In this thesis the author explores the ways in which students are able to draw on their out of school popular cultural and literacy practices to challenge conventional understandings of subject English. It is based on practitioner research conducted with secondary English students in the author's classrooms. The study is informed by theoretical positions and prior research into popular culture and secondary English. The author uses these perspectives to re-frame English curriculum and pedagogy in terms of the kinds of social relationships and networks that students develop beyond school, particularly in their engagement with popular culture. The literacy practices that students engage in beyond school provide challenges to dominant understandings of English curriculum and pedagogy. Research exploring the interface between adolescents' out of school literacy practices and the English classroom suggests that conventional conceptions of literacy are outdated and limiting vis-à-vis the diversity of literacy practices students engage with in their everyday lives. Informed by these perspectives this research focused on examining ways in which students in the English classrooms could draw on their out of school literacy practices when undertaking conventional tasks. The author sought to understand how they used such literacy practices to create understanding and meaning while fulfilling the requirements of the English curriculum. The author examines student work samples produced in these classrooms, describing the contexts in which they were produced and the significance of each text. At the same time, the author describes her professional learning as the author sets about exploring the semiotic potential of popular culture in the classroom, reviewing existing practices as an English teacher, and reconceptualising the role of English within the curriculum and the lives of the students. The study finds that students' uses of their out of school literacy practices provide a means of reconceptualising subject English as grounded in the social and cultural networks and relationships that students are engaged in, and where knowledge and meaning are socially constructed. It demonstrates an alternative pedagogy where teacher and students are co-learners and co-constructors of knowledge.