Films and TV programs that include educational settings, students, teachers and learning are abundant; they speak to common, or comparable experiences that the audience will have shared and they are richly imbued with narrative potential in their evocations of power, status, discipline, knowing, discovery, and desire. Perhaps inevitably, much work has focused on the iconic figure of the teacher, identifying her or him as hero, villain, grafter, or martyr, and whilst acknowledging the significance of such work, this collection makes a different kind of intervention in the field. In earlier work about representations of teachers and educational settings, such as Fisher, Harris and Jarvisâ wide-ranging exploration of popular culture, we see how different kinds of investment (emotional, intellectual, sexual) in places of learning are played out in cultural products. Their final sentence reads:
It is our conviction that representations of education in popular culture, while containing few easy remedies or easy guidelines to practice, enable us to identify the important questions that, although arising from the sphere of fiction, impact directly on the terrain of lived experience. (2008, p. 182)
This collection shares this conviction in that it, too, focuses on cultural products and seeks to uncover ideas about teaching and learning. The primary focus here, however, is on pedagogy itself, rather than what we might call the âpara-pedagogicalâ (that is, all of those things that happen alongside educationâbullying, sexual relationships, intoxication and so on). There are two, broad, research traditions that this collection draws upon: the representation of teachers (e.g. Fisher et al. 2008; Dalton 1995, 2013; Dalton and Linder 2008; Ellsmore 2005); and the utility of film and TV stories for pedagogy (e.g. Giroux 2002; Mitchell and Webber 1999), and we attempt here to bring about some kind of convergence of the two. We acknowledge, of course, that there is often overlap between âidentity workâ and pedagogic work, but we attempt to refine the focus here so that we may tease out pedagogic theory and practice in film and TV texts. This focus necessitates specific examination of screen narratives, rather than a wider ranging apprehension of, for example, instances of popular music, radio, comics and literature, in which schools and teachers make appearances. We are only interested, therefore, in the personae of teachers when these are directly related to teaching and learning.
The project is driven by research into how pedagogy is manifested on screen and how screen stories make explicit in more or less problematic ways the processes of teaching and learning. In all of these chapters we find ideas about pedagogy scrutinized and explored in relation to screen narratives, and the purpose of this collection is at least twofold: firstly, it contributes to a broader cultural studies project, which is driven by the need to reveal myth-making strategies in cultural products; secondly it provides analysis and discussion of particular pedagogic models and strategies that can feed into the professional development of educators. It is a cliché (but no less valid for that) that many were inspired to become teachers by Dead Poets Society (e.g. Payne 2014); this collection attends to the nature of that inspiration, questions the myths around teaching and learning, and provides insights into particular ways of being and interacting in pedagogic contexts, both formal and informal. As Mitchell and Weber argue:
The cumulative text of teacher that we read in movies, books and TV programs serves as a kind of informal curriculum or alternative Faculty of Education for adults who wish to become teachers. In the countless classrooms of fiction and film in which we all spend time, we are exposed to both right and left wing images or teaching, image-texts that can be agents of change and subversion, or conversely, unnoticed but powerful agents of reproduction and conservatismâŠThe cumulative cultural text of competing teacher images forms the background against which we struggle to clarify our professional identities. (1999, p. 170)
This book is about demythologizing some of that mediascape in relation to educationâit is an exploration of the imaginative terrain of teaching and learning and is underpinned by the idea that the imaginary is always ideological. By this I mean that imaginative stories about pedagogy always embody, more or less explicitly, theories of learning, and theories of learning are always based on concepts of the subject, the status and nature of knowledge, and ideas about the value and utility of education. The method, then, entails a range of analytical tools: textual and narrative analysis; reading âagainst the grainâ; discourse analysis; feminist and queer readings; and structural analysis. All of these methodological approaches are in the service of pedagogic questions, such as: What kind of learning is taking place? Who is learning? What is being learned? What is the relationship between teaching and learning? How is power manifested in this learning? What is the experiential dimension of this learning? These are, of course, all questions which should inform actual pedagogic practice, and develop understanding of the purpose of education, the production of knowledge, and the construction of learning experiences.
