CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Volume 22, Number 1, Spring 1993

ISSN 0710-4340

The Media Education Revolution

Len Masterman

Evaluating Standards in Media Education

Robyn Quin

Barrie McMahon

Setting an Agenda for Training

Gary Bazalgette

Two Dimensions of Teaching Television Literacy

Barbra S. Morris

The Second Spring: Media Education in Canada's Secondary
Schools

John J. Pungente

Systematic Development of Media Education in Chile

Miguel Reyes

Ana Maria Mendez

Media Education in the Danish Folkeskole

Birgrtte Tufte

An AMTEC Publication
EDITORIAL BOARD

Cheryl Amundsen

Me Gill University

Gary J. Anglin

University of Kentucky

Jon Baggaley

Concordia University

Robert C. Branch

Syracuse University

Robert M. Bernard

Concordia University

F. Barry Brown

University of Saskatchewan

Katy Campbell-Bonar

University of Alberta

Bruce Clark

University of Calgary

Dan Coldeway

Athabasca University

Thomas M. Duffy

Indiana University

Rodney S. Earle

University of North Carolina

D. J. Engel

University of Alberta

George L. Geis

OISE

Edward S. Halpern

AT&T Bell Laboratories

Michael Hannafin

Florida State University

William Hanson

Calgary Board of Education

Denis Hlynka

University of Manitoba

W. J. Hunter

University of Calgary

Robert Jones

Sheridan College of Applied
Arts and Technology

Lorne Koroluk

University of British Columbia

James J. LaFollette

University of Alberta

Richard F. Lewis

University of Windsor

David A. Mappin

University of Alberta

Earl R. Misanchuk

University of Saskatchewan

Ronald Owston

York University

Beverley A. Park

Avalon Consolidated School Bd. of
St. John's

Lauran Sandals

University of Calgary

Louise Sauve

Tele-Universite

Richard F. Schmid

Concordia University

R. J. Schmidt

Strathcona County Board of
Education

Steven Shaw

Concordia University

Mariela Tovar

Concordia University

Rolland Viau

Universite de Sherbrooke

Clayton R. Wright

Grant MacEwan Community
College

AMTEC BOARD OF
DIRECTORS

President

Barbara Martin

TVOntofio

Past President

David A. Mappin

University of Alberta

President Elect

Ross Mutton

Carleton University

Secretary / Treasurer

Lillian Carefoot

Curriculum Resources Centre

Director

Bob Christie

Christie Communications

Director

Esio Marzotto

University of Windsor

Membership

Dan Malone

Sherwood Park Catholic Schools
Canadian Journal
of Educational
Communication

Volume 22, Number 1
Spring 1993

Editor

Mary F. Kennedy

Translation

Michele Gour, Montreal

Production Manager

Mary Genova, WRITEWORKS

ISSN 0710-4340

The *Canadian Journal of Educational Communication* is published by the Association for Media and Technology In Education in Canada; 3-1750 The Queensway, Suite 1318, Etobicoke, Ontario M9C 5H5; Attention: Ms. Lillian Carefoot, Secretary/Treasurer. Notification of address change should be sent to the above. All articles are copyright by AMTEC and may be reproduced for non-profit use without permission provided credit is given to *CJEC*. Back Issues of *CJEC* are $16.05 Canadian and may be obtained by contacting the Editor. *CJEC* is indexed in the *Canadian Education Index* and ERIC.

Second Class Mail Registration No. 6956

INTRODUCTION

Mary F. Kennedy

1

ARTICLES

The Media Education Revolution
*Len Masterson*

5

Evaluating Standards in
Media Education
*Robyn Quin*
*Barrle McMahon*

15

Setting an Agenda for Training
*Gary Bazalgette*

27

Two Dimensions of Teaching
Television Literacy: Analyzing
Television Content and Analyzing
Television Viewing
*Barbra S. Morris*

37

The Second Spring: Media
Education in Canada's
Secondary Schools
*John J. Pungente*

47

Systematic Development of
Media Education in Chile
*Miguel Reyes*
*Ana Maria Mendez*

61

Media Education in the
Danish Folkeskole
*Birgitte Tufte*

69

MEDIAWARE REVIEW

79

BOOK REVIEWS

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Acknowledgement

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CJEC Special Issue on Media Education

Introduction

Mary F. Kennedy, Guest Editor

When I first began the editorial task of assembling this particular journal issue over a year ago, I had nothing but a list of names from around the globe who were leaders in the area of media literacy/media education. My personal knowledge of the subject matter was dated — I had incorporated media studies in English courses in my former life as a high school teacher, and I had, until the late 1970s, read widely in the area. My only recent forays included the occasional team-teaching of a graduate course in television studies. According to the development of media education paradigms described by Masterman, I was entrenched in the second stage — the Media as Popular Culture paradigm.

I had assumed that the thrust of the papers for the special issue would be on the underlying theoretical frameworks of media literacy, on the relationship of media education and critical thinking skills. Instead I found that the authors are, for the most part, comfortable with the existing theoretical underpinnings, and they are now focusing on the more practical and operational tasks of implementing media education in the curricula and in the schools. Hence my decision to change the name of the issue from Media Literacy to Media Education — a somewhat subtle and yet important distinction.

The issue presents profiles of media education activities around the globe—from the United States, to England, to Denmark, to Australia, to South America and back to Canada. The authors describe their experiences in working toward the development, implementation, and evaluation of media education programs for students and for teachers, delineating the major accomplishments and the constraints faced in trying to establish media studies as an integral part of schooling.

The first article by Len Masterman traces the development of media education through three paradigms — (1) the inoculation perspective; (2) the media as popular culture perspective; (3) the semiotic/ideological perspective. Masterman calls for "the grounding of media education in the dominant visual - televisual experiences of students."

Bobyn Quin and Barrie McMahon focus on the evaluation of media education programs, indicating the need for identification and specification of learning outcomes. They describe a regional testing program in Western Australian
secondary schools, and describe how the results should inform media education practices.

The British Film Institute has been active in providing inservice programs in media education for teachers in England over the past decade. Gary Bazalgette delineates problems faced by the government's stand on the provision of media education without providing the support in terms of training for teachers, and describes the BFI's response - the development of a comprehensive distance education program in cooperation with the Open University and the BBC Production Unit.

Media education in the form of a television literacy course for undergraduate students is the thrust of the paper by Barbra Morris. She emphasizes the need for a focus on actual textual evidence, as well as an understanding that the viewing process is essentially an individual experience.

John Pungente traces the growth and development of media education in Canada. While there are signs of interest in some provinces, there are many areas where media education is not as yet an issue. The province of Ontario, however, has become a national leader, and indeed a recognized leader internationally in the area of media education.

The focus of media education in Chile is on teacher education. Miguel Reyes and Ana Maria Mendez describe the partnership developed by university teachers in faculties of education and teachers in the school system who access inservice education courses on media education. The Chile experience is in opposition to the model followed in many countries, where governments have mandated or at least approved media studies as part of the curriculum, but failed to provide the necessary training or resources for teachers to properly implement such programs. The Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion is ensuring that there is a cadre of teachers interested in and trained to implement media education programs, in anticipation of such courses eventually being required in the national curriculum.

The Danish Folkeskole was the site of thirty-five experimental media education projects carried out between 1987 and 1991. Birgitte Tufte evaluated the projects, and describes the advantages and limitations of the special project approach to media education.

I have learned, through the development of this special issue, that media education is an accepted part of school curricula in a number of countries, and that even where there is acceptance and, in fact, intellectual support there are still numerous hurdles to be overcome. Teacher education does not include preparation for the teaching of media education, and most teachers charged with meeting media education objectives have little support in terms of resources and inservice training. I have also learned that those who are actively leading the media education movement are now functioning as doers rather than as thinkers. I do not mean this in an unflattering sense in any way. It is simply an acknowledgment, on my part, that there is much to be done to ensure that strong media education programs are available to all students, and these action-oriented activities are, for the time being, taking precedence over the more esoteric, theoretical issues.
The development of the special issue on Media Education relied on the input of the *CJEC* editorial board, colleagues from across Canada at the school district level, and colleagues in the Learning Resources Program, Memorial University of Nfld. I thank you all.

AUTHOR

Mary F. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Educational Communication and Technology, Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Nfld., St. John's, NFA1B3X8.
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# Press Release

For Immediate Publication

January 11, 1993

The Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada (AMTEC), which includes among its members professionals in media education and instructional technology in primary, secondary, post-secondary education and trainers in business and industry, will be hold its annual conference in June of 1993 in Windsor, Ontario. The program will feature plenary session presentations by:

**Joan Pennefather, Government Film Commissioner**

National Film Board of Canada

**Peter Herrndorf, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer**

TVOntario/Ontario Educational Communication Authority

**Robert Larson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer**

WTVS/Channel 56, Detroit Public Television

The plenary sessions will be complemented by 60 to 70 concurrent paper sessions streamed under the topics: Media Management, Program Development, Media Production, Research and Theory, Message Design, Distance Education and Applications of Technology.

A Media Awards Festival will highlight winning entries in the annual media production competition. Categories include: videotape, sound filmstrip, sound slide, 16 or 8 mm film, microcomputer and interactive media. There are awards for eight classes of entries: individual school, school system, post-secondary, government agency, student course project, commercial producer and business/industry.

## AMTEC*93

Theme: Bridging Learning Opportunities

June 13 - 16, 1993,

Cleary International Centre

Windsor, Ontario, Canada

**For registration information, contact:**

Margaret Landstrom, Division of Continuing Education

University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4

Telephone (519)253-4232 ext 3305

Fax (519)973-7038

E-Mail ESIOM@UCC.UWINDSOR.CA

**Media Awards Festival** entry forms are available from:

John Miller, Essex County Educational Media Centre,

360 Fairview Ave. West,

Essex, Ontario, N8M 1Y4,

Telephone (519)776-5610,

Fax (519)77fr4457

AMTEC '93 c/o DIVISION FOR INSTRUCTIONAL DEVELOPMENT, UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR, WINDSOR, ONTARIO, CANADA, N9B 3P4, FAX 519 9713608

BRIDGING LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES / POUR UN SAVOIR INTÉGRÉ

JUNE 13-18, CLEARY INTERNATIONAL CENTRE, WINDSOR, ONT.

Windsor Board of Education Windsor Separate School Board University of Windsor St. Clair College

Essex County Separate School Board

Essex County Board of Education

TV Ontario WTVS/TV56
# The Media Education Revolution

Len Masterman

**Abstract:** This paper outlines some of the major principles of media education as it is practised throughout the world today and discusses some of its most important implications. It attempts to show how current practice has evolved out of earlier, less satisfactory paradigms of media education, and provides a brief critique of these paradigms. Finally the paper suggests some points for future growth in the subject.

**Resume:** Dans cet article, nous voulons souligner quelques principes importants, appliques aujourd'hui partout dans le monde, dans le domaine de l'étude des medlas. Nous discuterons également de quelques unes des implications les plus importantes. Nous tenterons de demontrer comment les pratiques actuelles ont evolue a partir des paradigmes plus ou moins satisfaisants dont nous ferons une breve critique. Finalement nous apportons quelques suggestions quant a l'évolution de l'étude des medlas.

This article has a simple agenda. It will attempt to describe the major principles of media education as it has developed across the world in the past decade, culminating in the publication of the invaluable Media Literacy Resource Guide in Ontario in 1989.1 will try to demonstrate how those principles developed out of earlier, less satisfactory, attempts to teach about the media. And I will try to suggest some ways forward for the 1990s. My simple agenda, then, has three parts: Where are we today? How did we get there? Where might we go from here?

In order to provide a specific focus to this synoptic account I shall try and outline the different answers that have been given in different historical periods to that most fundamental of questions, "Why should we bother to study or teach about the media at all? What is it, as teachers, that we are trying to achieve? Media teachers, have, in the past, given three different answers to that question and those different answers (and the practices that followed from them) form the three great historical paradigms of media education.

The earliest answer to the question: Why study the media? ran something like this: "The mass media are really like a kind of disease against which children need
to be protected. What the media infect is the culture as a whole. The common culture is contaminated by the media's commercial motivations, their manipulation and exploitation of their audiences, their corruption of language and their offering of easy, low-level appeals and satisfactions". What makes the media such a problem on this analysis is the fact that they produce a counterfeit culture which is a direct threat to genuine culture, and to authentic cultural values. Crucially, this is an audience problem. It is not simply that popular culture and high culture cannot somehow co-exist. Clearly, at one level, they can. The threat comes through the corruption of the audience. The future of serious literature, Queenie Leavis argued in 1932, *inher book Fiction and the Reading Public*, was absolutely dependent upon the continued existence of a serious literate readership to sustain it. And contemporary newspapers, magazines, and advertisements were actively destroying that serious reading public. The media demanded, and therefore produced, shorter attention spans and an appetite for the sensational expressed in slick, smart and superficial language. This constituted an attack upon *the* very foundations of serious reading and indeed serious engagement with any art form.

It is salutary to remember that these arguments were being fully articulated in the pre-television era. They were a response primarily to changes which had taken place in the economics of newspaper production in the late 19th century. When advertising revenue rather than readers' payments formed the basis of newspaper finance, there were corresponding changes in the content and form of newspapers. Stories became shorter and more fragmented. Headlines were used to attract attention, and there was less emphasis upon information within stories, and more upon the human interest element. In short, with the movement towards financing primarily by advertising, the modern press was born. Essentially now newspapers made their profits not through the production of news, but through the production of audiences, and all of the techniques I have described were designed precisely to hook and hold audience attention, to create the audience commodity.

