9


Learning through sharing
Enhancing critical engagement with
popular culture content using social
media in a second language context
Anne Peirson-​Smith and Lindsay Miller

Abstract
This chapter reports on the findings of a novel action research project regarding
an undergraduate general education course about popular culture at a univer-
sity in Hong Kong where English is not the students’ first language. The course
is delivered in an interactive, student-centered lecture/tutorial fashion with an
online discussion component on a dedicated class Facebook group. By qualita-
tively analyzing Facebook comments, we are able to demonstrate that students
benefited from the use of an out-of-class social media site to share their ideas,
opinions, and feelings about the Popular Culture course content. Students are
motivated to use their second language when engaging in relatable popular cul-
ture topics and interacting in online and offline contexts. This enhances their
cognitive and communicative abilities, and further develops critical awareness by
blending academic concepts with everyday life experiences of popular culture
using a popular social media site.

1. Introduction
The context for this chapter is an ongoing action research project on an under-
graduate general education course about popular culture1 at a university in Hong
Kong. The research undertaken by the course instructors was intended to benefit
pedagogy for this course by regularly updating the course content and for wider
dissemination for those considering the use of social media as a viable teaching
and learning site. In this Popular Culture course, students practice their English
as a Second Language (ESL) competences in both formal and informal contexts
within the content framework of the course and via social media as a site of
pedagogic engagement. The pedagogical arrangement operates in the interests
of enhancing student self-​efficacy (Junco, 2011), constituting a first attempt to
investigate this relatively under-​researched field of study in this particular cultural
context.
This chapter illustrates how the course content allows students to become
engaged on Facebook to further understand common popular culture topics. In
a clear combination of structure and agency regarding situated course content,
152 Anne Peirson-Smith and Lindsay Miller
language proficiency can be enhanced in an immersive way by merging it with
stimulating subject content involving “real world tasks and social exchanges”
(Pally, 2001, p. 280) to heighten both language proficiency and advanced cogni-
tive skills (Cummins, 1981) beyond the delivery of a traditional language-​driven
course (Snow, Met, & Genesee, 1989). Taking this sustained content-​ based
approach (Pally, 1997), students are encouraged to blend the use of their second
language within the popular culture curriculum. The arrangement of the course
incorporates horizontal (subjective experiences) with vertical learning (academic
theories and knowledge) in the process of creating a richer educational envir-
onment (Bernstein, 1999) that can enhance linguistic and critical literacies,
while elevating essential social skills through discursive interaction with peers via
situated texts and media (Wallace, 1992).
Critically, we frame our pedagogical approach within the concepts of
co-​operative learning by stimulating discussion of course content on social
media to promote learner autonomy as an effective educational approach. The
main idea behind co-​operative learning in language education is to encourage
students to engage more closely with their learning and to highlight the rele-
vance and practical nature of classroom activities. As learners are social beings
whose cognitive development is enhanced through social interaction with each
other (see Vygotsky, 1978), the co-​operative nature of using social media (that is,
Facebook) as a learning tool has significant pedagogic potential. When viewed in
this way, a co-​operative approach to course design and implementation enriches
students’ learning experiences to create authentic texts for authentic audiences
and purposes (Stoller, 2002, p. 25). The need to apply inclusive pedagogies and
co-​operative working practices is critical as higher education institutions globally
strive to prepare students for their future workplace experiences, which are inev-
itably team-​based, co-​operative, and digitized.
There is often limited time in higher education classes wherein students
can engage collaboratively and take more control of their learning. Therefore,
teachers have to consider choosing supplementary, guided, out-​of-​class tasks,
which attract learners and provide opportunities for them to use their second
language. By investing time in out-​ of-​
class tasks via Facebook interactions,
students see themselves as a community of learners and through the affordances
of digital media become part of a global community of English language users
(Radclyffe-​Thomas, Peirson-​Smith, Roncha, & Huang, 2016). Herein, the stu-
dent experiences a discursive shift from traditional one-​way teaching approaches
to more interactive critical engagement in a wider interpretative community
(Peirson-​Smith, Miller, & Chik, 2015). When the classroom dialogue is transac-
tional, students make decisions about their learning and enact creative discursivity
(Collins, 1993). Close interaction between faculty and students thereby improves
students’ critical thinking, knowledge acquisition, analytic competences, and
intellectual development because peer-​to-​peer collaboration becomes a predictor
of student attainment (Junco, 2012).
Coyle’s (2007) four-​part model of Content Language Integrated Learning
(CLIL) is useful to apply and test when examining the effectiveness of learning
 Learning through sharing 153
in a second language context. In this framework, content represents subject
knowledge progression and skills linked to aspects of a defined curriculum; com-
munication is learning to use language and using language to learn; cognition
is acquiring cognitive skills linking concept creation, comprehension and lan-
guage skills; and culture is accessing other’s viewpoints in order to establish
greater understanding of self and others. During our data analysis, we also
identified and added control as a fifth dimension to this model. Control occurs
when students take full responsibility for their learning and communication in a
co-​operative manner by avoiding reliance on their instructors for total guidance.
Usefully, Coyle’s CLIL approach is based on the premise that “Effective content
learning has to take account not only of the defined knowledge and skills within
the curriculum or thematic plan, but also how to apply these through creative
thinking, problem solving, and cognitive challenge” (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh,
2010, p. 29).
There is also a growing body of research into how using social media
applications can have positive effects not only on students’ learning objectives,
but also on their social connectedness, positive relations with faculty and in a
reduction of stress levels (see Thai, Sheeran, & Cummings, 2019). Given the fact
that contemporary students are digital natives spending significant amounts of
time communicating online (Prensky, 2001), they are perhaps more likely to want
to use it not only in their social lives, but also may consent to the use of Facebook
in education (Manca & Ranieri, 2016). Social media platforms therefore have the
accessible potential to aid teaching. When well-​planned and monitored, digital
spaces are usually accepted by students as an additional knowledge resource and a
means of social engagement to enhance their learning experience.
The research project aimed to establish a class Facebook account for students
taking a general education (non-​discipline specific) course in pop culture, and
subsequently intended to use the results for future course improvements and aca-
demic research. Weekly prompt questions were directly related to course content,
and students’ activities and interactions were monitored on the dedicated class
Facebook site in order to explore and answer the following research questions:

