This book analyses how narrative fictions can be used by faculty and staff in the teaching of professionals in higher education. As professional life becomes ever more demanding, this book draws together the work of researchers and practitioners who have explored the tremendous impact that narrative fictions - novels, short stories, drama and poetry - can have on development. The editors and contributors posit that fiction can help professionals imagine new ways of being, reinvent their roles and tackle problems without a road map. Using fiction can also provide a safe place for the exploration of ethics and decision making, as well as furnishing tools for the development of empathy and engagement by offering vicarious experiences of drastically different lives and situations. A medium that by its very nature contains a multiplicity of interpretations, using fiction in professional education can enhance the education of professionals working in a range of disciplines, including health, education, social care, law and science.

Education in Popular Culture explores what makes schools, colleges, teachers and students an enduring focus for a wide range of contemporary media. What is it about the school experience that makes us wish to relive it again and again? The book provides an overview of education as it is represented in popular culture, together with a framework through which educators can interpret these representations in relation to their own professional values and development. The analyses are contextualised within contemporary, historical and ideological frameworks, and make connections between popular representations and professional and political discourses about education. Through its examination of film, television, popular lyrics and fiction, this book tackles educational themes that recur in popular culture, and demonstrates how they intersect with debates concerning teacher performance, the curriculum and young people's behaviour and morality. Chapters explore how experiences of education are both reflected and constructed in ways that sometimes reinforce official and professional educational perspectives, and sometimes resist and oppose them. Education in Popular Culture will stimulate critical reflection on the popular myths and professional discourses that surround teachers and teaching. It will serve to deepen analyses of teaching and learning and their associated institutional and societal contexts in a creative and challenging way.

Education in Popular Culture explores what makes schools, colleges, teachers and students an enduring focus for a wide range of contemporary media. What is it about the school experience that makes us wish to relive it again and again? The book provides an overview of education as it is represented in popular culture, together with a framework through which educators can interpret these representations in relation to their own professional values and development. The analyses are contextualised within contemporary, historical and ideological frameworks, and make connections between popular representations and professional and political discourses about education. Through its examination of film, television, popular lyrics and fiction, this book tackles educational themes that recur in popular culture, and demonstrates how they intersect with debates concerning teacher performance, the curriculum and young people's behaviour and morality. Chapters explore how experiences of education are both reflected and constructed in ways that sometimes reinforce official and professional educational perspectives, and sometimes resist and oppose them. Education in Popular Culture will stimulate critical reflection on the popular myths and professional discourses that surround teachers and teaching. It will serve to deepen analyses of teaching and learning and their associated institutional and societal contexts in a creative and challenging way.

This book analyses how narrative fictions can be used by faculty and staff in the teaching of professionals in higher education. As professional life becomes ever more demanding, this book draws together the work of researchers and practitioners who have explored the tremendous impact that narrative fictions - novels, short stories, drama and poetry - can have on development. The editors and contributors posit that fiction can help professionals imagine new ways of being, reinvent their roles and tackle problems without a road map. Using fiction can also provide a safe place for the exploration of ethics and decision making, as well as furnishing tools for the development of empathy and engagement by offering vicarious experiences of drastically different lives and situations. A medium that by its very nature contains a multiplicity of interpretations, using fiction in professional education can enhance the education of professionals working in a range of disciplines, including health, education, social care, law and science.