Doing Theory on Education ― Using Popular Culture to Explore Key Debates

Doing Theory on Education explores key debates using examples from contemporary media and popular culture to guide education studies students through the perennial debates that surround teaching and learning. Aimed at undergraduates, postgraduates and teachers in education settings, it uses over seventy popular culture texts from television, music, videogames, fiction, film, architecture, social media, the press and art to illuminate important issues and make the critical theory that underpins educational debates more accessible and engaging.

Each chapter also offers essential background knowledge and historical perspective and includes reflective activities to help you develop a critical approach, enabling you to argue your own point of view with confidence and consider where issues may progress to in the future. It examines core issues such as:

• Class and educational choice
• Learning styles
• Testing and assessment
• What counts as knowledge
• Leadership and professionalism

Education students and those in education settings often struggle to see the value of theory. Doing Theory on Education: Using Popular Culture to Explore Key Debates is an accessible text designed for educationalists who want to put theory to work as an active strategy for influencing thinking and practice.

Dr Andy Cramp is an honorary research fellow at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He has worked in a range of education settings across sectors, starting his teaching career as a lecturer at Loughborough University. After training as a secondary school teacher he taught English in a public secondary school in Tanzania and later in London colleges in Brixton, Hackney and Harrow. After 15 years in further education he moved back into the university sector.

Julian McDougall is Professor of Media and Education and Head of the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice at Bournemouth University, UK. He is editor of Media Practice and Education, runs a doctoral programme in Creative and Media Education and convenes the annual International Media Education Summit. He is author of a wide range of books, articles, research reports and chapters in the fields of education, media, literacy and cultural studies.