In the forward to Reading Television, Fiske and Hartley (2003) write that television programs "constitute a gigantic empirical archive of human sense-making, there for the taking, twenty-four/seven" (p.xviii). In addition, this "gigantic empirical archive" also includes fiction films, video games, documentary films, commercials, news media, radio, Internet, and many other forms of mass-produced visual media found in popular culture. In this dissertation I explore a particular piece of this contemporary archive. I suggest pedagogical projects based on a cultural studies analysis of "school docs," a particular genre of documentary films that I have defined and catalogued. This genre includes such documentary films as: Hoop Dreams (1994), Mad Hot Ballroom (2004), OT: Our Town (2002), Stupid in America (2006), Waiting for Superman (2010), and The War on Kids (2009). The pedagogical projects that I conceptualize are intended to explore issues and topics relevant to teacher education coursework; specifically issues and topics associated with the teaching of Social Foundations of Education. In this dissertation I: (1) discuss how I have become interested in the intersection of popular culture and teacher education; (2) define and discuss the "school docs" genre; (3) discuss how documentary films and fiction films have been taken up pedagogically by academics; (4) describe the context for which the projects in this dissertation have been conceptualized; (5) discuss a theoretical framework for analyzing school docs; (6) Describe the processes and procedures for collecting and analyzing school docs; and (7) suggest pedagogical projects based on my analysis of selected school docs.