(1) How effectively does communicating via Facebook about the topic of popular
culture enhance students’ content knowledge, communication abilities, cog-
nitive skills, and cultural awareness?
(2) Do students perceive any benefits or problems when interacting on Facebook
with peers and instructors in a second language-​learning context?

2. Methodology
The Popular Culture course is open to all students in the university with a var-
iety of ESL proficiency levels (from high elementary to high intermediate, with
an average of 6.5 on IELTS). The native English-​speaking tutors designed the
course, comprising lectures, class discussions, and individual/​group assignments.
The conceptual structure and related definitions and understanding of the course
154 Anne Peirson-Smith and Lindsay Miller
content are based on Storey’s six-​part framework in the core required reading
on the topic (Storey, 2018). This definitional outline frames pop culture as: “1)
quantitatively superior, 2) qualitatively inferior, 3) mass culture, 4) a product of
‘the people,’ 5) a battlefield for hegemony, or 6) a chimera to be deconstructed
by postmodernism” (Parker, 2011, p. 169). The definition of pop culture guiding
this course is deliberately broad-ranging and inclusive, given that the topic has
often been viewed exclusively from the limited perspective of the Global North
or situated purely in a twentieth century context.
A note on terminology is in order here: The terms popular culture and pop
culture are often used interchangeably both in the scholarly literature and general
parlance referring to objects, practices, behaviors, and beliefs that are customary
and widespread in a given time, place, and space. However, some scholars use
these two terms to more clearly differentiate between popular culture represented
more broadly by dominant forms that constitute a general way of life and lifestyle
and pop culture constituting a narrower, sub-​sectoral understanding of more
commercial outputs. As Chua Beng Huat (2012, p. 9) elaborates:

Conventionally, mass entertainment –​television, film, and pop music –​is

referred to as “popular culture”. However, following Stuart Hall’s (1994)
proposition, the term “popular culture” should be reserved for the larger
cultural sphere that encompasses the everyday life of the masses in contra-
diction to and contestation with elite culture, while “pop culture” should
be used to refer to commercially-​produced, profit-​driven, media-​based mass
entertainment; so conceived, pop culture is but one segment of popular cul-
ture. American pop music, movies, and television programs loom large glo-
bally, penetrating all places where the local income level is high enough to
enable the purchase of such products.

The course being examined here follows the former approach by using the term
“popular culture” in a wider manner to encompass the dynamic popular practices
of everyday life such as sport, fashion, food, travel, and social usages of tech-
nology, for example. Within this larger framework of popular culture forms and
habits in social life, students on the course also typically examine, both in class
discussions and assignments, the commercial forms of pop culture such as films,
TV shows, or music as a way of exemplifying the commercial aspects of the pop
culture industries according to the varied genres of popular output. This positions
popular culture as residing at the confluence between collective action and com-
mercialism and suggests in Gramscian terms (Gramsci, 1982) that it is a fluid
and hegemonic site of contestation and negotiation between the two and a point
of exploration of identity relations. Taking this broader approach, the popular
culture class focusses on the production and consumption of “a set of generally
available artefacts: films, records, clothes, TV programmes, modes of transport”
(Strinati, 2004, p. xv), involving a wide range of genres across various locations
and timelines placing emphasis on the idea that popular outputs and artefacts are
constantly evolving and have existed across history and cultures, being driven by
 Learning through sharing 155
similar human motivations for entertainment, information, connection, commu-
nication, and cultural sense-​making.
Typically, a class will have around 80 students studying science, engineering,
law, business, humanities, and social sciences. The course is designed themat-
ically around various popular culture genres and in each semester a range of
topics is covered from advertising, film, entertainment, technology, and travel,
for example. Usually, course content begins with a two-​week introduction to
key popular culture theories originating in communication, literary, and cultural
studies disciplines, such as mass culture and society, the Frankfurt school’s cul-
ture industries, consumerism, postmodernism, hegemony, and liberal market
evolution. This content-​based approach is based on examining different aspects
and genres of popular culture and the role that they play in the communicative
interactions of everyday existence and, notably, among those members of society
with reduced social, economic, or political agency (O’Brien & Szeman, 2004).
Each week a mini-​lecture with embedded class discussion exercises explores
main popular culture themes and selected genres, followed by in-​class discussions
aligned with lecture content. The course is delivered in an interactive, student-​
centered lecture/​ tutorial fashion (Bonk & Cunningham, 1998). Hence, the
instructor presents content information (vertical knowledge output) before
students work in discussion groups on structured questions, giving regular class
feedback using grounded examples from everyday life to illustrate their points
(horizontal knowledge input) (Bernstein, 1999). Key vocabulary terms are
defined in English as a way of enhancing students’ specialist linguistic know-
ledge; for instance, in one lesson students learn the vocabulary of sports such as
paragliding, skateboarding, and dodgeball, before group discussions on the level
and type of popularity regarding selected sports of their choice.
The course is assessed in the following way:
Reflective essay (20%): Students write a 1,000-​word individual reflective essay
at the end of semester about any part of the course content or their learning in
terms of the positive or negative outcomes encountered. The essays are graded
according to prescribed criteria, which are available to students via the online
management site.
Facebook posts (10%): Throughout the course, students are required to write
entries each week in a dedicated group. Typically, the tutor posts an initial
question and students are invited to respond with a post offering their own view-
point using a grounded example to substantiate their arguments. Generally, all
students engage with this activity and by the end of the semester they will have
posted up to ten messages each (totaling around 800 posts). Students are sub-
sequently required to select three of their messages, which represent their work
and two commentaries on another student’s post for summative assessment
purposes. The following are examples of the types of topics students discussed
in the themes of the pop culture course: K-​pop, bubble tea, memes, Marvel
movies, manga, Pokémon, social media, Korean variety shows, Western pop
music, streaming, fashion trends, Chinese movies, Canto pop, TV programs,
and skincare vloggers.
156 Anne Peirson-Smith and Lindsay Miller
In-​depth, individual assignment (25%): Students are tasked with writing a
2,000-​word essay in which they analyze a lifestyle brand, using the concepts and
theories covered throughout the course in addressing why the brand is popular
and how it illustrates the workings of popular culture industries driven by capit-
alism, consumerism, hegemony, and inherent power relations.
Group project (40%): Students self-​assign themselves into small groups to work
on a popular culture project of their choice, following consultation with their
instructor. At the end of semester, each group presents their project orally to the
class in 20 minutes and submits a summary report analyzing the chosen popular
culture topic.
Participation (5%): As the popular culture course is interactive, all students
are encouraged to attend each lesson, and attendance is taken weekly. Students
sit in groups during each lesson, while the tutor circulates and monitors students’
participation in group discussions to allocate a mark.