The collection is organized in three sections: the first, âWhat I Go to School For,â focuses on representations of pedagogy in formal settings; the second, âEverybodyâs Got to Learn Sometimeâ explores alternative and informal settings in which teaching and learning take place on screen; the third, âAnother Brick in the Wallâ identifies mediated sites of critique and resistance to conventional pedagogy.
Roger Saul opens the first section with an examination of the hero-teacher myth, showing how a particular storyline in Season 4 of The Wire exposes the contradictions inherent in this myth. He argues that the story prompts a discussion about the ways in which abstract school values are translated into specific forms of action and, perhaps most troublingly, how the ethical person may, of necessity, differ from the ethical teacher. Despite the storyâs realistic pessimism about the structural determinants of educational success and achievement, Saul finds a space of depth and humanity where the teacher, Mr. Pryzbylewski, and the student, Duquan Weems, encounter each other. Ultimately he argues that this representation of a pedagogic relationship has value for actual teachers, as it opens the imaginative space to incorporate a consciousness of irresolvable tensions. This is followed by Penny Spirouâs chapter in which she combines star studies with pedagogic analysis in her discussion of the persona of Robin Williams. She argues that despite the different stories and genres, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting and Patch Adams are all underpinned by Jack Mezirowâs notion of transformative learning. She reveals the particular mobilizations of this theory and argues further that the potency of Williamsâ star persona invests the processes of transformation with even greater force. She concludes that even when âplaying it straightâ there is a transformative power that emanates from Robin Williams as a âpedagogic clown.â Merideth Garcia and J. W. Hammond take us inside the world of Veronica Mars, arguing that âthe mysteries of education structure both the form and the content of the show.â Navigating deftly between the movements of the show, and the ways in which pedagogic principles underpin access to knowledge, the authors explain how Veronica Mars represents a complicated and wary orientation to education; it repudiates simplistic notions of the âteacher-savior,â reveals knowledge to be always imbricated with power, and finds ethical practice in unlikely and often unrewarded places. In this sense the show, perhaps surprisingly, offers some profound truths about education. Novella Brooks de Vita uses the world of Harry Potter to illustrate a taxonomy of pedagogic principles, suggesting that the films present an âextended metaphorical pedagogic modelâ via Hogwarts. Behind the traditional façade and the echoes of the English boarding school there are inevitably instances of âdiscipline-focused essentialism,â but the author finds some surprising examples of student-centered Modernist practices and, indeed, a range of teaching and learning relationships in between. She argues that in this most fantastic of settings there are some instructive examples of pedagogic activity that have resonance in the real world. Susan Ellsmore ends this section with a comparative analysis of the Educating TV series and The History Boys, revealing how both are engaged in myth-making and how they reflect the political realities of their times. Ultimately, she argues, they each have great potential to problematize the notion of âeffective education.â
The second section, with its focus on informal and alternative pedagogies, opens with Kirsty Sedgmanâs chapter on the dance-drama Bunheads. She uses this program to converge three related ideas: firstly what âlearning danceâ might mean on screen; secondly how Bunheads self-consciously mobilizes intertextual references to other stories about pedagogy in order to generate a critical sensibility; and thirdly, how the audience responded to the ways in which dance pedagogy is modeled in the show. This is followed by Ahmet Atay, who identifies the radical potential of mentoring, in particular the ways in which feminist and queer pedagogies may be identified in the practices of two educators, in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Billy Elliot respectively. The mobilization of these radical perspectives illuminates the practices of the mentors in these films and enables us better to understand the commonalities between two ostensibly very different personalities and contexts. In both cases it becomes clear that mentoring may be understood as a set of critical practices which are oriented towards lived experience and transformation, but in the case of Jean Brodie it is also clear that with the injunction to take greater risks comes a greater duty of care. Marcus Harmes, in a chapter about Doctor Who, draws parallels between formal pedagogy and the ways in which this is challenged, tested, and undermined. He shows how the series has always had a pedagogic basis, and suggests that its compulsion to return to Coal Hill School reveals a complicated and conflicted relationship with knowledge and learning. Ava Parsemain also discusses the public service agenda in relation to the Australian version of the genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?, arguing that it both represents a particular kind of pedagogy (that of âdetectionâ) and enacts another kind of pedagogyâan embodied and emotive experience. She suggests that this informal pedagogic experience may actually represent the public service ideal of âinform, educate and entertain.â The section closes with Katrina Lawrenceâs discussion of mentoring relationships and how these are played out in teen horror serials such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Teen Wolf. She outlines the differences between functionalist, humanistic and peer-group mentoring or co-mentoring, and shows how experiential learning emerges as a key pedagogy in these serials. The implications (as with many of these chapters) are that these skills and relationships are illustrated and dramatized so effectively that they can form the basis for pedagogy educationâthe pedagogic relationships on screen can be, in themselves, pedagogic for the audience.