If the media were a definite kind of cultural disease, then media education was designed to provide protection *against* it. Media education was an education against the media, and contrasted the manipulative nature of the media with the timeless values of real culture, as embodied supremely in literature. That earliest paradigm is sometimes known as the inoculative paradigm. You allow a little media material into the classroom only in order to inoculate the student more effectively against it. On the whole, media teachers today represent a powerful lobby against that way of thinking about the media. But it is still probable the way in which most other teachers continue to think about the media. And you will still see remnants of that old inoculative view within the most progressive media education practice. For example, teaching about advertising is still almost universally teaching against advertising, rather than an attempt to develop an understanding of the role and function of modern advertising agencies.

What effectively put an end to the dominance (though not the existence) of the inoculative paradigm was the arrival in schools in the early 1960s of a generation of young teachers whose intellectual formation owed every bit as much to the
influence of popular culture, and particularly films, as it did to print-based culture. Such teachers were apt to argue that the films of directors such as Bergman, Renoir, Bunuel, Fellini and in particular the French New Wave directors actually had as much intellectual energy and moral seriousness as anything that was being produced within European or American literature. They produced a new answer to the question: Why study the media? It was to enable students to discriminate not against the media but within them. To tell the difference, that is, between the good and the bad film, the authentic and the shoddy television programme, work within popular culture of some integrity and work which was merely commercial and exploitative.

This was the Popular Arts paradigm — the idea that popular culture was every bit as capable of producing authentic works of art as high culture. It gave Media Education a new agenda and a renewed energy in the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s almost all of that energy had been dissipated. There were three principal reasons, I think, why the Popular Arts paradigm failed to produce an adequate foundation for effective media teaching.

1) First of all, media education was still essentially a protectionist. It was still a somewhat paternalistic exercise in improving students' tastes. It was still based on a very negative view of the media preferences of the vast majority of students, and was always likely to be resisted by them for this very reason.

2) Secondly, it remained an evaluative paradigm, which was severely disabled by the fact that there were no widely agreed standards or criteria available for evaluating the media. Media teachers found themselves on very uncertain territory when they wanted to demonstrate precisely why this newspaper or television programme or piece of popular music was superior to that one. There was also a dangerous tendency for good to be equated with middle-class, and bad with working-class tastes. The kind of media material which teachers tended to like - European films shown in film societies, television documentaries, and serious newspapers - was self-evidently good. Hollywood movies, tabloid newspapers, and television game shows - the kind of material liked by students - were bad.

3) Thirdly, it was not simply a question of the practical difficulties of discriminating between the good and the bad in the media. There were major doubts about the very appropriateness of applying aesthetic criteria at all to a vast range of media output. Was there really any point in trying to discriminate, for example, between good and bad news bulletins, advertisements, sports programmes or weather forecasts? The Popular Arts movement was, essentially, a way of legitimising film studies. It privileged film, within the study of the media, as the one popular form with unchallengable claims to have produced works of authentic merit. But it provided a distinctly limited way of illuminating the media as a whole. And by the 1970s it was becoming crystal clear that any media education that was to have any relevance at all for students
had to give some pre-eminence not so much to film, which was actually
somewhat marginal to the experience of most students, but to television
which was much more central to their experience.

It was clear, then, by the mid-1970s that the Popular Arts paradigm, as a way
of making sense of all of the media, was exhausted. No other coherent way of
thinking about the media as a whole had yet emerged, however. Most of the 1970s
are best characterised as a period of fragmentation of the subject. A typical media
studies course of the time, for example, might have consisted of a term's work on
film, a term on television, some work on advertising, a little time on popular
music, and so on, with teachers and students bringing to bear upon each of these
areas, approaches and questions which tended to be topic-specific and to have
little in common with one another. The idea that there might be over-arching key
concepts, or a particular mode of inquiry which could integrate and unite the
different parts of the subject had not yet arrived. It was, as yet, difficult to think
of media studies as a coherent and disciplined area of study at all.

Slowly, however, during the late 1970s media teachers began to make
connections between their own down-to-earth classroom concerns and the drift of
a number of structuralist ideas, particularly in the areas of semiotics and
ideology. Very briefly, semiotics made two major contributions to media educa-
tion:

1) It exploded the media's own view of themselves as windows on the world, or unproblematic mirrors or reflectors of external reality. The media, rather, were actively produced, their messages encoded. The media, in other words, mediated. They were sign-systems which needed to be critically read, rather than reflections of a reality which we, as the audience, had to accept.

Semiotics, then, helped establish the first principle of media education, the principle of non-transparency. And it helped establish the dominant concept of media education as being that of *representation*. The media dealt with representations and not realities, and media meanings could not be pulled apart from the forms in which they were expressed.

2) Semiotics' second great contribution to media education was scarcely less momentous. As we have seen, the objective of media education up until this point had been to encourage discrimination. The value question - precisely how good is this newspaper, film or television programme - was central to the whole project. Semiotics overturned all of this. To take just one example: when Roland Barthes in his key work, *Mythologies*, analysed a striptease act, a plate of steak and chips, a tourist guide, or a wrestling-match, he was challenging, by his very choice of subjects, established cultural categories, tastes and values. For if a plate of steak and chips or a striptease act were to be as worthy of serious attention and analysis as, say, a poem, then a daring equation had been made between these cultural objects. Semiotics undermined, at a stroke, those appar-
ently immutable distinctions between the culturally valuable and the meretricious upon which media studies, and literary studies before it, had been based.

Both of these aspects of semiotics—its emphasis upon questions of representation, and its by-passing of the value question — were of inestimable value in marking a distinct break with literary-based ways of analysing the media. And they particularly illuminated the nature of television, whilst having a surprising degree of potency across all of the media. They provided media studies with precisely the kind of cross-media coherence the subject had so far been lacking, and they firmly grounded media studies in the dominant visual (i.e., televisual) experiences of students.

The way in which theories of ideology moved during the 1970s curiously dovetailed with these developments. At the risk of grotesquely over-simplifying a rather complex set of arguments, I think we can say that there was certainly a marked movement away from that traditional notion of ideology as a body of dominant ideas and practices imposed from above upon subordinate groups and which resulted in false consciousness. Rather, following the rediscovery of the work of Antonio Gramsci in the early 1970s, ideology came to be equated with common-sense, with what was most natural and taken-for-granted about our ideas and practices. Dominance was achieved, that is, as much by consent as by imposition.

These developments in semiology and ideology pointed in precisely the same direction. It was a direction that had profound implications for all media teachers. They pointed to the fact that the ideological power of the media was very much tied up with the naturalness of the image, and with the tendency of the media to pass off encoded, constructed messages as natural ones. They demonstrated, too, that questions of power were central to discussions about the production, circulation and consumption of images and representations. They raised questions about which groups had the power to define, and which groups were only ever defined. They established, in other words, the importance of a politics of representation, and thrust media studies into the heart of some of the most important political and social questions of our time.

I have emphasised the shift from a Popular Arts paradigm which was principally concerned with questions of aesthetic value to a representational paradigm, the third paradigm, which placed questions of politics and power at its centre because I think that that shift lay at the heart of most of the debates and discussions which were taking place within the media education movement during the 1980s. What was being achieved, I think, was a fairly massive movement out of one paradigm and into the other, and what was being worked out were some of the more radical implications of that shift. For what soon became apparent was that we were talking about something more than a change in subject content. What was being proposed were radical changes in teaching objectives, in classroom methodology, and indeed in epistemology, in teachers' and students' understanding of what constituted knowledge.
I can do no more than very briefly indicate some of the more important implications of the new media studies. First of all, and perhaps most remarkably, it de-centred the teacher in a number of ways which many found unsettling. Teachers were no longer the experts - the licensed arbiters of truth or taste - in quite the way that they had been and indeed still were in more traditional subjects. In the media class any group of students was always likely to have a far wider range of popular cultural references at its disposal than any single teacher could have. The expertise which existed in the classroom was much more widely dispersed.

Secondly, teachers no longer possessed an approved body of knowledge or corpus of information to which they alone held the key, and which they were expected to pass down to students. What Paulo Freire condemned as the banking concept of education, in which knowledgeable teachers deposited information upon ignorant students, did not seem to apply to media studies. Indeed media teachers did not control information at all. The information which was around in the media studies classroom was being provided by the media themselves. They were communicating it laterally rather than hierarchically, speaking across rather than down to their audiences. And they addressed teachers and students alike. The media equalised teachers and students. Both were equally and equal objects of the media's address. This produced a quite new situation in the classroom. Teachers and their students became co-investigators of media images and texts. They could reflect critically upon information, side by side, in a way which had been difficult when the teacher was more closely identified with the subject content.

Media education de-centred the teacher in other ways too. Teaching methods became much more student-centred. Simulations, practical work, sequencing exercises, prediction exercises, code-breaking games and a whole battery of techniques to encourage active learning were developed since it was essential to give students the confidence to begin to take control of their own learning and to make their own independent judgments.

Why was this important? Well, one reason was that if media education was to be of any value at all, it had to be thought of as a lifelong process. Media education was not going to be of much value unless students were willing and able to apply what they learned at school to their consumption of media outside of school. Indeed, it was not going to be of much use unless students had the ability, commitment and interest to carry their critical thinking about the media into adult life.

When teachers took a lifelong perspective on their work, their classroom practices began to change in a number of ways:

1) High student motivation became an end in itself, rather than a form of pill-sugaring. Simply, if students did not find the subject enjoyable and fulfilling, then the teacher had failed. Students would not wish to go on learning about and engaging with the media after they had passed beyond the gates of the school.
2) Having a lifelong perspective meant that it was essential to teach for transfer. It was never enough for a media teacher to help students gain an insight into that specific newspaper article or television documentary. It is always necessary for students and teachers to move beyond an understanding of specific texts towards an understanding of the general principles which would have relevance to the analysis of similar texts. What was important about media education was not so much what students knew, but whether they could use and apply what they knew to new situations and new texts. The objective here was to develop students' critical autonomy: their ability to stand upon their own two critical feet and apply informed critical judgements to media texts which they would encounter in the future.

3) The desire to encourage critical autonomy, increase student motivation, and develop lifelong abilities pushed teachers into using teaching methods which encouraged independent learning. Media education became, too, primarily an investigative process which encouraged understanding rather than an initiatory process designed to develop appreciation or to impose specific cultural values. It was organised around key ideas (selection, construction, mediation, representation, coding, etc.) which were taught via a spiral rather than a linear curriculum, and which were taught as analytical tools rather than as a kind of alternative content.

Media education also involved a quite new integration of analytical work and practical activity. Critical analysis had to be informed by some sense of the constraints of production. Practical work, for its part, had to involve more than a set of merely technical competencies. It had to be critical and reflective, and feed back into analysis. What media education aimed to achieve at its best was a fusion of practical criticism and critical practice.

Finally, what all of this added up to was a distinctive epistemology. It involved a revaluation of what knowledge was and how it was produced. Knowledge was not simply something which existed in the world-out-there, and which was relayed to students via textbooks and teachers. It was not something which others possessed and students lacked. It was not something that students had only to accommodate to, or which oppressed them with its weight and certainty. Knowledge and ideas, on the contrary could be actively produced and created by students through a process of investigation and reflection. The world-out-there wasn't the proper end of education, but its starting point.

What all of this amounted to in the 1980s was a really quite remarkable educational revolution which was being carried out at a time of general educational conservatism. To return to my original focussing question. The answer which this third paradigm - the representational paradigm - gave to the question 'Why Study the Media?', went something like this: 'In contemporary societies the media are self-evidently important creators and mediators of social knowledge. An understanding of the ways in which the media represent reality, the tech-
niques they employ, and the ideologies embedded within their representations ought to be an entitlement for all citizens and future citizens in a democratic society".

As I have suggested, in working through the implications of this paradigm, teachers found themselves working in new ways in the classroom. In fact, they were beginning to answer what is probably the most important question faced by educational systems in the late 20th century and beyond: What constitutes an effective democratic education for majorities of future citizens? Media teachers should be saluted for producing some innovative and exciting answers to that question. And this at a time when educational systems have tended to move in the opposite direction, towards greater differentiation and elitism, and when even such ideals as equality of opportunity have been subjected to widespread denigration.

So much for the past and the present. What of the future? In what ways will media education have to change and develop through the 1990s? Let me suggest two related points for future growth:

1) I think we will need to wake up to the full implications of the marketing revolution which has been taking place since the early 1980s. The growth and expansion of commercially-based media during that time has produced a situation in which advertising can no longer be seen as something which takes place between programmes on television, or in the spaces around the editorial material in the press. Rather, the whole of the media has now been opened up, not simply to advertising but to a whole range of marketing techniques such as product placement, public relations, sponsorship, plugs for films and records, advertisements, news management, and the creation of disinformation in a way which makes the old distinctions between advertising and editorial material almost obsolete. Similarly it is simply not possible for anyone to be media literate today if he or she does not understand that the primary function of commercial media is the segmentation and packaging of audiences for sale to advertisers. Up until now media education has been based upon a premise of the most astonishing naivety: that the primary function of the media has been the production of information or entertainment. What we have principally studied in media education have been texts: television programmes, newspaper stories, and magazine articles for example. But these are not the chief products of the media. They are what Dallas Smythe has called the free lunch: the means by which the real product of the media, from which its profits are derived - the audience product - is summoned into existence.