3. Methodological approach
The data presented next comes from students’ Facebook posts. The data collection
and analysis went through three phases as presented here.

3.1 Social media interactions (Phase 1)

A qualitative methodological approach (Miles & Huberman, 1994) was taken
in this study using content analysis to generate data and identify the impact of
cognitive and social online interaction on the teaching and learning outcomes of
this popular culture course. Under the guidance of the tutors, a research assistant
(RA) monitored, retrieved, and helped sort students’ posts. As learning goals are
of great importance in online learning projects (Uzuner-​Smith, 2014), it is essen-
tial that students were aware of the ongoing management of the Facebook group
as this mimicked real-​life usage of social media, where asynchronous written com-
munication typically occurs.

3.2 Analysis of Facebook comments (Phase 2)

As the project developed, the RA transferred student commentaries to word
files and prepared them for evaluation using the qualitative data analysis soft-
ware application Dedoose (www.dedoose.com​). Students’ online submissions were
categorized using Coyle’s (2007) Four C’s framework for the holistic integration
of language and content-​based teaching comprising: content, communication,
cognition, and culture (see Section 1). During the data analysis we also enhanced
Coyle’s conceptual framework by adding the fifth dimension of “control” as an
analytical category to account for the student-​centered, co-​operative learning
approach being encouraged throughout this course in class, through assignments
and via the social media site interactions.
 Learning through sharing 157

3.3 Evaluation of the learning experience (Phase 3)

After the data had been coded, course outcomes were evaluated by identifying
student responses in the asynchronous text-​ based Facebook discussions. The
investigators (two tutors and one RA) achieved this analysis by reading students’
comments multiple times and evaluating students’ responses in the Facebook
group in terms of their engagement (length of entry; quality of content; language
proficiency). Additionally, the research team analyzed the nature, type, and level
of student commentary on popular culture topics by identifying key themes in
terms of content, communication, cognition, culture, and control.

4. Findings
The representative samples presented below from Facebook data serve to illustrate
the effectiveness of delivering a course on popular culture with the support of
social media. In the following sections all respondent names are anonymized in
line with required ethical research guidelines. This data set allowed us to monitor
students’ understanding of popular culture and to test out the viability of the
CLIL model (Coyle, 2007). In this case, the analytical focus is on how language
is used to communicate and learn by using popular culture as subject matter to
direct the language employed by students in a staged way and to develop their
conceptual and subjective analyses using English.

