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PN 025 Questioning the Mother Tongue Media Education Model – The Teacher’s Perspective
L. Ciboci1, R. Hobbs2, I. Kanižaj3
1 Edward Bernays College of Communication Management, Zagreb, Croatia
2 University of Rhode Island, Kingston, USA
3 University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
While in some countries media education is present in the education system from the earliest age of children, in most countries media education starts in
primary schools through various models of media education (Emedus, 2014, ANR TRANSLIT COST, 2014). Len Masterman (1994) highlights four key models
of media education in European education systems: media education as a separate subject; media education as a part of diverse subjects such as history,
geography, languages; media education as a leisure activity and media education as a part of an existing subject, usually the mother tongue. The European
Media Literacy Education Study (EMEDUS), conducted in 2014 in 27 Member States of the European Union (Croatia as the newest member of the European
Union was not involved in the study), showed that media education is a part of the mother tongue in 22 countries. However, in many countries, children
learn about the media within other subjects such as Visual or Plastics Arts, Social Studies, History or Languages (Emedus, 2014). In Croatia, just like in most
of the other EU countries, in formal curricula children learn about media through media culture module, within the mother tongue. Therefore, the school‑
teachers (from 1st to 4th grade) and teachers of the Croatian language (from 5th to 8th grade) are the most important actors responsible for media education
in primary schools. In the same time in Croatia there is still no official policy on media education. Even on the level of academic education the system is not
providing teachers with adequate knowledge about the media, in order to be able to teach about the media in schools, according to curricula. This will be
shown based on a detailed analysis of study programmes of teaching faculties in Croatia. The authors will also analyse the views about this model of media
education from the perspective of teachers, who are responsible for media education in Croatian schools from first to fourth grade. The research was carried
out on 150 primary school teachers. The results showed that 78.7% of schoolteachers think that they did not acquire sufficient knowledge about the media
during their college education. We shall analyse the strengths and weaknesses of that model, and how teachers themselves assess their own level of media
knowledge and media competences. The results indicate that 83.3% of schoolteachers consider that the existing program of media culture is not sufficient
for the acquisition of general knowledge about the media. Furthermore, 62.5% of schoolteachers disagreed with the statement that the existing model
of media culture in Croatian schools fully prepares children for the critical use of media messages. Nevertheless, only 36.7% of schoolteachers considered
that in primary schools a separate subject on media education of children should be introduced. After the quantitative survey among primary school teach‑
ers, the method of semi-structured interviews among 10 schoolteachers will provide a detailed analysis of how teachers themselves use the media in their
classes and how they encourage students to use them, but also to create their own content.
PN 026 A Media Education Position on Big Data Analytics
N. Brüggen1, I. Zorn2, V. Dander3
1 Institut für Medienpädagogik in Forschung und Praxis, Munich, Germany
2 TH Köln, Köln, Germany
3 University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Media education is challenged to respond to the progressive datafication of our society, commonly referred to under the buzz phrase ‘big data’. As mem‑
bers of a temporary working group of the ‘German Association for Media Education and Communication Culture’ (GMK) and the media education alliance
‘Keine Bildung ohne Medien’(KboM), we would like to contribute to a pan European discussion about media education and media literacy in this context.
The working group is preparing a position paper that covers a brief lay out of the technological basis, which is coined in the term ‘big data’. The paper
addresses societal challenges, which seem relevant from a media education point of view, and discusses the need for action within the media education
community. In that ongoing work, we identify limitations within media educational approaches that focus on awareness raising of individuals (e.g.“Think
before you post!”). Concepts like ‘informational self-determination’ come to their limits when confronted with automated data collection in mediatized
lifeworlds. Media education will have to put more emphasis on fostering political participation to support societal dialogue on new technologies of data
analytics and their regulation. Furthermore, media education will have to think about getting involved and raise our voice in technology development,
adopting the idea of quality online content for children in addressing the challenges of big data with the notion of quality in technology. Whilst ‘big data’is
the buzz phrase most commonly used in the news media, we prefer a focus on ‘big data analytics’. By that notion we understand the analytical means and
strategies that powerful computer technologies apply to evaluate (meaning to ‘analyze’ and to ‘extract value’) immense data collections, too large, fluid
and heterogeneous to be processed by conventional means. Yet, smaller data volumes can be analyzed using these technologies, too. Therefore the analytic
features are more relevant than the scale of the data analyzed. The application of these analytic features restricts self-determination within an almost
pervasively datafied lifeworld. But still it is people who design these technologies with certain interests, which illustrates that it is not all about technology,
but about frameworks of thinking and future expectations for societies, that have to be addressed. At its current version, the position paper identifies six
main challenges. They support the argument that media education needs to reflect increasing limitations of self-determination in mediatized lifeworlds.
This might lead media education to a paradigm shift from raising users’ literacy (self-reflected media use) to a more generalized approach. This would
strengthen the aspect of critical appropriation and participation, not only as users but as political actors – a notion some concepts of media literacy resp.
‘Medienkompetenz’already articulate. The paper will report on the discourse on Big Data and media education in the D-A-CH region and suggest six main
fields of future work and research.