My own chapter opens the third section, about critical and alternative perspectives on pedagogy. I suggest that the 2006 film Accepted functions like a thought experiment in radical pedagogy, creating the conditions for it to flourish, testing the limits of freedom, exploring pedagogic innovation and, ultimately, submitting to the inevitable constraints of regulation. Following this, Laurence Raw takes us inside Turkish cinema in order to show how fictional and factual narratives have responded to a nationalistic political imperative for education to âmodernize.â As he explains, âmodernizationâ in the Turkish context translates into a set of restrictive, didactic practices which, in the films he surveys, are always in tension with humanistic, regionally, and locally sensitive practices. Politics and education are, of course, always entwined, but in Turkey, between East and West, this is even more so. Raw concludes with a suggestion that some recent films offer a coherent critique of Turkish education and, perhaps, point towards a new concept of modernization which incorporates multiculturalism, but he acknowledges that the past exerts a heavy weight on the present. This is followed by Joel Windleâs chapter, in which he takes a Bourdieusian approach to Brazilian screen culture and indicts the ways in which illiteracy is used as a proxy for class and racial prejudice. He argues that the mobilization of comedic representations of âilliterate north easternersâ constitutes symbolic violence against a constituency that already suffers disproportionate actual violence and impoverishment. Windle suggests that the displacement of this hostility onto a lack of education, perpetuates a meritocratic hegemony which masks the real conditions of oppression. He finds a potent challenge to this ideological process in the regional TV series, Lessons from Dona Irene, in which the artfully constructed illiteracy of Donaâs character subverts and humanizes the stereotypes promulgated by the national media. Julian McDougall identifies comparable hegemonic work in the âsecondary encodingâ of the TV show Gogglebox and its mediation of another show, Educating Yorkshire. Adopting a ĆœiĆŸekian approach, he argues that through this secondary encoding in which the emotional work of the audience is modeled for us, the actual, everyday conditions of oppression in education are neatly effaced, and adopts a creative approach to imagine a dialogue which undoes this erasure. Richard Berger and Ashley Woodfall end the collection with something of a call to arms. Their analysis of The Secret Life of Six Year Olds reveals how it constructs a simulacrum of education, presenting a curated version of childrenâs learning and interactions through a fixed rig format, familiar to us from other reality TV shows. They note the irony of such a show, complete with expert commentary and critical responses, for failing to identify (yet including) particular kinds of mediated learning. The children featured in this program exhibit considerable awareness of a transmedia landscape and are able to quote from, apply and combine a range of elements from different media sourcesâan adroitness that was not the focus of this particular âanthropological project,â and one which was barely commented upon. The authors conclude that the program gives us an unintended insight into childrenâs productive practices that could and should form part of early-years educationâa project they call (after Bolter and Grusin) âremediated pedag...