Are they mocking our work? Practicing a pedagogy of response to satire (original) (raw)

Abstract

This paper responds to a satirical sketch on Saturday Night Live (SNL) (Kelly, Schneider, Tucker & King, 2016) in which Lin-Manuel Miranda plays a substitute teacher who tries to inspire students using hip-hop pedagogy; however, the students think that his “innovative” methods are cliché. As teacher-researchers, we are interested in how student engagement and critical literacy happens in classroom settings impacted by popular culture. Backed by literature that encourages the implementation of culturally-responsive and sustaining pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014; Paris, 2012), our own teaching philosophies draw on critical arts-informed pedagogies in the classroom. We wondered then, how, in a span of 5 minutes or less, an SNL parody might disparage our work and research. How did it connect with viewers and have them laugh with the “reality” of what they saw to be true in it? We did not want to dismiss it as a flippant critique and mockery of our work; we wanted to explore how we might glean meaning from it and what might be learned to improve upon our practice and research. What follows is a study that incorporates a critical arts-based (Barone & Eisner,1997) approach and a methodology informed by reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1989; Tompkins, 1981). Using ourselves as test subjects with the hope that we can enact such critical literacy (Freebody et al., 2001) practices with our own students, we devised a series of questions that would gauge our reactions to what was being represented in the sketch. After responding to these questions individually, we came together to discuss our responses. We hoped that this process might allow us to understand the function of satire in popular culture as it represents teaching and research on inclusive and equitable teaching pedagogies, all the while embodying a critical reflective practice that invites it into the classroom. References Barone, T., & Eisner, E. (1997). Arts-based educational research. In G. C. J. Green, & P. Elimore (Eds.) (Ed.), Complementary methods for research in education (Vol. 2, pp. 75-116). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Freebody, P., Muspratt, S., & Dwyer, B. (2001). Difference, silence, and textual practice: Studies in critical literacy. Cresskill, N.J: Hampton Press. Kelly, C., Schneider, S., Tucker, B. (Writers), & King, D.R. (Director). (2016). Lin-Manuel Miranda/Twenty One Pilots [Television series episode]. In Michaels, L. (Executive Producer), Saturday Night Live. New York, New York: National Broadcast Corporation. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-91. Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84 (1), 74-84. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93-97. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1989). “The transactional theory of the literary work: Implication for research.” In C.R. Cooper (Ed.), Researching response to literature and the teaching of literature: Points of departure. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Tompkins, J. P. (1981). Reader-response criticism: From formalism to post-structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.