What I am suggesting here is not simply that we beef up our teaching about advertising and marketing as a topic. Rather, a critical understanding of the basic techniques and tenets of marketing will need to be brought to bear upon the study of all media texts and institutions and will have as central a place in the analysis of today's media as such concepts
as authorship had within films studies in the 1960s, and representation
and ideology had in the 1980s.

2) The second area of concern is really the obverse of the first. For the growth of commercial media has been accompanied by the increasing impoverishment of public service and pluralistic media. The spaces in which we, as members of society, can communicate with one another without governmental or commercial interference are being closed down dramatically. In Britain, for example the great media debate of the 1990s will concern the future of the BBC, and whether indeed it has a future as a cheaply and universally available high quality public service paid for by an annual licence-fee.

As media teachers I think that we are going to have to develop an explicit commitment to the principles of open and universal access to information, and to preserving the independence, from undue commercial influence or government interference, of at least some information producers. As teachers working within public educational systems I believe that we do have a de facto commitment to the maintenance and defence of public information systems, and that we have to find ways of expressing this not in terms of an uncritical partisanship or on the basis of a narrow anti-commercialism, but rather as an open and generous allegiance to democratic values. And that entails, as always, putting all of the arguments to our students but leaving them with the responsibility for making their own choices.

Make no mistake, very large issues are at stake in struggles over the future configuration of the media industries. Should information be regarded only as a commodity or does it have a social value? Is it preferable to produce information which meets general social needs or information which makes a profit? Is access to information a right, or should it be restricted to those who can pay? Is information only an extension of property rights or does it lie in the public domain? It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the future shape of all cultures lies in the ways in which they answer these questions.

The existence of an informed and articulate public opinion on these issues will be an important — perhaps the important — influence on how these issues are settled. It is our important task as media teachers in the 1990s and beyond to help create that informed public. For that is one of the slender threads upon which the future of media freedom, and ultimately democratic freedom, hangs.
## REFERENCES

Barthes, R. (1972). *Mythologies*. London: Cape.

Friere, P. (1972). *Pedagogy of the opressed*. London: Penguin.

Leavis, Q. D. (1932). *Fiction and the readingpublic*. London: Chatto & Windus.

Ontario Ministry of Education (1989). *Media literacy*. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Education.

## AUTHOR

Len Masterman is Professor of Education at University of Nottingham, School of Education, Inservice Training Unit, University Park, Nottingham, England NG7 2RD. Copyright for this article resides with Dr. Masterman.

6 L. Masterman

September 1992
Evaluating Standards in Media
Education

Robyn Quin
Barrie McMahon

**Abstract:** There is now considerable international consensus about the objectives of media studies. The objectives focus on the processes by which audiences can make sense of and critique the media. This paper addresses the outcomes of these initiatives for one group of students In the Western Australian government school system. Information is provided about a testing program of fifteen year old students which investigated the extent to which the students were meeting the media analysis objectives as outlined in the syllabus.

The results provide information about the students' capacity to make sense of the media messages and about the performance of particular demographic groups Including gender, non-English speaking background and Aboriginal students. On the basis of strengths and weaknesses revealed in the testing program, some adjustments to present teaching programs are proposed. These adjustments address the needs of both the general cohort and the particular needs of special groups

**Rdsum**£: On note, dl'heureactuelle, un important concensus International ausujet des objectifs de l'6tude des medias. Ces objectifssont centres sur les processus par lesquels les spectateurs comprennent et critlquent les m6dias. Dans cet article, nous nous penchons sur les resultats d'une telle etude chez un groupe d'etudlants du systeme scolalre gouvernemental d'Australie occidentale. Les resultats d'un pro- gramme experimental applique a des etudiants d'une quinzaine d'annees, montrent comment les etudiants attelgnent les objectifs d'analyse des medias tel qu'ils sont enonces dans le programme scolalre.

Les resultats montrent egalement comment les etudiants comprennent les mes-
sages mediatlques et nous renseignent sur les reactions de groupes
demographiques speciflques. Ces groupes etaient d1vises selon le sexe, la langue
maternelle (autre que l'anglais) et, si les etudiants etaient d'origine aborigene ou
non. Les forces et falblesses de ce programme devaluation determineront les
ajustements a apporter aux programmes d'enselgnement proposes. Ces
ajustements concerneront les besolns de la majorite et les besolns speciflques de
groupes partlculiers.
In many countries, including Britain, Canada and Australia media education has found itself a place in the curriculum and a space on the timetable. This position, within the establishment of subjects, has resulted in demands from educational authorities for formal syllabuses and assessment and course evaluation. This paper outlines a 1991 project conducted in Western Australian schools in response to such demands. The project aimed to assess the level of understanding of the media among fifteen year old students who had studied the formal syllabus as part of their English studies. In addition, the project was designed to indicate those areas of conceptual development which the syllabus was failing to develop satisfactorily. Project leaders hoped that the testing program would help in the development of new and more effective teaching strategies.

## Background

The project was part of a system-wide analysis of standards in Western Australian schools. Titled 'Monitoring Standards in Education' the system-wide program was an institutional response to the community's concerns with educational standards in government schools. There was a general belief, fuelled by rising unemployment and opportunistic politicians, that educational standards were falling, particularly in the areas of numeracy and literacy. Public accountability for development of skills in the basics became the popular cry. This community and political concern with standards provided the opportunity for media educators to identify student media analysis skills as fundamental, or basics in their own right.

All government school students study syllabuses which detail a sequence of media analysis skills to be developed in all students. The Lower Secondary Studies Syllabuses (years 8 to 10) were introduced in 1988 and are compulsory for all government school students, therefore those students taking part in the project discussed below had three years of study in the media analysis skills identified in the English syllabuses. (Some year 10 students also undertake additional programs involving media analysis by electing to do the optional media studies course.)

Three phases of the project are complete: the development of outcome statements of student learning; the development, trial and implementation of the test instruments; and the evaluation of the results across a range of variables. Yet to be undertaken is a review of the syllabus material in the light of the test results.

## The Development Phase

For the purpose of the testing program, a continuum of outcome statements describing media analysis skills was developed from the syllabus documents by a team of senior media and English teachers. The continuum covered the years K to 12 of schooling. The ten levels of understanding identified on the continuum are not related to year levels, nor do they cover every aspect of the syllabus. The ten stages indicate key understandings only, and do not offer a comprehensive summary of the syllabus. Although there is no nexus between the grade levels of students and the ten stages of the continuum, year ten students (fifteen year
olds) could be expected to perform at the higher levels of the continuum. The continuum identifies a content strand with the organisers of language and narrative, and a context strand containing the organisers of production/circulation, audiences and values. Ten levels of difficulty are identified for each organiser. The continuum was used to develop the appropriate tests and later as the basis for marking student work.

## *The Testing Phase*

The next step was to develop instruments by which we could assess the level of media analysis skills in students across the state. There were some underlying and unstated aims behind our study. They can be categorized as follows:

**Political.** In the current climate politicians and parents must be assured that the children are learning something and media studies has traditionally been accused of offering a soft option. It was hoped that the testing program might offer hard data as to the strengths and weaknesses of the media programs in schools. This was not without its dangers, but in the current economic and political climate teachers cannot remain aloof from demands for accountability. As advocates of media education we thought it in our own best interests to contribute to the accountability process and take responsibility for the evaluation of the aims, content and outcomes of the media course.

**Educational.** It was felt that the project could offer some valuable information for teachers about the strengths and weaknesses of the students, which could be used to develop strategies, building upon the strengths and eradicating the weaknesses. The test instruments were designed to be used in the same manner as doctors use blood tests — as a guide to professional judgement and not as a replacement for it. The instruments were to serve as diagnostic tools that would point to areas in need of remediation.

Two tests were developed by a panel of teachers. They were pre-piloted, piloted and modified before the formal testing program commenced. The Media Language test involved the analysis of three different print advertisements. The second test, Media Narrative, required the analysis of an introductory segment from a television situation comedy. The students were shown a twelve minute extract which was repeated once again after they had read the questions. Both tests covered to some degree the language, narrative, production/circulation, audience and values organisers the emphasis varying in each test. During one week in September 1991, 1425 students, representing just under ten percent of the cohort of fifteen year olds in the state, were tested. Approximately 50% of the students attempted each test, but some students undertook both tests.

As experienced teachers we were well aware of the pitfalls in test design and the impossibility of ensuring true test validity. A further complication arose in the preparation of marking guides because we were trying to place students on a continuum, therefore we had to distinguish between levels of sophistication in the answers. There were no questions which demanded a yes/no, correct/incorrect answer, therefore we had to determine the type of response which would place a student at level six and the response that would place him or her at level nine. The
results of the trial tests were used to distinguish between the levels of responses. At times we were reminded of the piece from Alice in Wonderland

"... how can you possibly award prizes when everyone missed the target?" said Alice.

"Well" said the Queen, "some missed by more than others and we have a fine normal distribution of misses, which means we can forget about the target."

## *The Evaluation Phase*

The tests were marked by a team of trained markers and then subjected to analysis along a number of paradigms using computer-based programs (T-Test, Chi Square Test). The results gave us information about students' strengths and weaknesses, their position on the continuum of outcome statements, and their position in relation to others in the sample. In addition, the results offered information about the differences in performances of males and females; those from English speaking backgrounds compared to those from non-English speaking backgrounds; those of Aboriginal extraction compared with those from non-Aboriginal backgrounds, and heavy consumers of television compared with light users.

## *Gender Differences*

Female students performed better than males on the tests. There were no test items on which males outperformed females. The gender factor turned out to be the most significant of all the variables. The test items wherein a statistically significant difference between the performance of males and females could be identified were those which covered the following aspects of media analysis:

* understanding of media codes, particularly those related to the symbolic significance of body language, setting, objects, colour, technical conventions (e.g. the symbolic associations with different print styles);
* understanding of the link between codes and the construction of the audience's position (e.g. the effect of voice-over in positioning the audience);

* understanding of the link between the codes and the cultural values that are associated with them. (e.g., the link between stereotypes, the values they portray and the ideological positions they conserve.)

A possible explanation for the gender imbalance in the results might be the literacy factor. Students were required to read questions and provide written answers. Other Monitoring Standards tests have revealed that year ten females have superior literacy skills to year ten males. Although the possibility cannot be completely discounted, the test items which required longer answers were not necessarily those where females outperformed males, nor were the questions that were longer and/or more complex in their requirements necessarily those that produced results with a gender imbalance.
The performance difference may also be a by-product of the test content. The Media Language test used advertisements featuring women in various stereotypical roles. A possible explanation for the superior performance of females is that females found more relevance in the images portrayed and were therefore more ready to critique these representations. But as the superiority of females was illustrated across both tests, the gender specific examples that were used in the Media Language test cannot be a complete explanation of the performance difference.

If the bias is not in the test items, a further possibility is that there is a bias in the teaching and/or the culture that encourages females to develop more finely tuned media skills than males. There is a body of evidence to indicate that our culture (and concomitantly our education system and media) operate within a masculine discourse. The result is the comparative disadvantage of women, and it could be argued that females have more to gain from recognising their less favourable representation in the media and more to gain by challenging it. In contrast the empowered group, the white middle class males, has less to gain from recognising and critiquing the anomalies in the representations. Is it possible then that the females in the test sample would be more sensitive to the images portrayed and to the values underpinning them than the males — hence the superior performance of females?

If this account of the gender performance difference is valid then a partial solution might be for teachers to place greater emphasis on the analysis skills that are outlined in the values strand of the Media Analysis continuum. The performance of male students may then be improved to a threshold where they do possess the critical skills to analyse their own cultural position. However if the premise is accurate, females will continue to outperform males in this area because of the intrinsic motivation provided by the unfavourable imbalances in cultural representations. A change in focus is probably overdue. A large amount of textual analysis centres around the representation of females in the media. The representation of masculinity receives less attention and criticism. The traditional representation of masculinity is under threat currently from alternative representations, stemming mainly from television. If the emergent representations of males as caring, empathetic men is to contribute in a positive way to forming the social identity of male students then these representations should come under scrutiny. Both male and female students could benefit from a wide-ranging exploration of the media's representation of masculinity.

## Language Differences

Not surprisingly, students from English speaking backgrounds performed better on the tests than those from non-English speaking backgrounds. There was no item with a variation of statistical significance in which non-English speaking background students outperformed English speaking background students. The difference was not as pronounced as the gender difference. Again the discrepancy does not seem to be attributable to the literacy dimension of the test as questions with a high literacy component did not necessarily produce a
statistically significant result. There were two related areas where English speaking background students outperformed those from non-English speaking backgrounds:

the ability to identify target audiences
the ability to determine audience appeal.

In the case of the target audiences, there was a statistically significant difference in the performances of the two groups when they considered age range of audiences, gender preference for various audiences, class identification for different audiences and the link between target audience and program time slots. Similar problems were experienced by non-English speaking background students when examining the audience appeal of programs.

