What Pokémon Can Teach Us about Learning and Literacy

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What Pokémon Can Teach Us about
Learning and Literacy
118
We can learn much about the codes and ways
What Pokémon Can Teach Us
of talking and doing associated with popular
Vivian Vasquez
culture texts by closely observing children.
Curtis:
On the bottom it says retreat
card but then if it has 3
stars you need 3 energy to
retreat him.
Vivian: Is that for everybody or just
for Ratatat?
Curtis:
It depends how much he needs.
If he needs none, he can retreat without anything.
Vivian: What does that mean? Does it
mean he can back out . . . ?
Curtis:
Yeah.
Vivian: What about this part? (pointing to right hand upper corner
of a Pokémon card)
Curtis:
Resistance by 30 from psychic.
In psychic Pokémon if they do
30 damage to ’em that 30
damage won’t do anything because of his resistance. And
because his weakness is fighting so let’s say a guy named
Machop did 20 damage to ’em
plus that that would be 40
and he would be knocked out
of the game. And you need
one colorless energy to do
quick attack with this 10+.
You need no energy to do
Pokémon power tricky.
APPROPRIATING POKÉMON:
A FIRST LESSON
My nephew Curtis bought his first
pack of Pokémon trading cards at age
six when he and my husband Andy
walked into a corner store in the
Language Arts,
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No. 2,
neighborhood and he noticed familiar
television cartoon characters on the
packaging of collector cards. Pokémon is a name given to an evergrowing series of what are called
‘pocket monsters,’ imaginary characters that have various capabilities,
such as being able to transform into
different versions of the same character, and powers, such as using electricity or fire to fend off opponents.
These characters live in an alternate
reality where they are able to evolve
by winning battles over one another.
The human characters in the cartoon
are trainers who prepare the Pokémon for battle. A majority of the
human characters are children. One
of the main characters is Ash, a tenyear-old who travels the countryside
collecting and training Pokémon.
Most of the cartoon’s storyline
evolves around Ash. As Curtis began
engaging in Pokémon gaming, that
is, as he became someone who
played the Pokémon trading card
game, he took on the role of Ash the
trainer. As Ash, he collected and
traded cards not only with his own
friends but with other children he
met at trading card clubs located in
stores where the cards are sold. He
also began creating his own versions
of the collector cards.
In this article, I highlight opportunities for engaging pleasurable and
powerful literacies (Comber, 2000)
by looking closely at Curtis’s appropriations of the popular text Pokémon. Specifically, I show the
literacies Curtis learned and used
while participating as a member of
a Pokémon club and in creating his
own Pokémon cards (see Figure 1).
The term “literacy/literacies” is used
to represent a variety of skills and
strategies used by learners including
reading, writing, drawing, and so
forth when negotiating and constructing meaning. My intent is to
show that engagement with popular
culture texts can teach us about
learning and literacy and to discuss
the powerful and creative learning
students can bring to the aspects of
popular culture with which they
choose to identify (Gee, 2003).
This work is part of a case study of
Curtis’s participation with the popular
culture text Pokémon over a fiveyear period from 1996–2001. The
opening exchange took place early in
the study as Curtis attempted to teach
me about the components of a Pokémon card. It was immediately clear to
me that this text was more complex
than I had imagined. Resistance,
power-tricky, colorless energy, and
HP were all details that meant nothing to me and caused endless confusion! I was lost, but Curtis was
patient with me. He waited and then
waited some more as I attempted to
understand, and he explained things
November 2003
Copyright © 2003 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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Curtis at age 8
Figure 1. Curtis creating Pokémon Cards
to me over and over giving me time
to make sense of the unfamiliar genre
and unfamiliar discourse in talking
and working with Pokémon text. In a
sense, he was teaching me how to
participate in a Pokediscourse, the
Pokémon way of talking about
gaming and using the cards. He was
teaching me to break the code so that
I could participate with and make
meaning of Pokémon text. Eventually, I learned enough to imagine the
potential for learning and literacy development available through engaging with this popular culture text.
