Curricular Constructions in/of My Weird School, 1-21
Biographical Sketch
Rebecca A. Goldstein, PhD, is Associate Professor of Secondary and Special Education in the College of Education and Human Services at Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, where she teaches courses on assessment, equity and diversity, the foundations of education in the United States, curriculum development and pedagogy, and the sociology of knowledge. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Dr. Goldstein also mentors student teachers and conducts research with her students in order to make more explicit the connections between theory and practice in the classroom.
Her scholarly interests include student and teacher identity development, the impact of neoliberal school reforms on schooling, and news media narratives and how they construct public understanding of issues related to education. Her work has published in journals like Educational Policy, Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, Critical Education, and the Journal of Peace Education, as well as contributed chapters to a number of books. In addition to co-editing Through a Distorted Lens, she is also the editor of Useful Theory: Making Critical Education Practice (2007, Peter Lang), and a co-editor for the forthcoming Dear Secretary DeVos: What We Want You To Know About Education (Sense/Brill).
Laura Nicosia, PhD, is Associate Professor of English at Montclair State University where she teaches all things American literature, Young Adult/Children’s Literatures, and literary theory. She serves as a Public Scholar for the NJ Council of the Humanities, is the NJ State Representative to the Assembly on Literature of Adolescents (ALAN), and is a Past-President of the NJ Council of Teachers of English (NJCTE). Nicosia is the author of Educators Online: Preparing Today’s Educators for Tomorrow’s Digital Literacies (Peter Lang, 2013), co-editor of Through a Distorted Lens: Media as Curricula and Pedagogy in the 21st Century (Sense 2017), and co-editor of the soon-to-be-released collection titled Dear Secretary DeVos: What We Want You to Know About Education. She also writes on Amy Sarig King, Gloria Naylor, Sarah Orne Jewett, Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, Louis Sachar, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Marianne Moore. Currently, Nicosia is working on three book-length projects—one on Gloria Naylor, another on the The Posthuman Chimera and Monstrous Other in Young Adult Literature, and the third on images of the city in contemporary popular fiction.
Type of Presentation
Individual presentation
Brief Description of Presentation
This presentation reports out on a critical media analysis of the popular children’s series, My Weird School (MWS, 1-21). Theoretically, we embrace Pinar’s positions regarding curriculum. Thus, a study of MWS helps us to better understand how students engage with a key institution in American society: public education. Preliminary results yield a troubling curriculum about schools, one that nurtures students’ love of reading and positive attitudes towards school, while simultaneously reflecting a discourse of derision regarding the adults.
Abstract of Proposal
This presentation reports out on a critical media analysis of the popular children’s series, My Weird School (MWS, 1-21). Theoretically, we embrace Pinar’s position that curriculum functions as and helps to write (auto)biography, in that the total of one’s experiences and the contexts in which they are lived, constitute the course of study. Not only do young people encounter messages about who they are and they around them from family, school, and communities, they also “learn” about the various groups and institutions that are part their lives as a part of the media they consume. Thus, a study of MWS media phenomenon helps us to better understand how students engage with a key institution in American society: public education.
Data include texts 1-21 of the MWS series, promotional materials from series publisher Harper-Collins, Gutman’s website, market tie-ins (e.g., card and board games), reviews about the series, and Op/Eds from journals and professional publications, and were analyzed using critical discourse and media analysis.
Preliminary results yield a troubling curriculum about schools, one that nurtures students’ love of reading and positive attitudes towards school, while simultaneously reflecting a discourse of derision regarding the adults. On the surface the teachers’ “quirkiness” at Ella Mentry School seems to engage the school-hating AJ, yet deeper analysis points to ambivalence about the roles of schools and teachers in young people’s lives. This space of ambivalence is where the hard curriculum work of contextualization must occur. We conclude with remarks about how those who work with young people who might read texts like MWS.
Related References:
Altheide, D. L., & Schneider, C. J. (2013). Qualitative media analysis (Vol. 38). Sage.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Routledge.
Pinar, William, Reynolds, William, Slattery, Patrick, Taubman, Peter (editors). Understanding Curriculum. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. 1995.
Pinar, W. F. (1994). Autobiography and an Architecture of Self (1985). Counterpoints, 2, 201-222.
Pinar, W. (2014). Curriculum: Toward new identities. Routledge.
Rogers, R. (2004). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. In An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (pp. 31-48). Routledge.
Location
Session 1D (Habersham, Hilton Garden Inn)
Start Date
2-22-2019 10:30 AM
End Date
2-22-2019 12:00 PM
Recommended Citation
Goldstein, Rebecca A. and Nicosia, Laura, "Curricular Constructions in/of My Weird School, 1-21" (2019). International Critical Media Literacy Conference. 8.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/criticalmedialiteracy/2019/2019/8
Curricular Constructions in/of My Weird School, 1-21
Session 1D (Habersham, Hilton Garden Inn)
This presentation reports out on a critical media analysis of the popular children’s series, My Weird School (MWS, 1-21). Theoretically, we embrace Pinar’s position that curriculum functions as and helps to write (auto)biography, in that the total of one’s experiences and the contexts in which they are lived, constitute the course of study. Not only do young people encounter messages about who they are and they around them from family, school, and communities, they also “learn” about the various groups and institutions that are part their lives as a part of the media they consume. Thus, a study of MWS media phenomenon helps us to better understand how students engage with a key institution in American society: public education.
Data include texts 1-21 of the MWS series, promotional materials from series publisher Harper-Collins, Gutman’s website, market tie-ins (e.g., card and board games), reviews about the series, and Op/Eds from journals and professional publications, and were analyzed using critical discourse and media analysis.
Preliminary results yield a troubling curriculum about schools, one that nurtures students’ love of reading and positive attitudes towards school, while simultaneously reflecting a discourse of derision regarding the adults. On the surface the teachers’ “quirkiness” at Ella Mentry School seems to engage the school-hating AJ, yet deeper analysis points to ambivalence about the roles of schools and teachers in young people’s lives. This space of ambivalence is where the hard curriculum work of contextualization must occur. We conclude with remarks about how those who work with young people who might read texts like MWS.
Related References:
Altheide, D. L., & Schneider, C. J. (2013). Qualitative media analysis (Vol. 38). Sage.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Routledge.
Pinar, William, Reynolds, William, Slattery, Patrick, Taubman, Peter (editors). Understanding Curriculum. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. 1995.
Pinar, W. F. (1994). Autobiography and an Architecture of Self (1985). Counterpoints, 2, 201-222.
Pinar, W. (2014). Curriculum: Toward new identities. Routledge.
Rogers, R. (2004). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. In An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (pp. 31-48). Routledge.