A possible explanation is that many of these non-English speaking background students read the media texts from outside the dominant reading position. The preferred reading of the text may not be easily accessible to the non-English speaking background students because they are not well placed to identify with the values and attitudes of core groups in society. They may see themselves as peripheral and members of what can be loosely termed The Other by reason of their ethnic backgrounds. If this assumption is correct and teachers are to address the problem it would seem that additional attention needs to be given to the analysis skills identified in the audience strand of the continuum.

## Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Performance Differences

The tests did not identify sufficient numbers of Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander students to make definitive judgements about the performance of this group. There were, however, sufficient students in the sample to identify some patterns. There was some correlation between the performance of Aboriginal students and those from non-English speaking backgrounds but there were fewer test items, overall, in which there was a significant statistical discrepancy. The test items which focussed on the mass media codes resulted in a poorer performance from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Given the small sample and the variety of Aboriginal backgrounds within that small sample (some having English speaking backgrounds, some not), it is difficult to predict the types of strategies which may lead to further improvement for this group other than to focus on similar targets as were identified for the non-English speaking background students.

## Television Viewing Differences

The correlation between the number of television viewing hours and the performance of students on the tests was statistically significant. Light television users performed better than heavy television users and this trend was more pronounced with males. The results for females were not statistically significant. The two tests yielded different results. The tests that required students to analyse print advertisements did not produce any statistically significant results.
The results from the test requiring analysis of a situation comedy were significant. Heavy users of television, particularly males, performed at a lower level than the light users on the television analysis test.

How can this result be interpreted? Simplistic equations such as "the more they watch, the less they know" may be tempting, but could be misleading. Such assumptions about the influence of television may still have some currency in the popular press, but they have been effectively discredited by research. It would however be legitimate to conclude that simply watching television does not lead to better media analysis skills. They have to be learned. It is a conclusion which should strengthen the claims of media teachers regarding their place in the curriculum.

Eather more speculative is the question of why this result. Perhaps the key to the poor analyst/heavy viewer correlation are the social circumstances and general attitudes to schooling of the students. Our results gave us no information about such issues as leisure activities available to the sample group, school performance, access to learning resources and many other factors that might be directly relevant to both their viewing habits and their test performance.

What do we do about this result? If the above speculation is correct, we as teachers do not have control over the social variables and cannot change the students' viewing patterns even if this were deemed to be desirable. We can, however, arm the students with improved analysis skills. These results indicate such a need.

## *The State-wide Profile*

The evaluation project has pointed to some serious deficiencies in students' understandings. The major problems identified in the study are lack of an awareness and understanding of the social context and social impact of the media, the lack of an understanding of both ideology and the media's role in maintaining existing power relationships. These weaknesses point to shortcomings in our syllabus and our teaching strategies. We will examine these results in greater detail.

## *The Social Context*

First, the results indicate that students can go through the motions - they are adept at deconstructing a given image. The students are surprisingly good at textual analysis, able to pick an image to pieces but unable to make the conceptual leap between the text and its context. The students' problems with linking their textual analysis with wider issues of representation is, on one level, a question of maturity. Students do not have a world view, a sense of themselves as part of a wider society. Society for them is something out there that they will participate in when they leave school. The first problem identified, then, is the need to furnish students with the skills to apply their analysis skills to a wider social context.
## Ideology and Power

The Monitoring Standards results indicated that students generally lacked the ability to discuss the media in terms of its role as a consciousness industry. This is a major problem, as the common requirement in the syllabuses of Australia, Britain and Canada is the demand that students understand the ways in which the media circulate attitudes and values. Not all the syllabuses use these words, some talk about ways of thinking, ways of seeing the world. The bolder use the term ideology. The findings of the study suggest that the central object of media education - the ability to analyse the role of the media in winning the hearts and minds of people - is not being met.

## Implications

The syllabus is really about what we want students to be able to do after they have left school. What we teach is determined by a vision of the future. We want students to be competent and critical users of the media - not competent and critical for one school year and long enough to pass the examination, but people who will continue to be competent and critical users of the media long after they have left our care. Therefore the texts we give students to analyse at school are simply vehicles—a means to an end—and that end is the development of critical skills which can be applied to any aspect of the media in the future. The exercises we set students are only useful activities in so far as they give students skills and knowledge they can apply in the future. If at the end of their school days the students can talk and write intelligently only about the attitudes and values of the texts they have studied in school but cannot apply their knowledge to other media products, then as teachers we have failed. We need to develop strategies that will encourage students to link what they do in the classroom to the world in which they live.

## Possible Strategies

What steps can be taken to rectify the problems and deficiencies identified above? Beginning with the issue of teaching about the social context of the media, how might we go about giving students a wider world view? A preliminary task for the teacher is to demonstrate to students that any media text is polysemous, that is, informed by various pre-existent discourses. It will not be possible to examine all the available discourses on every issue but it is possible to build up over time a schemata of the avenues which might be explored. Case studies developed around various topical media issues could be the means to this end. For example, at the time of writing a pressing issue in our own city is juvenile crime, particularly Aboriginal, juvenile crime. Various representations of this issue are presented by the media and each representation articulates a particular perspective on race, youth and social justice.

A more difficult but exciting approach to widening the students' world view is to use radical texts in the classroom. Texts which cut across the commonly held attitudes, texts which force the viewer to distance themselves from the content, texts which deny easy pleasure and evoke discomfort can be useful in focussing
attention on the ways that values and messages are constructed. Such texts deny accustomed pleasures and so force the viewer into an evaluation of his/her own position vis a vis the text. We have found that most students dislike such texts, but are sympathetic to the political claims they make and are interested in discussing them. On the negative side such texts are hard to come by, often expensive because they are outside the mainstream and, if overused, alienate students because they deny pleasure.

A third possible strategy is to provide students with some key questions which could be applied to current media non-fictional texts. Such questions might include:

* Through whose eyes or perspective do we get the information?

* How is this point of view constructed?

* Whose voices are not heard?

* What other images could have been chosen to support alternative voices?

* If a key piece of information were changed how would the meaning change?

* Who has the power to shape the information we receive?

* Who benefits from the current representations and who loses?

The second problem we identified was the inability of students to deal with issues of ideology and power in the media. Issues of power and ideology have traditionally been skirted around in the media classroom, often for reasons of self-preservation, but it has become clear to us that perhaps they need to be tackled head on.

One approach to the issue of ideology, or values, is to use old, dated texts. Students are more readily able to distinguish the values inherent in old texts than current ones because they are often at odds with their own view of the world. The recognition will often be evident in their laughter. Laughter is their response to the discomfort they feel when faced with values they do not share. The laughter can be used as a way into the text (what was it about the extract that made you laugh?) From that point it is possible to move into questions of reading. What knowledge did you have access to that made you respond in that way? How has the class/gender/race/ age orientation in the text affected your reading? The denaturalising effect of the dated texts offers a way into the discussion of the construction of values and attitudes.

Another strategy is to lead students to an understanding of the relationship between an image and an ideological position by identifying both the connotations and the implied oppositions in the text. In the evaluation we found that students were experts at spotting the symbol but found it much harder to relate the choice of symbols to an ideological position. Images are selected for the associations they evoke. An accessible example is from the closing minutes of Nicaragua: No Pasaran. If students identify those images which are used to represent the Nicaraguans and compare them to those used to represent the United States of America they will begin to see a pattern emerging. The oppositions constructed
and favoured within the text suggest to the audience particular ideas, proposi-
tions and arguments about the film's position. The images are selected for their
power to activate the attitudes and values of the viewer.

Consistent across the strategies suggested is the implication of the need to focus directly on the issue of social context and it seems to be an area not prioritised in the syllabuses. Common to syllabuses in Canada, Australia and Britain is a strong emphasis on textual analysis at the expense of contextual analysis. This could be because most texts have been written by people from a literature background; it might be that experience has indicated that this is the most effective path. Whatever the reason it does not matter as long as the goals are being met. However unless the issues of representation, power and pleasure and the articulations of these in current media texts are dealt with directly there is the danger that student skills and knowledge will be limited to classroom application. How often are students asked to analyse the constructed oppositions in the previous night's news broadcast?

In conclusion the question of aims in media education will be addressed briefly. The aims of media education need to be clearer to students and parents. Expectations of students need to be clearly and openly stated; teachers must identify and use techniques to establish whether students are learning; student progress must be made visible to the wider community. This is not to say that we must embark on a campaign of mass testing. On the contrary, time wasting, educationally suspect testing can be avoided if clear statements of expected outcomes are provided for students. We need to cut through the rubric of the syllabuses and state directly what it is we expect students to be able to do. With some refinement we are hoping that the continuum will provide a user friendly guide for teachers. They can use it to ask themselves what their own students can do at any point in time and where they should be aiming for next. It should provide a model for determining where we are heading with the students.

We are now entering the next stage of media education. The syllabuses are
in place, teachers are being trained for the task, the subject has a place on the
educational agenda, but it is not the time for complacency. The central purpose
of media education must be kept in mind if the courses are not to become navel-
gazing exercises. We need to continue the search for new and more effective
teaching strategies; we need to actively question our progress and determine our
path for the future. Refinement is needed.

ENDNOTES

1) Monitoring Standards in Education is an evaluation of the numeracy and literacy skills of students in years three (eight year olds); seven (twelve year olds) and ten (fifteen year olds) in Western Australian state government schools. It is conducted by the Ministry of Education and involves testing
sample groups of students across the state. The testing in media studies was
conducted as part of the testing of literacy skills.

2) The Monitoring Standards program as it currently operates calls for testing on a sample basis only. The tests can be used to develop profiles of students' skills and knowledge but cannot be used to compare students or teachers. This factor was important in convincing teachers to participate.

3) Palmer, P. (1986). *The lively audience: A study of children around the TV set*. Sydney: Alien and Unwin.

AUTHORS

Robyn Quin is Head, School of Language, Literature and Media Studies at Edith Cowan University, Mount Lawley Campus, 2 Bradford St., Mount Lawley, Western Australia 6050.

Barrie McMahon is Director of Curriculum, Ministry of Education, Perth, West Australia.
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
Setting an Agenda for Training

Gary Bazalgette

Abstract: The British Film Institute (BFI) has provided a decade of training for teachers In the area of media education. With curricular changes that would see the incorporation of media education as a requirement In the secondary English curriculum It became obvious to the BFI that face-to-face Inservice programs would no longer suffice. Over 46,000 teachers have little or no preparatory background In media education, That, coupled with decreasing time and financial support for inservice education, indicated the need for a different approach. The BFI, In collaboration with the Open University and the BBC Production Unit, developed a comprehensive distance education Inservice training course In media education for teachers. This paper documents the development of that course.

R6sum6: La British Film Institute (BFI) forme des enseignants, dans le domaine de l'études medias, depuis deja unedecennie. ['integration de l'étude des medias auxprogrammes d'enseignementdel'anglaisaunlveausecondalreaamenelaBFI d prendre conscience que les stages de formation face-d-face ne suffirralent plus. Plus de 46 000 enseignants n'ont aucune, ou ont peu de preparation en cette matiere. De plus, les contraintes budgetaires et le manque de temps les empechent de pouvoir faire des stages de formation. Il est done necessaire de changer d'approche. La BFI, en collaboration avec l'Open University et la BBC Production Unit, ont done elabore pour les enseignants, un stage de formation integre en etude des medias, d distance. Get article expose en detail le developpement de ce cours.

"At first I didn't know what questions to ask the children about the photographs.. .Then I went on the British Film Institute Easter School on media education — suddenly it became clear. I could see how all the media could be studied as a site for language learning. Now (July) I can have a discussion about a television programme I haven't seen and discuss points about realism and construction" (Letter from primary teacher, West Sussex).
You learn a lot from training teachers. Over the past ten years BFI Education has worked with well over a thousand teachers and advisers from all levels of education, in short courses and conferences and in five-day residential schools, the Easter School referred to above. And that number doesn't include the many others that our four education officers have been invited to teach, in workshops and seminars run by other people: advisers, trainers, consortia of schools.

But by 1988 it was already dawning on us that there were vast training needs in media education that we, and other agencies in the field, couldn't possibly meet through face-to-face encounters. New specialist examination courses were being set up at the level of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), taken by sixteen year olds and at the Advanced Level General Certificate of Education (GCE) taken by eighteen year olds, but all too often these were being taught by inexperienced people. More significantly though, in terms of numbers, there were by then campaigns afoot to insert media education into the curricular reforms that were developing in all parts of Britain, on the basis that media education should be the entitlement of every child from the early years of schooling. That argument is logical, and easy enough to make as a piece of rhetoric, but in practice it has daunting implications, given that the government was not planning any financial support for training or resources relating to the new curricula.

As a cultural organisation whose remit is to foster the arts of film and television, the BFI does not have any statutory responsibility to develop media education or to train teachers; it is our own policy decision that doing what we can in the educational field is one way of fulfilling the remit, while other parts of the Institute fulfil it in other ways.

In England and Wales, the government was determined to force through a National Curriculum based on ten traditional subjects: a recipe for overcrowding and conceptual overlaps. In this situation our pragmatic judgement was to argue for media education to have a base in English, since that seemed its best chance of becoming a basic entitlement for eight million school aged children. There are good rhetorical arguments for media education that permeates the whole curriculum, especially at primary level, and there are dangers in attaching a hybrid subject like media education to a traditional area like English, but there seemed to be no practical alternative.

