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Swimming Up-Stream In The Jean Pool: Developing A Pedagogy Towards Critical Citizenship In Visual Culture, Kevin Tavin

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

American children and youth live in and through mass media and popular culture. They frequently fashion their sense of history, ideology, and multiple and ever-changing identities through popular visual imagery. These images penetrate and pervade every aspect of our students’ lives in the form of television programs, children’s books, advertisements, movies, comics, toys, cereal boxes, video games, fashion merchandise, sport shoes, fast food paraphernalia, and architectural and public spaces. These images help to shape students’ experiences by capturing their imagination and engaging their desires. These pervasive, immediate, and sometimes ephemeral images often construct students’ consciousness and their sense of citizenship …