CULTURAL CROSS-OVERS
With its introduction to American
television in 1996, Pokémon quickly
became popular culture material for
children in playgrounds, neighborhood streets, and sometimes schoolyards. It was an imported Japanese
cartoon dubbed in English and created in anime style. Curtis was also
responsible for introducing me to
the world of anime (post-war
Japanese animation) cartoons beginning with Pokémon (http://www.
Pokémon.com) and later other popular culture gaming texts, such as
Digimon (http://www.digimoncity.
com), Dragonball Z (http://www.
dragonballz.com), Yu-Gi-Oh! (http://
www.yugiohkingofgames.com/
intro.html), and most recently, Beyblade. Anime film was first introduced in the 60s by master animator
Osamu Tezuka, who in 1963 produced Japan’s first televised anime,
Astro Boy (Vallen and Thorpe, 2001).
At that time, anime was produced by
painting images on cels. Cel animation is based on a series of frames or
cels in which the object is re-drawn
in each consecutive cel to depict
motion. This was the technique used
by all cartoon creators before the
dawning of computer animation.
Carrington (2003) notes that the cartoon heralded a new wave of distinctive animated genre. This success
Pokémon
became such a
hot topic for
conversation that even John Stossel
dedicated a 20/20 segment to it,
whereby he balked at those who
claim that Pokémon viewing encourages kids to gamble. It has even had
a turn at being on the cover of Time
magazine (1999). Pikachu, one of
the most known Pokémon characters, was included in the Thanksgiving Day Macy’s Parade, joining the
ranks of Snoopy and Curious George
in an American tradition. Further, in
November 2001, the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
sponsored a lecture on Japanese Animation. Even more interesting, the
University of Hawaii Center for
Japanese Studies Endowment
sponsored a two-day conference,
Pikachu’s Global Adventure, in
November 2000. The conference
involved an international team
of professors, lecturers, and media
scholars from around the world
who gathered to discuss the phenomenon Pokémon.
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What Pokémon Can Teach Us
Curtis at age 6
resulted in the
movement of this
cultural artifact
from its limited
role in children’s
television programming to a
presence in classrooms, lunchrooms, and
doctors’ offices
as the cartoon
characters began
to appear on
binders and pencils, backpacks
and lunch boxes,
band aids, children’s clothing,
and in featurelength films,
videos, CDs, and
trading cards.
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LEARNING FROM CURTIS
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What Pokémon Can Teach Us
One of the most prominent
crossovers of anime appeared in the
manufacturing of trading cards that
children and adults collect. To succeed in the trading card arena
means knowing the value of one’s
cards. Knowing the value of a card
requires an understanding of how to
read the cards. Pokémon gaming,
therefore, does not involve actual
physical battling over cards but systematic analysis of which cards to
Pokémon gaming,
therefore, does not
involve actual physical
battling over cards but
systematic analysis
of which cards to trade
with whom in order
to add to the value
of one’s collection.
trade with whom in order to add to
the value of one’s collection. It requires a deep understanding of
which kinds of cards carry the most
capital in the game of trading cards.
The primary way for children to develop this understanding is through
jumping in, playing, talking, and
discussing as well as designing and
redesigning their own versions of
the cards. This immersion takes
place as children engage with Pokémon texts in multi-mediated ways
through various genres, and through
the use of different sign systems,
such as film, video, music, books,
and magazines. Sefton-Green (2001)
presented a case study of his sixyear-old son’s initiation into the literacy practice of playing Pokémon
video games using a Game Boy, a
trademark for a particular kind of
handheld video game. He observed
that the availability of Pokémon
across a range of platforms (TV, film,
Language Arts,
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No. 2,
games, toys, etc.) is the reason why
attention to one literacy domain can
“miss the point.” Basically, he notes
that if a broad range of readings of a
particular text is available through a
variety of platforms but our focus is
on one particular platform, such as
print literacy, then our reading is not
as informed and resourced as it
could be, which limits participation.
Curtis became increasingly knowledgeable about drawing on multiple
sources to learn about Pokémon.
Creating his own cards required him
to learn to use a variety of resources,
such as those listed previously, as
well as his friends and the Internet.
In a sense, he was introduced to the
role that research plays in crafting
or designing a text. Arriving at this
point in his learning, however, was
not easy.