Even so, that meant that in theory there were 46,000 English teachers needing advice and training on media education, and many more generalist primary teachers who would need to integrate media work into their teaching. Although it was a pretty limited aspect of media education that actually ended up in the Statutory Order *, the examples and guidance given made it clear that the curriculum was at least open to broader interpretation and that those teachers who wanted to—and had the ability and confidence to do so—could develop more flexible and imaginative versions.

These changes, however, were happening alongside other educational re-
forms such as a drastic shift in the provision of in-service training. There were
going to be far fewer opportunities for teachers to attend long courses, especially
full-time ones, and the financial base of training was to be shifted to the schools, who would purchase training according to *their* needs. This would aggravate an existing problem: it was very difficult for teachers to obtain any training in media education that went beyond basic introductory sessions. A 1987 report by Her Majesty's Inspectors confirmed that the media teaching actually going on in schools tended to lack any sense of progression in learning — even though, according to a survey done the following year by BFI and the National Foundation for Educational Research, some 30% of schools claimed to be doing some media education. There was a preponderance of isolated topics and projects—the same exercises might be tackled by eight year olds as by fifteen year olds, with little sense at either age of what was being learned or where it might lead.

One answer, we decided, might be to develop a distance learning course that would enable teachers to progress beyond the introductory stage and to see media education as something that could be systematic and continuing. Even though it would only reach relatively few of the potential audience of 46,000 plus, such a course would at least serve as an exemplar for other training providers, and might help to lift media education out of the campaigning and rhetoric stage, into the realm of serious and coherent educational provision.

Accordingly, we entered negotiations with the Open University to develop a package in collaboration with them. This was to be a free-standing package, not linked to any broadcast components and not, at this stage, carrying any certification. We planned a seventy hour course, taught through five components: a book, a video, an audiotape, a set of slides, and a teachers' workbook. A course team of eight people was assembled, and work began in 1990.

In retrospect, it is clear that the entire package was constructed back to front. Driven by production demands, we embarked first on the book and the videotape, without any very clear idea of the pedagogic strategies in which they would be used. It is possible, though, that if we had tried to start from first principles, we would still be arguing about them. We designed the book with an eye to what books already existed in the field, and what we thought any aspiring media teacher ought to know. There is no shortage of books with impressive arguments for media education and bright ideas for ways of doing it. But media education, in different guises such as Film Appreciation and Television Studies, has a long history in Britain and many of its debates are perennial ones. The BFFs first book on the subject, *Talking About the Cinema*, by Kitses and Mercer, was published in 1966, and one of the most influential books in the field was Hall and Whannel's *The Popular Arts*, published by Hutchinson in 1964. We decided that the book had to give a sense of the history, of how the debates about the media's nature, cultural status and effects have trampled to and fro over the same ground, and how, out of those debates, various forms of classroom practice have emerged. An historical dimension would, we felt, give teachers that confidence to engage with these debates on their own terms, rather than imagining that there is an intimidating and established body of knowledge to which they must defer.

At the same time, the book obviously had to give a sense of the excitement and immediacy of working with children in classrooms. We accordingly commis-
sioned twenty teachers at all levels of education to write short accounts of their own practice: some at micro level; some at the macro level of planning and policy.

This model of a two-part anthology, part historical review and part contemporary experience, remained our working base as we turned to other components of the package. But as they grew, we realised that we needed more hi the book. More original writing was commissioned: guides to the different traditions of thought coming from cultural studies and sociology; studies of pedagogy and learning. One question still remained: what linked the debates of the 1960s and 1970s to the practice of the late 1980s and 1990s? What did we think teachers ought to be thinking and doing? What the book needed was a pivot, a point which made sense of how we had anthologised both past and present.

By now we were refining our ideas about the conceptual basis of the package as a whole. We had agreed to take as our framework the six-part "Key Aspect" structure of broad headings which was first outlined in our 1989 book Primary *Media Education: A Curriculum Statement*². Developed by a group of primary teachers and advisers, this framework attempted to link and adapt a number of the key concepts currently taught to students of fourteen years of age and older, to the group's own perceptions of children's initial understandings about, and interests in, the media.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.**
*Chart of Key Aspects*</figcaption></figure>
Many media education curricula are based on a series of axioms. For example, Ontario's resource guide, *Media Literacy*, has eight Key Concepts, each of which asserts a precept: "media contain ideological and value messages," or "form and content are closely related in the media."³ But there is not a clear link between these precepts and the multiplicity of classroom activities or "coping strategies" offered in the pages that follow. Are the precepts teaching goals, or first principles? It is hard to tell, and it is even harder to tell how one would plan or evaluate children's learning (as opposed to classroom activities) in relation to them. It ought to be possible to devise a curriculum framework that encompasses both goals and first principles, and is capable of being mapped on to the progression of children's learning, without developing a mechanistic one-thing-after-another syllabus.

A paper by Eke (1986), one of the Primary Media Education working group, criticised "the tendency to break down media issues/theory into smaller "logical" components" after which "it is difficult to avoid the temptation to sequence the fragments logically in terms of difficulty... and to teach on this basis"⁴. The group's own investigations into children's talk about the media expanded this idea. Very young children were clearly making judgements and hypotheses that could be linked, conceptually, to key issues of media theory, "Blue Peter's more realer than Bugs Bunny"⁵ is a modality judgement, focusing on the reality status of texts, but drawing on generic knowledge and a skilled reading of audiovisual techniques and conventions. "They never let the baddies win" not only summarises generic conventions but also contains the term "they" which is capable of development towards an understanding of media institutions, economic determinants, ways of addressing audiences and circulating texts. Any conversation with children about media has these theoretical connotations. In the end, it is not crucial exactly which working concepts are chosen for a curricular base. But any curriculum map of media education, whatever conceptual ground it covers, ought to be capable of interpretation in both horizontal and vertical dimensions, like a geographical contour map. It ought to delineate the range of concepts, but at the same time we have to be able to read the different levels at which each concept can be thought about and discussed, from the most basic principles or generalisations, to the most complex and sophisticated interpretation. In brief, it has to be both accessible and challenging. A list of axioms runs the risk of being neither.

That said, it must also be recognised that we learn from our teaching. Consequently, any curriculum framework should be provisional. Our Key Aspect framework is, perforce, a recurrent thread in the package, a tool for measuring progress, generating questions, and planning activities. To support it, a substantial chapter outlining the Key Aspect framework was added to the book.

The sixty minute video component was made by the BBC Production Unit at the Open University, which introduced the practices and procedures of a third institution to the BFI-OU collaboration already in place. Television production schedules are inexorable, and the video had to be made in the autumn of 1990 whether we were ready for it or not. Pragmatically, we knew there were several tasks the video had to perform. It had to offer audiovisual texts for analysis, and
there was no time for a leisurely review of cinema and broadcasting to find the perfect exemplar. One well-used tactic was chosen: beginning the entire course raw, as it were, by showing the opening of a feature film and asking people to identify their own responses, their own questions, their own predictions - on these we would build the conceptual framework of the course. The first few minutes of *Celia* were chosen: an Australian film by Ann Turner which interestingly mixes fantasy and politics, and which has a child protagonist.

Adopting this tactic for a distance learning project created its own problems. Face to face, it is possible to draw out people's comments and show how they link to the conceptual framework. To the comment "I think it's a horror film" one can respond "how do you know?", and then draw out the student's own knowledge of category, identifying that as a worthwhile basis for further questions and investigation. But in designing print and video for an unknown audience, there is no guarantee of responses unless they are anticipated, and thereby pre-empted. There is no simple solution to this dilemma. We supplied a lot of workbook notes - far more than originally planned - but it also seemed important to demonstrate the conceptual framework in action on the video. Choosing a romantic, soft-sell Italian television commercial for pasta, a voice-over was written to take viewers through a slowed and paused version of the commercial, to show how each Key Aspect could be brought to bear on the text and illuminate it in a different way. In the workbook, a set of notes was provided that challenged the voice-over, asking readers to think again about what was said and to consider how far they felt it was justified. The video then provides another text - a BBC programme trailer - for the package users to analyse on their own, using questions and notes from the workbook.

In devising this part of the package we were on familiar ground. We had all done exercises with teachers in the analysis of texts, using this conceptual approach. Providing slides and audiotape, we could also enable students of the package to undertake standard exercises in image analysis and in making a photo-story with a sound track. All this was based on the sound principle of starting where the students are: showing them that they already have knowledge, understanding and skills that they can use and develop.

A typical procedure in many training courses is to move from this sort of work straight into classroom activity, either leaving the trainee to work out how the activity is supposed to link to the conceptual signposts already set up, or on the basis of pure assertion: "this activity will teach children to..." or "by doing this, pupils will learn that..."

We were not happy with this approach. We felt we had to start with our students' own levels of understanding, hence we should be encouraging them to do the same. But how could we demonstrate the significance of their students' knowledge and understanding? We could not literally do this, but what we could do was to provide both video and audiotape of children's activities and talk, and demand an analysis of both, in terms of what kinds of knowledge and understanding were demonstrated, and what kinds of learning seemed to be going on. Working with small groups of children aged six, ten, and twelve, we taped
discussions of two items already included in the package - a documentary style
photograph and the pasta commercial. We selected teachers of three different age
groups (seven, thirteen, and sixteen year olds), and filmed them at work in their
classrooms with their students.

Here we came up against the peculiar difficulties of media education training.
If one is teaching people to analyse the way texts are constructed and to
interrogate their conventions, one cannot just show classroom practice! In
piloting sections of the package our nice films of busy children were shredded by
our newly critical students. Questions on the audiotape were pilloried. The
answer, and it is inevitably a partial one, was to demand that the package users
focus specifically on the problem of representing classroom practice through the
media. Any medium — print, audio, video, photography — involves choices: of
words, of framing, of editing from several hours down to a few minutes. In
confronting these choices through both analytical and practical tasks, our
students involve themselves in media issues and educational issues at the same
time.

Dealing with these problems got us to the stage of identifying and producing
the content of nearly all the components, but in terms of the package's pedagogy
we had only gotten through stage one. Most guides to media education stop there:
you have the conceptual picture, you have tried out a few useful activities - go out
there and do it! We wanted to do more. We wanted to return to, and open up, some
of the intractable critical debates that shook media education in the 1970s and
have tended to be swept under the carpet in the rush to make media education
a respectable curriculum subject for the 1990s. What ever happened to ideology?
What happened to pleasure? And going back further still, what happened to value
judgements and aesthetics? These are by no means closed subjects from an
unfashionable decade. We devised a three-session unit of the package that met
these debates head on, revisiting such texts as the MacCabe-McArthur debate on
realism⁶ and Judith Williamson's "How Does Girl Number Twenty Understand
Ideology?"⁷, but asking students to engage with them in terms of their own
motivations, practice and goals here and now.

Prompted by the Inspectorate's critiques, we also wanted to tackle progres-
sion in learning. The major difficulty here was that there is practically no
evidence to use: virtually no one gets a chance to teach media systematically to
the same children over several years. This unit therefore became very hypotheti-
cal, as we asked students to revisit the tapes of children's talk and work at various
age levels, and to think about the differences. The problem is that one cannot
extrapolate progression in learning from developmental evidence.

Speaking of a 1940s documentary photograph, the 6-year-olds say "this
picture's something real." What do they mean by this, and how does one find out?
Twelve year olds looking at the same photograph say "it does look a bit false^yeah/
it doesn't look realistic." Are both groups recognising the documentary intention
of the image? Are the older students able to focus on what the younger ones have
missed, or are they reading it differently? And what difference would it make to
those six year olds' understanding if they had the opportunity to take different
<caption>**Figure 2.**</caption>

Bert Hardy Photograph

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

photos of a subject and to explore their own judgements about what they think is real and what they think is not real? We cannot answer these questions yet, but we can at least alert teachers to their complexity and importance.
Finally, it seemed crucial that the package's users should not just learn about media education as a set of teaching and learning concerns, but that they should be able to place those concerns in a strategic context. Where would they locate media teaching? How does it relate to their own curricular requirements? How would they promote it in their own institution or their own region? Again, the debates anthologised in the book feed in at this point, as we ask the teachers studying the package to plan a term's work, and to prepare a presentation on media education for an audience of colleagues or parents.

Not everyone using the package is going to take it on as a full seventy hour course⁸. It is constructed in sixteen sessions, some of two hours and some of four, organised into five units. There is also a substantial amount of reading between sessions. We have assumed that it is at least as likely that trainers will adapt and select from the package according to their own time constraints and needs, and we indicate some ways of doing this. Nevertheless, our intention all along has been to set a new agenda for training. Any educational training that fails to link theory to practice, that offers teaching based on predetermined activities rather than on children's learning, will not really meet teachers' needs, however accessible it may seem at first sight.

In the final analysis we do not want to train teachers to think that they know it all - or even that they could know it all. The final session of the package is open-ended, inviting teachers to define and undertake their own classroom research, taking the work of the package on into their own practice and into as yet unanswered - or even unformulated - questions, of which there are many.

## Notes

1. The Statutory Orders are the documents describing the legal requirements for the teaching of each subject in the National Curriculum.

2. Bazalgette, C. (Ed.) (1989). *Primary media education: A curriculum statement*. London: British Film Institute.

3. Ontario Ministry of Education. (1989). *Media literacy resource guide*. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Education, pp. 8-10.

