Abstract:
This paper is drawing on one local case study of four female students experiences from the social network go Supermodel. In this contribution the girls’ ways with this network during two and a half year in grade 3-5, will be analysed in relation to diversity with an emphasis on gender. Just like the children in Heath’s (1983) now classic study, the students in this case study are becoming talkers, readers and writers when they are using and making meaning from ‘stuff’ that, like goSupermodel and other recourses, are available in their everyday life. The aim with this paper is to elaborate on how critical literacies might be realised in contemporary literacy education, drawing on student’s popular cultural experiences in general and the social network goSupermodel specifically. When studying and analysing the girls’ ways with this social network, my ambition was, apart from understanding their experiences and thoughts regarding this, also to seek for patterns of critical stances and approaches among themselves. Popular cultural texts are, as all texts, ideological in the sense that they set standards, withhold or create ideas and norms in societies (Street, 1993). When comparing for example how popular cultural texts are categorized and directed towards ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, a clear gender divide emerges at the same time as norms and ideas about how to behave and be as a child belonging to one of these categories, which is shown in earlier research (see for example Marsh & Millard, 2000). At the very core of this paper is how critical literacies (CL) might be realised in contemporary literacy education drawing on student’s popular cultural experiences. To remediate and represent existing texts can be seen as the goal, of CL, which encompasses the idea of agency and productive power. Janks (2010) highlights the importance of that students have to be taught how to use and select from all the semiotic resources they encounter with the goal of equity and social justice. Is that possible, one might ask, considering the case of goSupermodel? This question will be further developed and elaborated on in this paper. Heath, Brice Shirley (1983): Ways with words. Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Janks, Hilary (2010). Literacy and Power. New York, London: Routledge. Marsh, Jackie & Millard, Elaine (2000). Literacy and Popular Culture. Using children’s culture in the classroom. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Street, Brian (1993). Cross-cultural Approaches to Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.