Like most children, when Curtis
bought that first package of cards at
the corner store he had no idea how
much he had to learn. His initial attraction to the cards came from a
connection he made to the Pokémon
cartoon on television. In a sense, he
saw the cards as an extension of his
TV viewing experience. As he played
with his original set of cards, he situated himself in the televisual (relating
to or shown on television) reality
provided by the TV show (Luke,
2002), even though he had not yet
mastered the game. It was when he
began to play with the cards in the
company of his friends that he developed a new identity in the Pokémon
gaming world. According to Gee
(2001a), since reading and thinking
are social achievements connected to
social groups, we can all read and
think in different ways when we read
and think as members (or as if we
were members) of different groups.
READING, THINKING AND
LEARNING AS MEMBERS
OF A GROUP
As a new member of the Pokémon
world, Curtis immediately recog-
November 2003
nized the need to learn the codes
(the specific ways of talking and
doing) associated with this popular
culture text. He also learned about
Game Boys and Pokémon game
modules that could be played on
handheld pocket computer units.
Since he received a pocket unit for
his birthday, Curtis moved back and
forth between the two-dimensional
card game and the virtual space
provided by the computerized game.
More than ever, Curtis became interested in surfing the electronic network (also known as the Net) to find
out more about the various Pokémon
and their characteristics. He would
then share printouts of his findings
with his friends who did the same
with him. In conversation with some
of the older children at his school,
he became privy to tools of the trade
including the use of magazines written to provide gaming strategies for
both the computer game and the
card game. This led Curtis to become
an avid reader and a frequent visitor
to bookstores and neighborhood
stores where magazines are sold. He
did not often buy the magazines but
spent a great deal of time browsing
through them. While developing
browsing skills, he learned to
quickly locate identifying key words
and phrases as he flipped through
the pages of a magazine. He also
learned to read a table of contents
and an index. Another skill he developed was what Sefton-Green
(2001) refers to as “mapping space”
whereby Curtis learned how to
“read” the maps within the strategy
guide and orient himself within the
virtual environment of the game.
If Gee (2001a) is right about the relationship between social achievement
and social groups, then the first thing
that children’s engagements with
such popular culture texts can teach
us is to be attentive to the ways in
which children collaboratively construct a particular culture that is
highly organized and to ask what it is
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The intensity with which Curtis and
his friends participated with the popular culture text seemed to call for a
specialist discourse that works simultaneously to include the initiated and
to exclude others, even though this
was not done deliberately (SeftonGreen, 2001). The complex discursive
practices they used signaled membership in the group for only those
who had previously been initiated
into Pokémon discourse. For some
children, this was enough incentive
to learn more, read more, and participate more fully in the game.
Playing the game well involved
learning how to strategically outmaneuver other players, learning how
to be analytical about what moves
and strategies to employ, and developing good problem-solving skills.
Being able to continue to participate
in this literate culture required the
ongoing learning of a growing
community of literate practices
associated with problem solving, analyzing, and strategizing. It was discussion, challenge, and the constant
exchange of ideas that created the
space needed for this learning to be
sustained and generative. By generative, I refer to the ways in which
Curtis and his friends continuously
sought out new, more challenging
levels of participation in the game.
DRAWING AND REDESIGNING
AS PARTICIPATORY ACTIVITIES
center (see figure 2). It was during
talk about evolutions that Curtis and
his friends began to redesign the existing Pokémon cards to create their
own, often more complex, evolutions for the characters.
Redesigning Starmie
A close examination of Curtis’s reOne of the participatory activities
design of the Starmie card allows me
generated by membership in Curtis’s
to unpack the learning and literacies
Pokémon gaming community was
that resulted from this activity.
drawing and re-creating existing
Below, I outline some of the elements
cards. This seemed to be one way of
and components of a basic Starmie
becoming more knowledgeable
card and compare these to Curtis’s
about and familiar with the various
redesigned card (see Figure 3).
parts of the cards. The children often
Although he gave it some new altertalked throughout their drawing,
native characteristics, Curtis kept
sharing details about how they were
Starmie’s name the same in his
creating the various text and symredesign to keep it identifiable
bols. This talk involved the deconamongst his friends. Starmie’s repustruction of the cards—looking
tation among gamers as a mysterious
closely at the bits and pieces that
Pokémon with many move options
made up a card to make sure that
(strategic ways of beating its oppothe new redesigns were recognizable
nents) made it appealing to Curtis.
to other gamers. Further, this talk
Although Pokémon are supposedly
usually was accompanied by sound
non-gendered, Starmie is seen by
effects and impromptu leaps into
some gamers as a girl’s Pokémon due
dramatizing Pokémon battle moves.
to its appearance as a starry jewel.