4. Eke, R. (1986). Media Education Issues. In *BFI National Working Party for primary media education*, Working Papers Two. London: British Film Institute.

5. Blue Peter is a long-running magazine program for children aged six to twelve, shown daily on BBC television.

6. See Colin McArthur, DaysofHope. In *Scra>n,V*. 17 (1) 1976, and Colin MacCabe Principles of Realism and Pleasure. In *Screen*, V. 17 (3) 1976.

7. Williamson, J. How Does Girl Number Twenty Understand Ideology? In *Screen Education*, No. 40, Winter, 1981-82.

8. *Media education: An introduction* (1982) Milton Keynes: The Open University.
*Photo Credit* - Bert Hardy (1949). Liverpool, England

AUTHOR

Gary Bazalgette is Deputy Head of Education, British Film Institute, 21 Stephen St., London, England W1P1PL.
# Two Dimensions of Teaching Television Literacy: Analyzing Television Content and Analyzing Television Viewing

Barbra S. Morris

**Abstract:** Students engage in basic content research they design and complete for themselves and learn not to make unsubstantiated generalizations about text, or to employ totalization in criticism. Students formulate a precise research question about television text, hypothesize about what they will find, log and categorize findings, and interpret and report results in light of the original hypothesis, using exact evidence from the text. Similarly, students must conduct viewer analysis in a systematic fashion: responding to and designing questionnaires for focus groups and engaging in analytical discussions. Sample student writings, originating from college-level research into sports programming, indicate development of television literacy.

**Resume:** Les étudiants concoivent et complètent par eux-memes des projets de recherche elementaire. Us apprennent à eviter les generalisations sans fondement au sujet des textes étudiés et a ne pas être absolus dans leurs critiques. Us posent d'abord des questions précises au sujet de textes de télévision. Us formulent ensuite des hypothèses au sujet de leurs constatations, notent et categorisent les résultats, les interprètemet et font ensuite rapport des résultats en se referant à l'hypothèse originale et en se basant sur des préuves qu'ils auront puisees dans le texte. Les étudiants dolvent aussi procéder à une analyse systématique des spectateurs en repondant à un questionnaire qu'ils auront eux-memes concu pour des groupes cibles, et en prenant a son analyse par des discussions. Des textes, préparés par des étudiants de niveau collegial dans l'étude de la programmation des sports montrent un développement certain de la connaissance du média de la télévision.

Interest in teaching critical thinking about television has increased in our schools. As yet, however, too little is known about how classroom teachers use this subject matter to promote students' intellectual engagement and academic development. Perhaps one way teachers might inform each other about their teaching strategies would be to explain their own teaching approaches and reasoning behind them, describe typical classroom scenarios and, finally, illustrate students' development of television literacy with samples of their work.

In my own experience as a college teacher of television analysis, I have learned to combine close classroom study of content with requiring students to
reflect on their own and others' viewing responses. These two dimensions of teaching appear to work well together in motivating and promoting students' television literacy.

In *Reading Television*, Fiske and Hartley (1978) stress that the first step in television content research is ascertaining precisely what is in the text. They insist that "The starting point of any study of television must be with what is actually there on the screen" (p. 21). Their straightforward position, advocating careful collection of evidence upon which to base television criticism, argues against impressionistic, superficial assertions about what is bad or good in programming. Similarly, Brummet and Duncan (1990) labelled the practice of making general claims about all of television content as the problem of totalization or generalization about television content as if all experiences of television-watching can be reduced to one category. They say that totalizing masks critical distinctions, meaning that "important differences among members of any category are overlooked" (p. 225).

Moreover, lack of differentiation among television-watching experiences often leads to an assumption that all viewers respond similarly. The notion that large numbers of viewers passively accept television content, regardless of its quality, and without discriminations, is summarily dismissed by Liebes and Katz (1990):

> "Domestic audiences are not homogeneous entities. The ethnic and cultural communities that make up most societies, not to speak of the aggregates of age, education, gender and class, are all different enough to raise the possibility that decodings and effects vary widely within any given society" (p. 8).

In contrast to generalisations about television-watching experiences and effects of the medium, then, teaching television literacy begins with careful investigations into the actual complexity of texts. Equally important, literate television viewers demonstrate willingness to reconsider their own responses to any text. Analytic viewers understand that they read from their own unique perspectives, and individual readings necessarily differ from one another in levels of insight into textual meaning.

In fact, it is the variety and vitality of content/viewer relationships that emerge as intriguing aspects of classroom teaching about television. Therefore, as important as it is in research into television content to be accurate about what actually appears on the screen, it is equally important to understand and respect the enormous number of factors that determine any viewer's reactions to any received television text.

Although one frequently hears the assertion that viewers are harmed by what they watch on the screen, assuming all television-watching is negative overlooks the multiple roles viewers themselves say television serves in their lives. For example, in response to a questionnaire distributed in winter 1992 to students who were beginning my television analysis course, a student observed that television had helped her adjust to adolescence by establishing her sense of being connected to society, despite feelings of isolation from her immediate family:
"While I was growing up, my best friend and teacher of what few social skills I possess was TV. I wouldn't listen to my parents, but I paid attention to TV. When I didn't like what it was telling me, I merely switched channels until I found a voice with which I could emotionally and/or intellectually unite."

Here is a not uncommon instance of a viewer reflecting upon positive interactions with television. This student recalled journeys through the text, again and again, finding compatible voices there that filled a gap in her life. Those who condemn television for its negative impacts on society, even though many of these concerns are justified, need to be equally willing to examine ways in which television provides positive empathic connections or social links for members of the TV audience who experience alienation from their own lived circumstances.

As we develop television literacy in school, then, we need to be aware of a meaningful social community television has provided for many members of its audience. The classroom where television analysis takes place can be a place where students freely speculate about problems and benefits of their viewing histories. In this sort of academic climate, students can avoid the limiting aspects of totalization about either television content or viewer responses to it. Television literacy, in other words, can combine close analysis and criticism of televised text with close analysis and discussion of how and why viewers interpret texts in the ways they do.

## Television Content Analysis

Because of the daunting amount of television content available to study, teaching television literacy is more manageable when students begin with very precise examination of actual details of text. Furthermore, academic study of television ought to depend on accurate documentation. Toward that end, then, I ask students to begin their television criticism by developing well-focused content research questions. Once a precise research question is formulated, students become basic researchers; in logging and coding content outside of class, they determine the presence or absence of whatever features they have elected to study. Once they have actual data to analyze in hand, interpretations of possible effects of the text begin.

During the fourteen weeks of a typical college semester, my students have time to study four genres of content: sports, news, commercials, and dramas. In the first section of this paper, I will refer only to the first genre that we study, the production and presentation of sports on television, to illustrate students' close textual analysis. We have no trouble locating sports texts for our discussions. American television has embraced live televised sports-casting; in fact, all the mass media contribute daily to promoting general awareness of various kinds of sports matches, or athletes, or persons connected to sporting events. Even students who claim that they rarely watch television since they entered college nevertheless report that they keep abreast of favourite teams or athletes, either through newspapers or magazines or occasional broadcasts of the premier continuous sports-broadcasting network on American television: ESPN. Very
few students say that they have never followed any sport whatsoever, and they are all, regardless of their attitudes toward sports-casting in general, aware of many major figures in the sports world. After more than a decade of teaching content analysis, I find that sports, because it is a universally familiar topic to students, offers a good place for them to begin serious television study together.

Despite their familiarity with sports programming, most sports fans relate uncritically to the representations of sporting events on television. It is almost as though viewers think they are watching unmediated direct transmissions of athletic contests. Therefore, sports content is a particularly eye-opening genre for exploring constructions of stories about athletes, or matches between teams, as well as investigating how our perspectives on, and pleasures in, entire sporting events are created. Research into televised sports emphasizes study of the creation of stories about people and events and ultimately works toward preparing students for their studies of stories about individuals and issues in newscasts, the genre immediately following sports.

While it is fairly obvious to regular sports watchers that recounting of athletes' past exploits occurs in sportscasts, the ways these stories are dramatically constructed and presented within a program may not be quite so evident. Indeed, just analyzing the powers of commentators as story-tellers introduces students to considering input into viewers' attitudes toward content. Ordinarily, most interpretations by commentators of visual text throughout a sportscast are well-accepted ingredients of the whole experience. To develop academic television literacy, however, I encourage students to research narrative positions of commentators during a typical sportscast. In doing so, I know students will also learn how illusions of authority are developed in telecasts.

One method of encouraging television literacy, then, is to turn students' attention to observing a very few elements in a telecast that help shape the whole broadcast. For instance, one student (Mary) decided to focus on developing a better understanding of how commentators' narration related to visuals in a broadcast of the United State Figure Skating Championships (ABC, 11 January 1992, 9-11 p.m.). She posed three research questions: What are the physical relationships between commentators and on-camera visuals? Which relationship is most frequently employed? What effects might the relationships of commentator to imagery have on a viewer's reading of the content?

All students log and then categorize or code whatever features they elected to study in actual broadcast programs. In their papers, they display their findings in charts before analyzing the possible effects of those features on audiences; specific research always serves as the basis for their interpretations. During their research, however, new discoveries about television content invariably take place.

Mary, for example, hypothesized that she would find three predominant categories of commentator-to-visual relationships; (1) voice-overs, during which a viewer hears only the commentator and sees something else; (2) face-to-face camera editorializing, during which the commentator, when looking directly into the camera, appears to look directly at viewers; (3) face-to-face interviewing,
during which a commentator speaks with someone else on-camera, occasionally looking at viewers, but ordinarily speaking with the other on-camera person.

In a short research proposal prior to beginning her logging of the figure skating contest, Mary said she believed that voice-overs during the actual athletic performance, or category one, would predominate during the broadcast. Her hypothesis proved to be correct. What Mary did not anticipate finding was a need to subdivide this first category of voice-over into three sub-categories; (1) voice-overs heard during a skating routine, (2) voice-overs employed during a montage of text replays or during an in-depth report of athletes, and (3) voice-overs used as segues into and out of commercial breaks or program announcements. As Mary conducted her research, close analysis of television content heightened her awareness of and appreciation for the text's overall complexity. In highly focused research, a student's development of television literacy begins with close examination of an aspect of content, yet it leads student researchers to discover and distinguish among other, unexpected features in the text. Mary's depiction of her precise findings about frequency and use of voice-over commentary in a one hour figure-skating sportscast revealed the following:

<table><thead><tr><th>Types of Camera/Commentator<br>Relationships</th><th>Number of<br>Occurrences</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Voice-overs within a routine</td><td>Total: 75<br>(Average= 12.5 per routine)</td></tr><tr><td>Voice-overs within a montage/<br>report</td><td>Total: 02 ongoing<br>voice-over throughout)</td></tr><tr><td>Voice-overs as segue or stall</td><td>Total: 18</td></tr><tr><td>Face-to-camera editorial</td><td>Total: 13</td></tr><tr><td>Face-to-face interview</td><td>Total: 03</td></tr></tbody></table>

In addition, for her research paper, Mary needed to log exact examples of voice-over commentary, and this led to her undertaking some preliminary rhetorical analysis of the language of commentary. To quote from her conclusions about her findings:

"As you can see, the findings partially support my hypothesis. The category 'Voice-overs within a routine' greatly outnumbers the other kinds of commentary. My hypothesis, however, did not distinguish between types of voice-overs, so I needed to look at three sub-divisions. I logged and noted each separate voice-over as a single instance of verbal narrative; when voice-over stopped for two seconds or more, I considered a two second break sufficient to indicate a new voice-over had started. I found that the majority of commentary was dedicated
to educating the viewer about the sport and the quality of performance. The appearance and tone of commentators made me feel as though I was getting an authoritative inside story. For example, when I first saw Al Michaels and Dick Button, they were wearing matching tuxedos. Peggy Fleming wore an elegant evening gown and jewelry. The visuals suggested high quality competition to me, while the excitement of their voices apparently was meant to persuade the audience that the competition was worth their attention. Because of commentators' dignified appearances, viewers are not likely to question their expertise and judgements. Voice-overs often contained personal insights into the health, well-being, and preparation of the skaters. I found the commentators were trying to ease any disappointments in performances with consoling remarks; Button called, Harding a 'dedicated, gusty, true-blue competitor'. Fleming, however, provided insight into the extra effort of Kerrigan: "That wasn't even scheduled into the program," she remarked about a triple-toe, double-toe combination.

Now that I have completed this preliminary study, I wonder if similar types of commentary are made in other sports, and how commentary might change from sport to sport. I am beginning to be aware of what isn't in ice-skating voice-overs: tough analysis and very complex evaluations are absent. The commentators apparently assume that we want to hear only supportive and positive voices. Now, I am interested in why the evaluations are so limited and who they think we are."

Mary's careful content analysis led her to ask new, more probing, questions about the text, far beyond her initial inquiry. Her emerging interest in the effects of television commentary and reasons behind the tone being established by both visuals and voice-overs, and her questioning of assumptions about audience interest bring her toward increasingly sophisticated questioning of content, while her broadening perceptive insight displays a developing television literacy.

