This study examines how eight upper secondary school history teachers use popular culture whilst teaching history. The study allows the teachers to justify why they use popular culture as a tool for teaching. It also allows them to interpret how their students experience popular culture in their history teaching. The purpose of this study is to investigate what the use of popular culture looks like in the teaching of these eight history teachers. The questions of which the study is based on are: How do teachers use popular culture in their history teaching? How do teachers justify their choices of popular culture in their history teaching? How do teachers interpret that their students experience popular culture in their history teaching?

The essay conducts qualitative interviews and the source material comes from interviews with eight history teachers. The analysis tools used in this study are history use and historical thinking concepts. They are used to sort out and categorize the history teachers’ reasoning behind how and why they use popular culture in their teaching.

From the teachers’ interviews and reasoning, one can see that popular culture fulfills six different purposes. It appears that popular culture could be used as a means of: working with the use of history, using historical evidence, using popular culture to create variety in teaching, using popular culture for interesting, enlivening and relevance, to work with historical significance as well as using popular culture to discuss past and present. One could also see that the teacher’s interpretations of the students experiences were something that the teachers frequently discussed. Further, one could see that the use of history, as well as historical thinking concepts were used in connection with popular culture.