At some level, Curtis and his friends
Starmie also is seen as an enigma
were using drama as an editing tool
because of how its nonviolent apto create their drawings. These
pearance is contradicted by its posdramatizations often led to acting
session of some of the best moves in
out what would happen to the Pokéthe game. So in a sense, Starmie is a
mon as they evolved or transformed
very powerful Pokémon, one that is
into more complex characters after
worth having in a collection.
winning a battle. For instance, when
Staryu, a five-pointed, star-shaped
The original Starmie card has over 30
Pokémon with a smooth round red
different words, phrases, and images.
gem in its center, wins a number of
Included are a wide range of icons,
battles, it can
evolve into a
more complex creature,
Starmie. In its
evolved state,
therefore,
Staryu turns
into Starmie,
a ten-pointed
star with a
multi-faceted,
Staryu
Starmie, an evolved Staryu
brilliant red
Figure 2. Staryu and Starmie
gem in its
121
What Pokémon Can Teach Us
about these cultures that keeps them
“in the game,” in spite of the increasing challenges involved with playing
it. The more that Curtis and his
friends learned to “read” Pokémon
texts, the more they understood how
to play the trading card game. The
more they played the game, the more
challenging it became. With each
new challenge came the thirst for
more information that would lead to
the development of more complex
strategies for playing. This caused
them to become more immersed in
the game leading them to be further
engaged with new symbolic and discursive practices that helped them to
achieve their goals of playing the
game well, such as understanding
how to quickly read the symbols and
images on a card as well as knowing
what language and actions to use to
be a successful player.
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What Pokémon Can Teach Us
abbreviations, and symbols, each of
which refers to specific characteristics
and attributes of this Pokémon. For
example, there are symbols such as
an eye (symbol for what are known
as “mysterious” Pokémon that possess psychic abilities) or a starburst
(symbol for what are known as “colorless” Pokémon). Then there are abbreviations for terms like “hit points”
represented by the letters HP, or
“level” represented by the letters LV.
Each card has on it different systems
of representation that children
quickly learn to read. Sefton-Green
(2001) suggests that the ease of reading such systems could be due to the
prevalence of icons in many forms of
children’s culture. The iconic symbol
systems that appear on each card
work to support the reading of text
on the cards.
To be successful at playing the game,
players need to know what each
detail means because these details are
used to evaluate and analyze whether
or not to battle and/or which Poké-
mon to put in a battle. For instance,
a good player might battle her/his
Starmie card if the opponent (the
Pokémon card that the opposing
player has put into battle) has a
weakness for water (water is the
classification of Pokémon to which
Starmie belongs). What this means is
that an opponent with a weakness
for “water Pokémon” would be less
effective in battle against Starmie.
More information about Pokémon
gaming rules and how to play the
game at a basic level are available at
http://www.sierrascollectibles.com/
Pokémon_rules.htm.
Curtis’s Redesign
Curtis created a ten-pointed star
freehand in his redesign of Starmie.
It took several tries to get the angles
and the distance between the points
just right. To do this, Curtis layered
two five-point stars, one on top of
the other. This kind of visual/spatial
information is not available in any
of the strategy or rulebooks, so he
had to figure out how to
draw Starmie through close
examination of the original
card. He also decided to embellish the background of
the card by adding two stars
and bubbles. The original
Starmie had a plain background. The “bubble beam,”
a spray of bubbles to disorient an opponent, is one of
Starmie’s primary attacks.
A primary attack is a Pokémon’s natural weapon.
The addition of bubbles
in the background of his
redesigned card reminds
the opponent of this
character’s capabilities.
Figure 3. Curtis’s Redesign of Starmie
Language Arts,
Vol. 81
No. 2,
November 2003
The original Starmie card
has 60HP (Hit Points or the
amount of damage it can receive which basically determines how strong it is).