## Analyzing Television Viewing

Students ordinarily begin the study of television believing that they already know the content well enough, and they won't have to work very hard analyzing it. Once they begin close content research, however, they realize their understandings have been fairly casual. Moreover, students rarely have thought about whether viewers read television differently from one another. In order to introduce the value of critical dialogue about television content and to encourage expression of various points-of-view about it, I often bring to class brief questionnaires for students to complete. In these questionnaires, students frequently say how important television is to them. At the same time, as Luker and Johnson's "Television in Adolescent Social Development" (1989) indicates, students seldom have opportunities to discuss what television means to them. In class discussion, however, students speculate about the presence of meaningful messages in the text about behaviour, attitudes, and values, and they realize that these received ideas need to be questioned much more profoundly. With even the briefest questionnaire answered before group discussion, participation by everyone in
class discussions improves tremendously.

In the past, when I did not ask for written responses to samples of text screened in class, relying totally on students' spontaneous oral observations to them, some students simply would not be interested in examining their own attitudes in comparison to those of others. Perhaps they would listen silently or did not believe their own responses were valuable. But when everyone views a segment of television text in class followed by a brief questionnaire to be completed about the screening, and I illustrate numbers of YES/NO responses on the blackboard, we are beginning class discussion from a point of full representation and participation. Indeed, I feel the collective energy of the class, as a whole, increases as we consider reasons behind differing responses to the same text.

The questionnaires generate both quantitative and qualitative information. Some questions simply ask for either a YES/NO response. Some questions ask for one word descriptions of individuals who have appeared in the televised segment. Other questions may require identifying or ranking features like the text, in their perceived order of importance. For example, in a segment from a sitcom or soap opera, students might rank the general attractiveness or the power of individual characters in the scene. In the last case, ranking is followed by considering issues of acceptance or rejection of characters and the practice of stereotyping people because of visual appearance or level of language in televised dramas.

Sometimes students are asked to form focus groups outside of class to investigate responses to programs by people that they regularly watch television with. For example, many of my undergraduates have programs they watch in their dorms with others. Students regularly report years of devotion to watching certain programs, and they speak of some characters as though they were members of their own families.

This year, one of my students (Tory) elected to develop a questionnaire to distribute to her dorm-watching buddies, all of whom met weekly together to see the program, "A Different World". She developed the following list of questions for them to answer:

Approximately how long have you been watching this program?

How often do you watch this program?

What is it about this program that keeps your interest?

What was the main theme of this week's episode?

Did you enjoy this episode? Why or why not?

Who do you feel is the best actress on the program and why?

Think back to when you first began watching "A Different World."

How has the program changed?

Was this change positive or negative? Explain.

Please give a brief description (1 or 2 words) about the following characters:
Please give a brief description (1 or 2 words) about the following characters:

Dwayne Wayne
Ron Johnson
Jalesa Taylor
Terrence

Whitley Gilbert
Kim Waite
Freddy
Mr. Gaines

All of her respondents indicated that they had been watching this program for six or seven years. Tory analyzed their responses to her questionnaires and also asked questions directly to all respondents after they completed the forms. She learned that her viewers preferred this program because it dealt with issues that they were concerned about: sexual harassment, racism, tuition costs, political trust, values and motives among friends. In her paper analyzing viewer responses, Tory quoted from several questionnaires, illustrating her viewers' concerns. One response that represents extended historical perspective read: "The program now deals with more universal issues than when it began. The characters have grown up and the stories have more depth. It is no longer just a comedy."

After focus group projects, each student presents her or his findings to the rest of the class for general discussion. For this kind of presentation, students prepare a one-page abstract of exactly what text was studied, and by whom, followed by a summary of findings (with relevant illustrative quotes) and an interpretation of findings. These summary presentations serve a number of functions: (1) We all learn more about viewers' responses together, (2) Students' own viewing experiences and peer groups are valued, (3) Discussion after each presentation helps create and solidify us as a community of researchers in our classroom.

In the discussion that followed Tory's research into attitudes of her friends toward "A Different World", we discussed ways in which characters in this program solved their problems. Luker and Johnson (1989) suggest the following useful stages of such program discussions: "Establish the facts of the conflict, establish the perspectives of the central characters, classify the coping style used by the main character, explore alternatives which the main character could take, and consider the consequences of each alternative both for the main character and the foil" (p. 51).

The research that Tory completed outside of class set the stage for an in-depth examination of a sample program of "A Different World" in class. She led the discussion, with members of our class involved in interpreting program content as well. Establishing the importance of this program among regular viewers in their own age group before analyzing it in class created a greater sense of urgency about understanding what the program's messages actually were. As Luker and Johnson (1989) point out: "It is important to be systematic in the use of television shows with adolescents. The lessons they offer maybe obvious to adults, but they are likely to be hidden from adolescents - especially if the problem portrayed on television is the very issue with which they are having difficulty" (p. 51).
content in developing students' academic and analytic abilities are ease with text and the depth of information they bring to their research. Beyond those benefits, however, is another advantage: television content analysis legitimizes students' own experiences and insights both outside and inside school. Too many students do not think their life experiences count in their own education. The lessons and samples of students' work in this brief paper are, I hope, examples of how television literacy, as a classroom objective, can promote both serious textual criticism and thoughtful reconsideration of the importance of one's own role in interpretation of content.

## REFERENCES

Brummett, B. and Duncan, M. C. (1990). Theorizing without totalizing: specularity and televised sports. *The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 76* (3), August.

Fiske, J. and Hartley. (1978). *Reading television*. New York: Methuen Press.

Liebes, T. and Katz, E. (1990). *The export of meaning*. New York: Oxford University Press.

Luker, R. and Johnston, J. (1989). *Television in adolescent social development*. *Television in social development*, February.

Morris, BarbraS. (1989). The Television generation: Couch potatoes or informed critics? *English Journal*, December.

## AUTHOR

Barbra S. Morris is a faculty member with the Department of Communication, the English Composition Board and the Residential College, University of Michigan, 1025 Angell Hall, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109. She is currently doing research in Dublin, Ireland on a Fulbright grant.
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# The Second Spring: Media Education in Canada's Secondary Schools

John J. Pungente, SJ.

**Abstract:** Media Education in secondary schools has begun to develop in the western Canadian provinces. There is also some interest being shown in the subject in the Atlantic provinces. Quebec has its own stand on Media Education. In Ontario - where more than one third of all Canadians live - Media Education is very much alive. The Ontario government has mandated the teaching of media within the English curriculum for grades seven through twelve. There are a number of resources available for teachers and the Association for Media Literacy provides information, workshops, summer schools, a newsletter, and in-service training in media.

**Resumé:** Get article suit le développement des programmes d'étude des medias a trovers le Canada. L'étude des medias dans les ecoles secondaires a dejd commence a se developper dans les province de l'Ouest et les provinces de l'Atlantique se montrent interessees par le sujet. Le Quebec, pour sa part, a sa propre position sur la question. En Ontario par contre, ou Ton retrouve plus d'un tiers de la population du Canada, l'étude des medias est tres active. Le gouvernement ontarien a decide d'inclure l'étude des media dans son programme d'anglais de la septleme d la douzleme annee. De nombreuses sources d'information sont 6 la portee des enseignants et (Association for Media Literacy (AML) leur apporte un soutien pedagogique d l'alde d'atellers, d'une ecole d'ete, d'un bulletin d'information et de stages de formation en etude des medias.

## INTRODUCTION

In 1922, Lewis Selznik, the Hollywood producer, is reported to have said: "If Canadian stories are worthwhile making into movies, then companies will be sent into Canada to make them." Selznik's dismissive words encapsulate a not uncommon attitude among some Americans to their northern neighbours. Canada, in this view, is not a place where interesting things happen; all the good stories come out of the USA.

But in one area, at least, this presumption is manifestly untrue. The interesting stories in secondary school Media Education in North America are Canadian stories.
From the late 1960s until the mid 1970s, the Americans developed a series of secondary school Media Education projects that showed great promise. Unfortunately, most of these projects were short-lived for any number of reasons. At present there are only a handful of significant Media Education programs in the USA

In Canada, by contrast, secondary school film courses blossomed in the late 1960s and the first wave of media education began under the banner of "screen education." An early organization called CASE (Canadian Association for Screen Education sponsored the first large gathering of media teachers in 1966 at Toronto's York University. Participants came from across the country. Largely as a result of budget cuts and the general back-to-the-basics philosophy, this first wave died out in the early seventies. But in the 1980s and 1990s there has been a new and stronger growth of secondary school Media Education, particularly in the province of Ontario.

Canada is a vast nation — the third largest in the world now that the Soviet Union has broken up — with a relatively small population of about twenty six million. In fact, there are more people in the state of California than in all of Canada. Canada's ten provinces and two northern territories each have their own education system. With responsibility for education resting in the hands of the provinces, there are differences in how each province deals with Media Education.

## *The Provinces of Western Canada - British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba*

British Columbia does have provision for some optional use of media courses, but there is no mention of it in official Department of Education documents other than one optional course at the senior level on Writing for Journalism. Some secondary schools teach television production courses as a preparation for a career in the media and a few of these schools have indicated that they would like to add a Media Literacy component to such courses. But there is no educational training which would provide teachers with a background in Media Literacy.

Yet in the summer of 1991, a group met in Vancouver to form a Media Literacy Association. Members of the group included representatives from secondary school teachers, university professors, the National Film Board of Canada, MEDIA WATCH (a women's group), The Knowledge Network (British Columbia's educational television station), Canadian Filmmaker Distributors West, and a magazine called ADBUSTERS. The Association was officially launched in the spring of 1992. Its aim is to develop and implement educational strategies that will foster and promote understanding of how mass media products are created, and how they influence Canadian society.

Teachers and education officials in the province of Alberta are also very interested in Media Education. Since 1982, Viewing has been one of the strands that is required across the curriculum. Unfortunately there are no teacher training courses or other support materials and few teachers actually teach about the media. There is hope for the future due in part to the strong interest of both the public and Catholic school boards. Early in the 1990s, groups such as the
University of Alberta, The Society for Instructional Technology. The Alberta Association for Curriculum and Development, and the National Film Board of Canada held several conferences on Media Education. This is a beginning but, like British Columbia, there is along way to go in Alberta.

Teachers interested in Media Education have more support in the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan. There Mick Ellis, the Audio Visual Consultant for the Saskatoon Board of Education, and a group of Saskatoon educators founded Media Literacy Saskatoon (MLS) in January of 1988. MLS has as its goals:

* to establish and maintain communication among educators;

* to advocate for the development and integration of media literacy in educational curricula;

* to influence educational policy makers;

* to provide professional support; and

* to maintain contact with Canadian and international media literacy organizations.

This support group for teachers of media has developed three programs - Telemedia, Newsmedia, Kidmedia - for use in the schools and has written a unit of study in Film and Literature for the senior English course. They have also developed a Media Literacy curriculum that extends from primary through to the end of secondary school. This is in line with their belief that Media Literacy should be integrated with any and all aspects of the school curriculum from the earliest years of school to its completion.

In 1991, MLS became an official special subject council of the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation (STF). This allows access to all teachers in Saskatchewan through the STF Bulletin, provides an instant sort of respectability, and allows the funding of inservice and a conference through an annual $600 grant. The first annual conference was held in October of 1991 with 45 in attendance including representatives of three mass media businesses in Saskatoon.

Media Literacy Saskatchewan publishes a quarterly newsletter for its members called MEDIA VIEW which contains practical information, bibliographies, reviews of books and audiovisual resources, and lesson ideas. Saskatoon has six categories of common essential learnings which are to be incorporated in all courses of study offered. Two of these learnings are Communication Skills and Critical and Creative Thinking. Using these, the MLS is currently working on a proposal which would integrate Media Studies throughout the primary and secondary curriculum. The proposal approaches the topic of Media Literacy through Appreciation, Analysis and Production.

The primary and secondary Language Arts Policy in Saskatchewan requires Media Literacy be further integrated into the curriculum. Not only is it part of the common essential learnings but it is also one of the supporting domains of the basic Language Arts structure. There is also room for Media Literacy as a locally developed option in Grades 10, 11 and 12 (ages 15 to 18).
As yet, very few schools offer such courses possibly because there is no teacher training in this area. However, MLS is working hard to interest more schools in the possibilities for Media Education and to offer some inservice programmes. There is a great deal of interest from teachers and the future looks bright for Media Education in Saskatchewan.

Manitoba has an official provincial policy on Media Education. Language Arts teachers are encouraged to integrate Media into their teaching in the Early and Middle Years by examining the messages coming from television advertising. Secondary school teachers are asked to investigate the media as part of their English courses. Other possible vehicles for teaching about the media include school and student initiated courses. Senior history courses can deal with television's view of the Third World and Grade 9 (14 year olds) Canadian Studies courses look at the images of Canada presented on television.

However, many Manitoba teachers do not feel capable of dealing with the media in class and hence do not do so. There are no regular courses available to train them. In 1992, the University of Manitoba offered a summer school in media education for teachers. Thus while an official educational policy is in place which would permit a great deal of Media Education, there is little practical support for teachers wishing to teach media studies.

This situation is changing. The Manitoba Association for Media Literacy (MAML) was founded in October 1990, the result of a Special Areas Group (SAG) Conference sponsored by the Art Educators Association of Manitoba. At that time several individuals interested in Media Education met with Neil Andersen and John Pungente, SJ, executives of the Ontario-based Association for Media Literacy (AML). The outcome of that meeting was the formation of MAML which has an affiliation with the AML, providing MAML with access to the considerable resources AML makes available to its own members.

