Many factors contribute to the way individuals come to an understanding of what schooling is about and where it might be headed. This book explores the role of popular culture in that process.

The authors illustrate how powerful and suggestive images and ideas about teachers, learning, and other aspects of schooling are constructed in the "texts" of various modes of popular culture. As a basis for further inquiry, the book describes important tendencies and patterns in the representation of aspects of schooling. It also provides examples of analytical approaches and strategies for thinking about the significance of patterns with respect to questions of meaning, power, and pedagogy in schooling practices. At the interface of educational and cultural studies, the book encourages inquiry into mainstream popular culture, and explores how this culture contributes to forms of discourse about the nature and direction of schooling.