Curtis’s card has 110HP,
making it 50HP stronger than the
original. While creating his card,
Curtis talked about wanting his redesigned card to be almost twice as
strong as the original. His card also
has a greater damage factor than the
original. This factor refers to the
amount of damage caused to an opponent. Basically, a higher number
indicates the potential to cause
greater damage. Curtis’s card has a
90-damage factor while the original
only has a 20-damage factor. What
this means is that when the original
Starmie battles an opponent, it can
cause “20 damage,” whereas Curtis’s
new Starmie would cause “90
damage.” His card would cause
almost five times the damage to its
opponent as the original.
Another item that he added to his
card is a description for his Pokémon’s primary and secondary attacks. Attacks are the weapons used
to overcome an opponent. The primary attack he included is Bubble
Beam (spraying bubbles to disorient
the opponent). He enhances the
strength of this attack by noting on
the card, “your opponent does 20
less damage than usual. If their
attack does nothing, it does not
work.” For example, if the opposing
Pokémon does 40 damage when it
battles against Curtis’s Starmie, its
attack strength would automatically
weaken by 20. “If their attack does
nothing, it does not work” would
refer to opponents who have 20 or
fewer damage points who clearly
would have zero damage if battling
with the redesigned Starmie. The
secondary attack causes 70 damage.
In combination, Curtis’s Starmie
could cause 160 damage to an opponent, which is quite substantial.
He makes his Pokémon even
stronger by adding a notation that,
“If your opponent makes you miss a
turn, take that turn back.” Clearly
he has made the new Starmie extremely difficult to beat.
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Research on Children’s Use of Popular Culture
Tobin, J. (2000). “Good Guys Don’t Wear Hats”: Children’s
Talk about the Media. New York: Teachers College Press.
Dimitriadis, G. (2001). “In the Clique”: Popular Culture,
Constructions of Place, and the Everyday Lives of Urban
Youth. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 32 (1),
29–51.
• This study examines how two urban teens used key
popular texts to construct a sense of place by mobilizing the texts in specific ways and in particular
The final difference between the
cards is that in the redesigned card,
Starmie is at LV49 (level or position
within the hierarchy of cards) while
in the original, Starmie is at LV28.
To create his card, he engaged in relational number work (more or less
than, primary and secondary) and in
calculation (addition, subtraction,
multiplication).
Curtis’s redesigned card only focuses on those symbols and text
that deal with strength. For instance, he left out information regarding weight and height, both of
which are included in the original.
Clearly, he was discerning and deliberate in what he included and
what he left out, in what symbols
and text he revised, and what symbols and text he maintained. This in
itself is an impressive skill to have
learned alongside all the other skills
called upon to participate fully in
the Pokémon gaming world.
Stevens, L. P. (2001). “South Park” and Society: Instructional and Curricular Implications of Popular Culture in
the Classroom. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,
44 (6), 548–555.
• Through case study research, Stevens offers insights
into how three middle-school teachers incorporate
popular culture media into their content area classes
to encourage their students to become critical consumers of popular culture. Issues of planning, student response, and fitting popular culture into the
existing curricula are also discussed.
A CLOSER LOOK AT SKILLS
CONSTRUCTED THROUGH
ENGAGEMENT WITH POKÉMON
In a study of first-person shooter
games, James Gee (2003) used previously documented research on literacy development regarding
important principles of learning to
unpack the principles of learning
that undergird the playing of computer games. Many of these same
principles apply to the construction,
understanding, and design of the
Pokémon gaming cards. Following
is a summary of intersections between some of Gee’s principles of
learning and the repertoire of skills
Curtis used when designing his
cards. The italicized text represents
Gee’s principles followed by a brief
example of how each played out as
Curtis engaged with Pokémon text.
Active, Critical Learning Principle:
All aspects of the learning environ-
—Karen Smith
ment, including the ways in which
the semiotic domain is designed and
presented, are set up to encourage
active and critical, not passive,
learning. [Example: To trade cards
successfully, Curtis had to engage in
an active, not passive, flurry of decision making regarding gaps in his
card collection along with determining how the value of particular
cards would increase the worth of
his collection.]
