British comics, British values?

This prescient research explores how British comics contribute to readers' constructions of Britishness. David Cameron's (2014) call to 'be far more muscular in promoting British values' is evident in changes in teacher education standards, school curricula and state guidance to schools, and Ofsted criteria for school inspection, and indicates a move away from discourses on fundamental human rights (Smith 2013). How readers (people) perceive themselves and others - as British, or as not quite British enough - is integral to their sense of self, affecting their learning not only in school but throughout their lives. Consequently this study into how Britishness is constructed in comics, a media source available to learners of all ages, is of pressing importance to all involved in education. Aligning specific comics to Storey's (2009) six types of popular culture addresses the diversified British comics industry, to offer an integrated series of snapshots of comics readers' understandings of Britishness.

First research questions: Do British comics 2005-2015 show microaggressions about race? Are these associated with specific ethnic and religious groups?

Second research questions: How do specific British comics 2005-2015 contribute to readers' constructions of Britishness? What role do constructions of race play in these understandings?

The conceptual framework for this research combines sociocultural theories of learning, Critical Theory, and Cultural Studies. The construction of understanding, not only the acquisition of information, is situated in sociocultural understandings of thinking and learning (Vygotsky 1978; Wertsch 1981) as the exploration of how language (vocalised or silent speech) is connected to development of understanding. Sociocultural theories have not previously been focussed on the comics medium, making this proposal innovative. Critical theory (Held 1980) integrated with cultural studies (Storey 2009) provides a fundamentally Marxist approach (Hall 1978) to studying cultural texts as the material basis of a culture, assuming that popular culture in capitalist industrial societies is a principal site where unequal divisions are established and contested. Critical race theory exposes unequal racial divisions embedded in social structures and practices. Strong CRT literature on British multiculturalism (Gillborn 2008) will be combined with existing critical approaches to comics (Smith and Duncan 2012) that focus predominantly on American comics, offering a strong field of literature with potential for extension to British comics.