4.1 Content
One of the aspects of the course most commented on was that students enjoyed
the topics covered in class, finding them to be familiar, accessible, and represen-
tative of their everyday experiences, and that they were enlightened by exam-
ining them more critically. A topic such as the socio-​cultural effects of advertising
resulted in significant in-​depth commentary from student respondents, and their
comments often impressed the tutor in terms of length of post (average 140
words per post), insightfulness, and accurate use of language. In the following
shortened example, we see how the student gave thought to the issue of how
advertising promoted sexism by using sophisticated language to get the persua-
sive argument across:

BENNIE WAI: Advertisements also promote sexism. Sexism is a prejudice towards

gender roles. Stereotypes of gender are built up through advertisements […]
we usually see beautiful female models on advertisements with a similar body
figure like slender. How these advertisements portray women is giving an idea
to the female public of how they “should” look like or the definition of beauty.

Bennie’s post, which was 191 words long, highlights critical contemporary
feminist views around the topic of advertising using points developed in a
158 Anne Peirson-Smith and Lindsay Miller
sophisticated manner, with the use of low-​frequency lexis such as promote, stereo-
types, and sexism. Bennie’s comment resulted in several follow-​up responses by
other students wanting to support and further develop ideas of stereotyped
gender roles, female commodification, and patriarchal ideals of female beauty in
advertising.
Many weekly Facebook posts related directly to students’ personal lives out-​of-​
class. Hence, relating the learned weekly content to students’ lived experiences
was a common approach used in the Facebook posts:

VICTOR MUE: As I mentioned in the class that I am a badminton lover, bad-

minton is no doubt a part of my life. I will play badminton at least once
week, probably two to three times in holiday and each time I play won’t be
less than 2 hours.

The course content was seen to be engaging in terms of the importance of the
topics chosen based on interest or personal experience, and we rarely had to
encourage students to engage with particular topics. Students appeared to make
the connections between popular culture theories in noting what a universal part
of their life many aspects of popular culture represented, such as sports, fashion,
or music. This reflection on the ubiquity of the forms and reach of popular cul-
ture encompassing prevalent everyday experiences (Hall, 1994) alongside the
commercial products of pop culture such as K-​pop, anime, or fast food, aligned
with the dual distinction made in the approach and content of the course. In this
sense, the course content and approach achieved the objective of getting students
to question their relationship with and acceptance of popular culture industries
and texts as a natural extension of their lives in a more critical way regarding
hidden content of promotional narratives stimulating needless food or fashion
consumption, for example.

4.2 Communication
Our students were well aware of the importance of using English and the need
to master this as their second language. They not only wanted proficiency in
the language, but were also aware of the political implications of attaining lin-
guistic mastery, which appeared to invest them with significant communicative
confidence:

FIONA YU: Personally, I believe that the language in which the western cultural
products are expressed in can explain the phenomena of Western cultural
imperialism. English is the most widely used language, which connects people
of different origins together; as a lingua franca –​it plays a significant part in
Americanization and Westernization as most people can understand it.

There were many comments about the critical pedagogical approach used
by the tutors and the fact that students were required to actively participate in
 Learning through sharing 159
class discussions and write their posts in English after class. This was viewed posi-
tively as students often commented that they enjoyed the interactive nature of
the lessons, enabling improvement in second language skills through immersive,
content-​based, informal usage in a dialogic way:

BETTY CHANG: Moreover, the tutor always encourages us to speak more and
exchange the opinion with different people through group discussion.
One’s thought is always not comprehensive enough, that’s why we need the
opinion from others as to make the answer better and more comprehensive.
Having group discussion enable us to learn more from others. This course
was really meaningful to me.

Another language benefit the tutors noticed was that due to the asynchronous
nature of Facebook, students had time to consider their comments and search for
the “right word” to fit their thoughts and arguments. Indeed, as second language
users, the application of vocabulary was often quite advanced and often seemed
atypical for normal language usage in asynchronous chats, for instance:

TESSA MU: In fact, provocative images abound in advertising, perpetuating

sexual exploitation and objectification of women.

