Remediated Pedagogies? The Secret Life of Six Year Olds

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Abstract

In 2015, a new reality television program debuted on Channel 4 in the UK. The Secret Life of Four Year Olds was based on a pilot from the previous year, and this time around it was augmented by The Secret Life of Five Year Olds and The Secret Life of Six Year Olds, respectively. The program-makers stated that these three distinct age-group-led iterations offered different sites of developmental comparisons, and by doing so appropriated the conventions (age-not-stage) and contexts (the classroom) familiar to UK television audiences—particularly those with children of their own. Our analysis of The Secret Life of Six Year Olds reveals how it constructs a simulacrum of education, presenting a curated version of children’s learning and interactions through a fixed rig format, familiar to us from other reality TV shows. We note the irony of such a show, complete with expert commentary and critical responses, failing to identify (yet including) particular kinds of mediated learning. The children featured in this program exhibit considerable awareness of a transmedia landscape and are able to quote from, apply and combine a range of elements from different media sources—an adroitness that was not the focus of this particular “anthropological project” and one which was barely commented upon. We conclude that the program gives us an unintended insight into children’s productive practices that could and should form part of early-years education—a project we call (after Bolter and Grusin) “remediated pedagogy.”

Keywords

Media Text Cultural Tool Pedagogic Discourse Performance Play Public Service Broadcast 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Centre for Excellence in Media PracticeBournemouth UniversityPooleUK

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