diverse sources of information is problematic. This book provides a fascinating insight into the discerning values of young people. As they reveal their hopes and dreams within the knowledge society, the young people involved in this cross-cultural enquiry also highlight their conservatism and the traditional core values associated with their homes and families.

Focusing on a decade in Irish history which has been largely overlooked, Youth and Popular Culture in 1950s Ireland provides the most complete account of the 1950s in Ireland, through the eyes of the young people who contributed, slowly but steadily, to the social and cultural transformation of Irish society. Eleanor O'Leary presents a picture of a generation with an international outlook, who played basketball, read comic books and romance magazines, listened to rock'n'roll music and skiffle, made their own clothes to mimic international styles and even danced in the street when the major stars and bands of the day rocked into town. She argues that this engagement with imported popular culture was a contributing factor to emigration and the growing dissatisfaction with standards of living and conservative social structures in Ireland. As well as outlining teenagers' resistance to outmoded forms of employment and unfair work practices, she maps their vulnerability as a group who existed in a limbo between childhood and adulthood. Issues of unemployment, emigration and education are examined alongside popular entertainments and social spaces in order to provide a full account of growing up in the decade which preceded the social upheaval of the 1960s. Examining the 1950s through the unique prism of youth culture and reconnecting the decade to the process of social and cultural transition in the second half of the 20th century, this book is a valuable contribution to the literature on 20th-century Irish history.