In this way, students appeared to be using academic English in their informal

social media discourse as a shift away from normative social media exchanges.
This discursive hybridity was a common feature of the discussion posts, indicating
that students were either creatively exploring their voice or were unsure of their
identities in such discussions. Consequently, they reverted to more formal lan-
guage in terms of academic vocabulary and complete sentence structures to frame
their interactions, despite the informality of the social medium in which they were
communicating.

4.3 Cognition
As mentioned above, students taking the popular culture course came from all
disciplines across the university. This led to an expansion of different views on
a topic and sometimes enabled students to see things from another perspec-
tive as a cognitive challenge. Due to the mixed interdisciplinary nature of these
groups, students were encouraged to express their observations and emotions
from the content perspective of their major. They often found that the course
and observations of their peers on the assigned popular culture topics challenged
pre-​conceived ideological notions about lifestyles practices:

LI WING YUM: I am a Sociology student, I get used to apply classical theory to

analysis social issues […] I realized that everyone has different views towards
a topic, we need to listen, respect for their opinions. It is a good learning
choice to interact and discuss with other classmates on the popular culture.
160 Anne Peirson-Smith and Lindsay Miller
This observation of listening to other’s views in-​class and recalibrating their own
position in a more creative way also extended into Facebook commentary:

HO KA NG: Pop Culture is a funny and useful subject for me […] Facebook offers
a great platform for us to discuss and learn from each other.

Students also noticed from their posts that they could, indeed, talk about
a topic even if they had little direct experience of the issue, and that all
comments were of value when analyzing texts that are more “open” to sub-
jective interpretation:

CATHY HOI: I love sport as it definitely fills my life with lessons and mirthfulness.
It of course strengthens my physical health but more essentially, foster my
psychological development.
JANET CHAI: I agree with Cathy Hoi differing from her experience, actually,
I am a bystander next to the athletes. Being one of the members for cheering
up them, our minds are being united and tightly connected. It makes me
first realize that sports can indeed link people […] I wonder this is what the
essence of popular culture is.

Here, the “space” provided for creative thinking and discussion, both during inter-
active class exercises and on the Facebook platform, engendered creative explor-
ation of ideas and views, in addition to stimulating creative discursive content.

4.4 Culture
The popular culture course is, obviously, all about culture as a way of life and a
way of being in both individualistic and collective ways. Significantly, students
develop an awareness of the different ways of defining and understanding this
contested and contentious term “culture” and are able to identify which cultural
groups they belonged to and the rationale for the differences and similarities
therein:

LINDA SAMMI: I agree with Janet Chai, because what the best popular culture is
to someone, might not even be categorized as popular culture to someone
else. What people appreciate is different, and if everyone appreciated the
same thing, than there would be no popular culture at all.

Sometimes, a student would post a controversial or stimulating comment about

culture, resulting in follow-​up posts. Trevor, for example, posted a particularly
perceptive comment (254 words) about the value judgments used to assess cul-
tural products such as music preferences in a positive or negative way. This post
sparked off an animated string of posts defending all personal choices of cultural
consumption against the prejudicial opinions of others:
 Learning through sharing 161
TREVOR CHOW: While no one has the authority to say which culture is better
than the other, it is common for people to have judgments and stereotypes
just from one’s cultural group. Say you meet a stranger for the first time,
and the stranger tells you he loves Justin Bieber. What would you think
of him? You would most likely think of him differently if he said he likes
Iron Maiden […] and with judgments, we often attach values and meanings,
which ultimately results in something “better” than another. My point is
even though most of us say there is no “better” culture (including myself),
we unconsciously make judgments on a person based on his cultural group.
Logic says that no culture is “better”, but human behaviour seems to suggest
otherwise.
CALEB YING: I totally agree with Trevor […] But it is so hard for us to eliminate
prejudice because I do think that prejudice is a part of culture in which has
rooted deeply in everyday life practice […] critical thinking does not mean
being judgmental, it means that we have to think more deeper to find out
the logic or reasons behind. It may help a little bit in overcoming prejudice.