Design Principle: Learning about and
coming to appreciate design and
design principles is core to the
learning experience. [Example:
Curtis and his friends found great
pleasure in creating their own cards.
Redesigning the cards required an
understanding of how the original
cards were designed.]
Semiotic Principle: Learning about
and coming to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign
systems (images, words, actions,
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What Pokémon Can Teach Us
• This ethnographic study focuses on how children
talk about media representations of violence,
gender, race, colonialism, and social class. Children
used their understandings of middle-class families
to distinguish between good guys and bad guys.
The meanings children make from movies
arise out of their experiences of living in a
specific local context.
social networks—finding specific thematic links between and across the texts and using those links to
index their relationships with family. The complex,
emergent, and “messy” relationships many youth
have with popular culture are identified.
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What Pokémon Can Teach Us
symbols, artifacts, and so forth) as a
complex system is central to the experience. [Example: Curtis drew
from and made use of multiple sign
systems in creating cards through
engagement with books, magazines,
videos, and the Internet. Curtis lives
in Canada and uses the metric
system. The cards use the imperial
system. While creating his cards,
Curtis used a conversion program he
found on the Internet to convert the
Pokémon’s weights and heights from
imperial to metric measurement.]
Committed Learning Principle and
Practice Principle: Learners participate in an extended engagement as
extensions of their real-world identi-
Situated Meaning Principle: The
meanings of signs (words, actions,
objects, artifacts, symbols, texts,
etc.) are situated in embodied experience. Meanings are not general or
decontextualized. Whatever generality meanings come to have is discovered bottom up via embodied
experiences. [Example: While designing Pokémon cards, the meanings of signs are situated in the
designer’s experience as a collector
and trader of cards, which is contextualized based on who the other
trainers are and on the corpus of
cards that they have on hand.]
Intertextual Principle: The learner understands texts as a genre, a family of
Popular culture texts such as Pokémon cards and
games are the kinds of materials that many kids read,
have access to, and participate with as literate beings
in the new millennium.
ties. The learner gets lots and lots of
practice in a context where the
practice is not boring. [Example:
Curtis took on the role of Pokémon
trainer as he created and designed
his own cards. With lots of effort
and practice, he played out this
Poke-world identity for extended
and sustained periods of time.]
On-Going Learning Principle: The distinction between learner and master is
vague, since learners must undo their
routinized mastery to adapt to new or
changed conditions at higher and
higher levels. There are cycles of new
learning, automatization, undoing automatization, and new reorganized
automatization. [Example: Card manufacturers sustain gamers’ interest in
Pokémon by continuously putting
out different versions of the cards.
With each new version came another
complex set of understandings. Curtis
had to continuously adapt to new or
changed conditions for trading, collecting, and designing.]
Language Arts,
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No. 2,
related texts, and understands any
one such text in relation to others in
the family, but only after having
achieved embodied understandings of
some texts. Understanding a group
of texts as a family of texts is a large
part of what helps the learner make
sense of such texts. [Example: Designing his own cards required Curtis
to frequently engage with a variety
of related texts. He knew which magazine to go to for information on the
strengths of the various characters
and which Internet sites could offer
him further information. He also
knew how the magazines, in conjunction with the Internet sites and
other resources, worked to provide
him with the information he needed.]
Multimodal Principle: Meaning and
knowledge is built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design,
sound, etc.), not just words. [Example: Curtis built up the meaning and
knowledge underlying the creation
November 2003
of Pokémon cards through moving
back and forth between a variety of
modalities, not just printed words.
Intuitive Knowledge Principle and
Affinity Group Principle: Intuitive or
tacit knowledge built up in repeated
practice and experience, often in association with an affinity group,
counts a great deal and is honored.
It is not just verbal and conscious
knowledge that is rewarded. Learners
constitute an “affinity group,” that is
a group that is bonded primarily
through shared endeavors, goals, and
practices. [Example: Curtis and his
friends formed an affinity group in
which knowledge gained through repeated practice and experience carried great cultural capital. Curtis
became better and better at knowing
how to draw the various characters
and became “the” primary resource
for neighborhood children who
wanted to design their own cards.]
Insider Principle: The learner is an
insider, teacher, and producer (not
just a consumer) able to customize
the learning experience and domain/
game throughout the experience.
