Outcomes from my Popular Culture survery

Explore the outcomes of your parental/student teacher survey. Did any responses surprise or challenge you? What might be the subsequent implications for your future practice? Make links to the in-session discussion and to any relevant readings.

We are all living in an exponentially increasing digital age, so imagining what it must be like for a young child to grow up within this digital world is difficult. Schools are now increasing their use of ICT to provide more inspiring and engaging lessons for all of their pupils. I surveyed a student teacher about her current stance on using new media and popular culture within the primary classroom. She raised the idea that educationalists are always aiming to incorporate the latest technology into their work, however, are they doing this for the benefit of the children, or are they following what seems popular to use within the classroom at that time? Being a strong advocate of the use of ICT within the classroom means that as a teacher I hope to use ICT in order to transform the way lessons are taught in primary school. However, studies have shown that schools tend to only introduce a new technology to the classroom when it has either: saturated the market and can therefore no longer be ignored; or as a way of accepting a piece of technology, not because it innovates teaching, but because it reinforces the old conventions of teaching.

This concept of reinforcing the old teaching conventions highlights the main reason why the student teacher I interviewed did not want to introduce technology into her classroom. If she had the choice to do so she informed me she would not feel proficient enough to do the job well. Whereas as I am much more comfortable with the use of ICT I encourage its use within every lessons if I believe it will enhance the learning achievements of all the children. Maybe if this student teacher feels her lack of ICT knowledge will affect her capabilities of using ICT correctly in order to improve learning then this highlights an implication for future teachers as they will need to feel confident with their own technological abilities in order to want to use technology to interest and engage their pupils.

Lastly, the student teacher I surveyed discussed the possible benefits of introducing popular culture in order to engage a reluctant learner. This is because introducing a new topic using popular culture will most likely engage the child, as it relates to something they enjoy outside of school, and therefore connects their learning to one of their genuine interests. The only worry this student teacher voiced was that with the overuse of popular culture it may affect how beneficial its use will be to the pupils in the class. One possible outcome could be that as the children become more aware of the use of popular culture they slowly stop becoming as responsive to its use within the classroom.


Bibliography:

http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/discussion_papers/One_tablet_or_two.pdf (Accessed 12.10.14)