4.5 Control
A fifth dimension that we added to Coyle’s (2007) framework is that of con-
trol, based on the notion that students in the course are expected to take
control for their content-​and language-​oriented learning through coopera-
tive communication in individual and group-​based class discussions as they
would in their daily interactions with multiple forms and types of pop culture.
There are instances in the discussions where students enacted their agency and
became more empowered in expressing their opinion about a popular cul-
ture topic. Seemingly, they no longer regarded the tutor as having directional
power over their discussions/​learning and preferred to take control of the
discursive space. One way in which we see this type of agency being exercised
is in language use. Although the tutors established a private Facebook page,
invited students taking the class to be members, prompted students to post
up comments, and assigned a percentage of the course grade to students’ par-
ticipation on the site, they did not stipulate the length of the posts, the type
of vocabulary used, or the formality of language that students should adopt.
As Facebook is a social media site, the type of language often used is more
similar to spoken, conversational text (incomplete sentences, verb-​based style,
and enhanced grammatical complexity), in contrast to equivalent written text
or academic discourse (noun-​based and lexically dense). Many studies have
demonstrated the hybrid nature of online discourse on social media platforms
where the traditional dichotomies of written and spoken forms in synchronous
and asynchronous digital content are often blurred in terms of monologic
versus dialogic or text versus utterance (for example Jucker & Dürscheid,
2012). Other related studies of student online discourse in second language
classrooms in Asia have found that
162 Anne Peirson-Smith and Lindsay Miller
meaning negotiation, error correction, and technical actions seldom occurred
and that social talk, task management, and content discussion predominated
the chat […] relationships among different types of online interaction
and their connections with subsequent writing and revision are complex and
depend on group makeup and dynamics.
(Liang, 2010, p. 45)

Hence, we often saw a variation in text types and length of texts: Sometimes
students would post lengthy messages (400 words plus), at other times short
responses (15 words or fewer). Guidelines were deliberately not provided
regarding what to post or how to use the second language within that context.
In the following examples, we can see how one student uses language similar to
formal academic written texts, which was followed by another student who used
a “think aloud” question in response:

JO LAM: In Fashion Industrial Advertisement, women are always sexual objecti-

fied (Nussbaum, Martha C., 1985), as they are projected as sexual object in
the ads, for instant, in the advertisement in Tom Ford and American Apparel,
models are naked and the products are placed in front of their sexual organ,
durability of meaning. Also, the encourage women to fit in model of being
“rapeable” (Gavey 2005), in the advertisement of the Dolce & Gabbana, an
almost naked woman is forced on the floor by a handsome strong men and
surrounded by three other guy.
TOM CONNOR: Perhaps advertising is art?

In both cases, there is a sense of being able to rhetorically express a position with
confidence in English, either formally or informally, with or without the use of
academic references to support the argument.