[Example: The more that Curtis and
his friends created cards and engaged in exchanging cards, the
more they liked it and they learned
about it. This learning always took
place in social spaces in particular
contexts with his affinity group and
gave him opportunities to take on
different roles.]
LITERACY INSTRUCTION AS
BROAD-BASED PARTICIPATION
IN A RANGE OF LITERACIES
Language is not the only important
communication system in the
modern world; images, artifacts,
and many other visual symbols are
particularly significant (Gee 2001b).
Popular culture texts such as Pokémon cards and games are the kinds
of materials that many kids read,
have access to, and participate with
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as literate beings in the new millennium. Through engagement with
such texts, children like Curtis and
his friends participate in an open
pedagogy where print text is not
privileged. Rather it becomes one of
many symbol systems used as a
generative multimodal tool for cultivating multiliteracies that include
different forms of literate behaviors
beyond those traditionally associated with literacy, such as reading
and writing. Children’s culture is
based on broad participation in a
range of literacies. In this open
pedagogy where learning is not
predetermined but generated by a
functional need to continue to learn
to play the game better, Curtis and
his friends thrived as literate beings
continuously seeking out more
knowledge and willingly taking up
the challenge of participating in a
game that grew in complexity and
difficulty over time.
As a former preschool and elementary school teacher, I ask myself
how young children’s participation
with popular culture text could
inform my own literacy teaching
practice and my students’ learning.
My intent is not to sell teachers on
using popular culture texts in the
classroom, even though I have been
witness to their power. Further, I
am not arguing that everything
learned from playing Pokémon is
I believe there are important questions that those of us who work
with young children can ask with
regards to popular culture texts. For
instance, what can we learn about
what motivates children to stay in
the game in spite of the increasing
complexity of that game? What attracts them to the game in the first
place? How can we capitalize on the
new literacies developed through
engagement with everyday popular
texts that children encounter during
the course of daily life? What does
it mean for learning to be social?
What happens to literacy development in these social spaces? What
role do multimodal texts and the integration of different symbol systems play in literacy development?
Pokémon texts are one example of
the sort of highly complex literacies
that children are now facing in this
new millennium. In essence, this article is about developing “new literacy” pedagogies. These pedagogies
go beyond debates over basic skills
and best methodology and are informed by observation and analysis
of children’s participatory engagement with texts for which they have
an affinity and for which they are
willing to participate in complex
learning situations for a sustained
period of time.
References
Carrington, V. (2003). “I’m in a bad mood.
Let’s go shopping”: Interactive dolls, consumer culture and a “glocalized” model
of literacy. Journal of Early Childhood
Literacy, 3(1), 83–98.
Comber, B. (2000). What really counts in
early literacy lessons. Language Arts,
78, 39–49.
Gee, J. P. (2001a). Reading as situated
action: A sociocognitive perspective.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy,
44(8), 714–725.
Gee, J. P. (2001b, July). Critical literacy as discourse analysis. Paper presented at the
CELT Rejuvenation Conference, Chicago, IL.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to
teach us about learning and literacy. New
York: Macmillan.
Luke, C. (2002). Re-crafting media and ICT
literacies. In D. Alvermann (Ed.), Adolescents and literacies in a digital world
(pp. 132–146). New York: Peter Lang.
Sefton-Green, J. (2001, June). Creative
media cultures: Learning beyond the
school. Paper presented at the conference, Learn, Create, Break Boundaries.
Malmö University, Sweden.
Time Magazine Cover (1999). Vol. 153(18).
Vallen, M., & Thorpe, J. (2001). A night at
the academy: Anime comes of age. The
Black Moon. Retrieved from http://www.
theblackmoon.com/Academy/academy.
htm on 5/29/03.
Author Biography
Vivian Vasquez is assistant professor in
the School of Education at American University in Washington, D.C. Previous to
this, she taught preschool and elementary
school for 14 years.
125
What Pokémon Can Teach Us
Children’s culture is
based on broad
participation in a
range of literacies.
good. I am arguing that there is a
lot we can learn about how to support literacy development by
watching children closely as they
engage with such texts. My intent
is to show the sorts of literate behaviors that come from children’s
participation in and use of popular
culture texts such as Pokémon.