James Trier

“Cool” Engagements With YouTube: Part 1

This article discusses the participatory potential of YouTube, a social website that allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. The author provides examples of how YouTube was incorporated into a course as part of a “mosh-pit” pedagogy that involved both students and teachers in engaging with a variety of YouTube videos.

‘Sordid Fantasies’: reading popular ‘inner‐city’ school films as racialized texts with pre‐service teachers

This article discusses a multi‐phase project designed to inquire into and challenge pre‐service teachers’ assumptions, beliefs and knowledge about inner‐city schools. Prior to beginning their student teaching in inner‐city schools, pre‐service teachers articulated in essays and seminar discussions their opinions and beliefs about inner‐city schools. They then examined in depth selected cinematic representations of inner‐city schools to deconstruct those representations for their ‘racialized’ and ‘deracialized’ discourses, as well as for the ‘sordid fantasies’ and ‘lullabies’ that films set in the inner‐city typically construct. Finally, after their experiences student teaching in inner‐city schools, pre‐service teachers rearticulated their views about inner‐city schools, based on their own experiences teaching in such schools. Pre‐service teachers discovered the extent to which their views of inner‐city schools had been formed through popular representations, and they also discovered how their own experiences in schools revealed the great discrepancy between popular representations of inner‐city schools and what such schools are actually like. Pre‐service teachers found the process of analysing the school films through the theoretical lenses provided by academic texts to be engaging and productive.This article discusses a multi‐phase project designed to inquire into and challenge pre‐service teachers’ assumptions, beliefs and knowledge about inner‐city schools. Prior to beginning their student teaching in inner‐city schools, pre‐service teachers articulated in essays and seminar discussions their opinions and beliefs about inner‐city schools. They then examined in depth selected cinematic representations of inner‐city schools to deconstruct those representations for their ‘racialized’ and ‘deracialized’ discourses, as well as for the ‘sordid fantasies’ and ‘lullabies’ that films set in the inner‐city typically construct. Finally, after their experiences student teaching in inner‐city schools, pre‐service teachers rearticulated their views about inner‐city schools, based on their own experiences teaching in such schools. Pre‐service teachers discovered the extent to which their views of inner‐city schools had been formed through popular representations, and they also discovered how their own experie...

Inquiring into ‘techniques of power’ with preservice teachers through the ‘school film’ The Paper Chase

Abstract In working with preservice teachers, I have often coupled academic readings with “school films” to take up critical issues. In this article, I discuss a project I designed to introduce preservice teachers to the idea of “techniques of power” through analyses of the film The Paper Chase (1973), analyses informed by Gores (in: T. Popkewitz, M. Brennan (Eds.), Foucaults Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education, Teachers College Press, New York, 1998, pp. 231–251) articulation of eight “techniques of power” and certain elements from Foucaults (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Random House, New York, 1977) Discipline and Punish. I also explain how preservice teachers began to view teaching and disciplinary practices through the lens of techniques of power.

Exploring the concept of 'habitus' with preservice teachers through the use of popular school films

The thesis of this paper is that it is a productive venture to introduce preservice students to social theories that are typically not a part of teacher preparation programs. Examples of these theories are those associated with terms such as “habitus,” the “carnivalesque,” “power / knowledge,” “seduction,” “detournement,” “the spectacle,”“la perruque,” (the wig), and “the art of making do,”as well as others. In this paper, I describe a project that involved exploring the theory of “habitus” to problematize the tendency of preservice students to not think in terms of relations between what goes on in the classroom and what goes on in society. I introduced “habitus” by having preservice students read selected print materials and by having them view, analyze, and respond in writing to popular school films. Students also analyzed their experiences in classrooms in terms of habitus, making a connection between theory and practice.

Reconceptualizing Literacy Through a Discourses Perspective by Analyzing Literacy Events Represented in Films About Schools

A cohort of secondary English preservice teachers was engaged in a series of articles designed to bring about a shift in their initial autonomous views of literacy toward a more sociocultural “Discourses and literacies” perspective. Students wrote an essay in which they articulated their initial assumptions about what literacy was and what teachers of literacy do. They were then introduced to a sociocultural (multiliteracies) theory of literacy, as well as to the important concept of literacy events, by reading, writing about, and discussing selected academic articles and chapters. To deepen their explorations of Discourses, literacies, and literacy events, students then analyzed scenes from selected films, noting how they represented a variety of literacy events. Finally, students designed a variety of literature and composition lessons that revealed the Discourses perspective on literacy that they had been exploring.

Boston Public as Public Pedagogy: Implications for Teacher Preparation and School Leadership

Abstract The media play a major role in the construction of popular cultural “texts,” such as films and television programs. These media forms are conceptualized as “public pedagogies”—i.e., as texts that have great potential to teach the public about a wide range of educational issues. This article focuses attention on the representation of teachers and principals in the popular television series Boston Public. Specifically, the authors provide two complimentary accounts of how the representations of teachers and principals can be engaged through critical analyses or “readings.” One account develops a deconstructive reading of how Boston Public treats teacher preparation, teacher competence, and principal leadership. The second account examines how preservice teachers were engaged in multiple readings of the program. The article concludes by suggesting that analyzing popular representations of teachers and educational leaders in film and television can become one important strategy, among others, for developing critically reflective educational leaders and teachers.

Teaching With Media and Popular Culture

Preservice English teachers experienced the concept of teaching with media. They incorporated film, music, television, and visual texts that they viewed as having potential in teaching English classes. They also shared their lessons and media artifacts with one another, exchanging ideas and collaborating on subsequent projects that involved teaching with media.

Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis

The Situationist International (SI) was a Paris-based artistic and political avant-garde group that formed in 1957, went through three distinct phases during its existence, and dissolved in 1972. In 1967, SI leader Guy Debord published his book The Society of the Spectacle, which presents his theory of how “the Spectacle” (i.e., the Capitalist system in its totality) works endlessly (though not always successfully) to transform people into spectators whose sole purposes are to consume commodities and to live de-politicized, passive, isolated, and contemplative lives. To challenge and subvert “the Spectacle,” Debord and his SI associates theorized and practiced the anti-spectacular critical art they called “detournement,” which entails reusing existing artistic and mass-produced elements to create new combinations or ensembles. As Debord wrote in 1956, detournement has the potential to be “a powerful cultural weapon in the service of real class struggle.”

Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle

This column discusses the 40th anniversary of Guy Debords The Society of the Spectacle and the Situationist International group. The author juxtaposes a few brief historical snapshots with definitions of key terms and paraphrases some important ideas and events. The author also refers to selected texts and Internet sources by and about Debord and the situationists. Readers who subsequently engage with these texts and Internet sources should be able to discover the relevance of Debord and the SI to current discourses of critical media literacy.

Exemplary Introductory Critical Media Literacy Documentaries

Teachers are often unsure about their critical position toward and knowledge about mass media. As a consequence, they are unsure about engaging their students in media analyses. To begin acquiring a new critical media literacy discourse and then introduce it to their students, teachers can read the many valuable accounts by other educators who have conceptualized, or engaged students in, critical media literacy projects. But teachers often do not have the time to read dozens of articles, book chapters, and books. The author of this column introduces another way into the discourse of critical media literacy—a way that involves learning and thinking about the media through critical documentaries that explain and critique them. Taking up such documentaries is not only less time consuming, but it is also as valuable an introductory experience as taking up printed texts on the subject.