5. Discussion and conclusion

In terms of the two research questions that we set out to answer, from the pre-
liminary data reported here, we can see how students interacted naturally with
each other and how the five categories of engagement are all prevalent in the
students’ discussion posts. The use of Facebook as a mediated space was useful
as a discursive site in prompting students to debate the popular culture topics
that they covered in class, as evidenced by the number, length, and content of
posts generated each week from the majority of students attending the course.
Furthermore, although we did not specify how to use English in these responses,
the students seem to have taken it upon themselves to find ways to express their
ideas, feelings and emotions in their second language. Unlike a classroom setting,
the student respondents did not need to be given permission or be encouraged
to find their voice when responding critically to an issue, as they seemed to have
already acquired the agency to occupy this “third space” beyond the locus of the
 Learning through sharing 163
classroom (Routledge, 1996). The relative ease with which students transferred
their communication to a second language suggests a high degree of motivation
to engage in their learning in a subject that clearly inspired them.
Facebook topics were closely linked to discussions in class. Therefore, we created
a course using a blended form of more traditional teaching/​learning experiences
in the classroom that encouraged students to share their lived popular culture
experiences with each other online. This led to social connectedness between
students and tutors both in real time and online through engagement with familiar
and relatable topics, which perhaps reduced the stress for students whose English
language skills may not be so strong and which might have otherwise prevented
them from contributing in class. There were numerous positive comments made
by students as to how the asynchronous aspect of Facebook allowed them to prac-
tice analyzing popular culture in their second language. Hence, students were
learning to acquire and use new terminology and language as vertical knowledge
and make sense of it by applying it to known and lived horizontal knowledge in
an authentic task-​oriented setting.
Most students taking the popular culture course and posting comments were
positive about the type of topics studied and the unique learning experience we
created for them by enabling the discussion of familiar popular cultural topics
in their second language. By way of posting content on Facebook as illustrated in
the sample of data presented in this chapter, our students demonstrated a cap-
acity for self-​directed learning, critical thinking skills, creative engagement, an
ability to communicate with each other in their second language, and an ability to
recognize and critique important characteristics of their own and other cultures
as a way of making sense of popular culture in everyday life (de Certeau, 1984)
when operating in a glocalized world. As the broader, more inclusive approach
to the subject content taken on this course emphasizes, the production and con-
sumption of popular culture outputs such as music, fashion, sport, food, film,
advertising, technology, and travel, for example, operate at the local, regional,
and global levels. In this sense, popular culture outputs and texts constitute trans-
national flows of influence that are globally appropriated and adapted in situated
ways founded on universalizing and particularizing tendencies. In this sense,
contemporary popular culture forms as soft power are multi-​cultural, invariably
reflecting both local and global or their glocal aspects (Caves, 2004, p. 307).
Student autonomy is evident in their learning via the use of this socially
mediated dimension and how they made use of a social media site in different
communicative ways as a thinking and discursive space using text and image
multi-​modally to engage in critical debates with their peers. Some used informal
types of written text, more akin to conversational text, while others used more
formal written texts. Participants largely enacted their discursive agency and took
control of both familiar and new or unknown popular culture topics, including
comparative global examples, as a form of ownership in learning “about and
through” the subject content (Peirson-​Smith, 2017, p. 137) and beyond this in
everyday encounters with popular culture. This approach enabled students to
164 Anne Peirson-Smith and Lindsay Miller
make sense of daily life and the power relations between producers and con-
sumers of popular culture to be navigated.
The unique contribution of this study is to foreground the vital part that
agency, or control, plays in enabling learners to take ownership of the discourse of
their popular culture, and we have shown how this can also be done in a second
language context. In this way, a cognitive and affective transition appeared to
occur from a formal teaching/​learning environment imparting vertical know-
ledge to a sharing/​caring environment that encouraged the exploration, appli-
cation and critical debate about horizontal knowledge, based on subjective
experiences of popular culture encounters, facilitated on a dedicated social media
site. Given the trend towards more holistic approaches to teaching and learning
in preparing students for life, it appears that content based courses using this
pedagogical approach can enhance motivation by focusing on issues of identity
and higher-​order interests, thereby elevating language competences in the peda-
gogic process. As Brown (2007 , p. 1) observes:

Your whole person is affected as you struggle to reach beyond the confines
of your first language and into a new language, a new culture, a new way of
thinking, feeling, and acting. Total commitment, total involvement, total
physical, intellectual, and emotional response are necessary to successfully
send and receive messages in a second language.

Using the extended CLIL model, we activated the higher order dispositions and
language capabilities, raising interest levels via online engagement with subject
content that constitutes a significant part of students’ lives. This content-​based
pedagogic experience also strategically prepared students for future formal and
informal social and collaborative interaction, both online and offline, by imparting
the confidence to interact with broader discourse communities after graduating
into the realities of popular social life.

Note
1 For an explanation why in this chapter the terminology “popular culture” rather than
“pop culture” is employed, see Section 2.

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