The role of MAML is to promote the aims of Media Education, in particular to assist individuals to examine the role of the media in society. Specifically, MAML wishes to provide individuals with an opportunity to:

* develop the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to interpret the ways in which media construct reality;

* develop an awareness of the social, cultural, political and economic implications of these constructions and their pervasive value messages; and

* develop an appreciation and aesthetic understanding of the media.

To accomplish its goals, MAML sponsors presentations and workshops for educators, parents and members of the public at large; assists in the development of media literacy programs for Manitoba schools; provides in-service opportunities for Manitoba teachers; and publishes DIRECTIONS, a quarterly newsletter.
*Atlantic Canada and The Territories - Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, The Yukon, The North West Territories*

There are no official government documents supporting secondary school Media Education in any of the four Atlantic provinces nor in the two territories —The Yukon and the North West Territories. Some teachers in these places are working on their own to introduce Media Literacy into their courses—usually in English.

With the beginning of the 1990s there has been a renewed interest in the subject and the Nova Scotia Teachers of English invited Barry Duncan, President of the Ontario-based Association for Media Literacy to speak at one of their annual conventions. And in the fall of 1992, the Association for Media Literacy Nova Scotia was formed.

*Central Canada - Quebec and Ontario*

Over half of Canada's population lives in the two central Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Quebec's Ministry of Education has given approval for the teaching of some secondary school courses in Media Literacy in both French and English schools. There is a Communication element to the Language Arts courses. Such courses are mainly taught in and around Montreal. There have been a few Media Literacy text books written in French. The latest was written by Jacques Piette, a professor at the Université de Montreal, and published in the fall of 1992. The author has given a number of courses on Television Literacy in French speaking schools in both Quebec and Ontario and is speaking with government officials about a further implementation of Media Literacy.

In 1991, the Montreal-based Centre for Literacy, which maintains an open resources collection with materials related to every aspect of literacy, began to receive a large number of requests for resources on media literacy. The Centre made a commitment to increase the media component of their collection and to organize workshops and other activities on media education. A similar development has taken place at the Centre Saint-Pierre, a French language popular education group.

Another step in the development of Quebec Media Education took place in September of 1990. At that time a group of French and English speaking secondary teachers, university academics, and others interested in Media Literacy met at the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal to form the Association for Media Education in Quebec (AMEQ). The group meet monthly and all meetings are bilingual. Their primary purpose is to promote Media Literacy in Quebec by:

- developing a network of those interested in Media Literacy;
- sharing what is happening and what has been successful in Media Literacy in various schools and school boards both in Quebec and outside of the province;

- encouraging a dialogue on such issues as objectives, implementation, and
evaluation of media programs in Quebec; and
assisting teachers with in-service training and workshops.

Lee Bother, co-president of AMEQ, is working on a media guide for the Ministry of Education which will replace the 1982 guides and will incorporate deconstruction as well as construction of media.

In Ontario, where over one third of Canada's population lives, Media Education is thriving. In 1987 Ontario's Ministry of Education released new guidelines that emphasize the importance of teaching Media Literacy as part of *the* regular English curriculum. At least one third of a course in both intermediate and senior division English must be devoted to media study. And in Grades 7 and 8 (12 and 13 year olds), ten percent of classroom time must be dedicated to some form of media studies. In addition students may choose a complete media studies course as either an optional credit or as one of the five English credits required for secondary school graduation. Ontario is the only educational jurisdiction in North America to make Media Literacy a mandatory part of the curriculum.

The decision by the ministry was the result of several factors. The concern of many public groups about the proliferation of violence and pornography in the media resulted in pressure to have the school system respond in some constructive way. Many parent groups, concerned by the increase in television viewing among the young, insisted that schools have some responsibility to teach media literacy skills.

At the same time as the new English studies guidelines were being developed, teachers were surveyed about classroom practices. While only a minority taught media literacy programs, more than eighty percent indicated that they would do so if there were resource materials and in-service training. Informal lobby groups consisting of teacher federations, the Association for Media Literacy, and home and school groups, submitted briefs to the Minister of Education asking that media literacy be an essential part of the school curriculum.

One group above all is responsible for the continuing successful development of Media Education in Ontario. This is the Association for Media Literacy (AML). There were seventy people at the AML's founding meeting in Toronto in April of 1978. The founders of the association were Barry Duncan, a secondary school teacher, now AML President and head of English at Toronto's School of Experimental Education; Arlene Moskovitch, then with the National Film Board of Canada, now a free lance producer, writer and consultant; Linda Schulyer, an elementary school teacher, who has since become a principal in Playing With Time, Inc. the production company responsible for the popular television series seen around the world—KIDS OF DEGRASSI STREET, DEGRASSI JUNIOR HIGH, and DEGRASSI HIGH; and Jerry McNab, head of the Canadian Filmakers Distribution Center, now head of Magic Lantern, a film production and distribution center. By the end of the 1980s, the AML had over 1000 members and a track record of distinguished achievements.

In 1986, the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Ontario Teachers' Federation invited ten AML members to prepare a MEDIA LITERACY RE-
SOURCE GUIDE for teachers. Published by the government in the summer of 1989, the 232 page guide is designed to help teachers of media. It includes teaching strategies and models as well as rationale and aims. The main body of the book presents ideas and classroom activities in the areas of Television, Film, Radio, Popular Music and Rock Video, Photography, Print, and Cross-Media Studies (Advertising, Sexuality, Violence, Canadian Identity, News). The Resource Guide was preceded by the release of a video (produced by AML members) on Media Literacy for teachers. This guide is used in many English speaking countries and was translated into Japanese in 1992.

Prior to the release of the Resource Book, the Ministry seconded the AML authors to give a series of in-service training days to teachers across Ontario in preparation for the introduction of media courses. Since 1987, AML members have given over 100 in-service days and workshops in Ontario. AML members have also given presentations in western and maritime Canada, Australia, Japan, Europe and the United States.

The Ontario resource guide describes Media Education—or Media Literacy as it is known in Ontario—asbeingconcerned"with the process of understanding and using the mass media. It is also concerned with helping students develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of the mass media, the techniques used by them, and the impact of these techniques. More specifically, it is education that aims to increase students' understanding and enjoyment of how the media work, how they produce meaning, how they are organized, and how they construct reality. Media literacy also aims to provide students with the ability to create media products."¹

The government resource guide is very specific about the ultimate aim of media education. Ontario's aims closely follow those first stated by Len Master-man in TEACHING THE MEDIA. Ontario sees Media Education as:

> "... a life skill, and the success of an educational program must be judged by the behaviour of students after they leave school. If the school can provide them with the necessary knowledge, skills and awareness, they will then be in a position to control their relationship with the media."²

There are many international influences reflected in the MEDIA LITERACY RESOURCE GUIDE. Several of Ontario's concepts were influenced by the work of Len Master-man, a British university professor who is one of the foremost Media Education theorists. Masterrnan's statement on principal concepts resulted in the development of the following eight key concepts in the guide.³

1) *All media are constructions.* Arguably the most important concept is that the media do not present simple reflections of external reality. Rather, the media presents carefully crafted constructions which have been subjected to a broad range of determinants and decisions. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions.

2) *The media construct reality.* A major part of the observations and experiences upon which we base our picture of what the world is and how it works
comes to us "preconstructed by the media, with attitudes, interpretations, and conclusions already built in." [4] Thus it is the media, not ourselves, who construct our reality.

3) *Audiences negotiate meaning in media.* Who we are has a bearing on how we process information. Each of us finds or "negotiates" meaning in a different way through a wide variety of factors: "personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background."⁸

4) *Media have commercial implications.* Media Literacy includes an awareness of "the economic basis of mass-media production and how it impinges on content, techniques, and distribution." Media production is a business and must make a profit. As well, Media Literacy investigates questions of ownership, control and related effects. A relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media.

5) *Media contain ideological and value messages.* All media products are advertising in some sense—for themselves but also for values or ways of life. Our mainstream media convey—explicitly or implicitly—ideological messages. These can include all or some of the following: the nature of the "good life" and the role of affluence in it, the virtue of "consumerism", the role of women, the acceptance of authority, and uncompromising patriotism.

6) *Media have social and political implications.* Media are closely linked with the world of politics and social change. Television can elect a national leader largely on the basis of image. And at the same time involve us in civil rights issues, famines in the Third World, and the AIDS epidemic. The media has intimately involved us in national issues and global concerns. We have become McLuhan's Global Village.

7) *Form and content are closely related to the media.* Each medium, as Marshall McLuhan noted, has its own grammar and codifies reality in unique ways. And so, different media will report the same event but create different impressions and messages.

8) *Each medium has a unique aesthetic form.* Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so ought we be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.

Len Masterman makes an important exhortation to teachers. "The really important and difficult task of the media teacher is to develop in pupils enough self-confidence and critical maturity to be able to apply critical judgments to media texts which they will encounter in the future... The primary objective is not simply critical awareness and understanding, it is critical autonomy." [7] Ontario students who are media literate will have the ability to decode, encode, and evaluate the media symbol systems that dominate their world.

Classroom textbooks in Media Studies were available from Australian, British and American authors, but there were no suitable Canadian textbooks. Since 1988, AML members have written Canadian textbooks for senior students —Barry Duncan's MASS MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE, Donna Carpenter's MEDIA: IMAGES AND ISSUES, Neil Anderson's MEDIA WORKS, Roy
Ingram's MEDIA FOCUS, and Rick Hone and Liz Flynn's VIDEO IN FOCUS: A GUIDE TO VIEWING AND PRODUCING VIDEO. The AML also publishes a twelve page bibliography on Media Education.

During 1988 and 1989, the AML collected curriculum units in media studies from Ontario teachers and published some of the best of these in THE AML ANTHOLOGY 1990. Edited by AML executive, Bill Smart, the first edition quickly sold out and THE AML ANTHOLOGY SUPPLEMENT 1992 was planned. For the first edition of the Anthology, the AML executive felt the need for an all-purpose compendium of media lesson plans and units which demonstrated a variety of media genres and strategies for a variety of grades and levels. Some units were designed for teachers new to media studies, others were more sophisticated in their application of the key concepts and in their activities and production tasks.

Recognizing the importance of learning from what has been done in other countries, the AML has collected materials from around the world and organized visits to Toronto by Len Masterman from England, Eddie Dick from Scotland, and Barrie McMahon, Robyn Quin Peter Greenaway and Stephen Walters from Australia. In addition, to fulfil a need for a textbook for Grades 7 and 8 (12 and 13 year olds), two AML members - Jack Livesley and John Pungente - obtained permission from Barrie McMahon and Robyn Quin to do a Canadian adaptation of their excellent text MEET THE MEDIA. The Canadian edition was published in January of 1990 and is now in use in schools across Canada.

Three times a year, the AML publishes MEDIACY. This periodical, edited by AML executive member Derek Boles, updates AML members on what has been happening, lists new publications in the field, announces speakers and topics for quarterly events, and publishes articles on related topics. During the school year, the AML quarterly events bring in speakers ranging from media teachers to media professionals and deal with topics as varied as Multiculturalism, Race and Media and Deconstructing Television News. Each June, the AML holds an annual seminar which attracts close to one hundred teachers. Two streams are offered — one for the beginning media teacher and one for the experienced teacher.

Since 1987, the AML has also offered three courses for media teachers during summer school in conjunction with the Faculty of Education at the University of Toronto.

Media Part I introduces the key concepts of the media: how the media construct realities through the interaction of media codes, cultural practices, media industries and audience. Models of critical pedagogy and classroom organizations are presented. Students work in groups with camcorders and an editing suite as well as deconstruct a variety of media, review current resources, and design practical curriculum units. Special speakers from the media industry make presentations to the class.

Media Part II reinforces what was done in Part I and has a special emphasis on how individuals and audiences negotiate meaning, showing the implications of this for course designs and student discussions. In order to propose effective
school-wide and board-wide courses, teachers assess course frameworks devel-
oped in Britain, Australia, and several Ontario school boards.

Media Part III students develop and present an original research project based on assessing student response to media curriculum in the classroom. Refining ideas drawn from media theory, critical pedagogy, and discourse analysis, students learn appropriate research practices and look at the variety of ways for contextualizing teachable moments in the media. Students are expected to acquire the skills of conducting workshops and advising teachers at the school board level on course design.

These courses are also offered during evenings in the autumn and spring semesters and on Saturday mornings. Plans are underway for similar courses to be offered by AML members in conjunction with other universities across Ontario. Students from these summer schools have gone on to help prepare curriculum for some of Ontario's 182 school boards. Other AML members have done the same. One example is the work coordinated by Derk Verhulst and John Martyn to bring together ten eastern Ontario school boards to write a set of classroom units for these boards.

The Canadian government is in the midst of passing legislation on a new copyright law. The AML has been very active in lobbying for the right of teachers to a "fair use" clause which would allow them freely to show excerpts from television in class.

In May of 1989, the AML brought together forty-six educators and media professionals for a two day invitational think tank to discuss future developments of Media Education in Ontario. The Trent Think Tank took place at Peterborough's University of Trent. Participants included classroom teachers, Ministry of Education personnel, Language Arts coordinators and consultants, university professors, and representatives from the Saskatoon Media Literacy Association, the Development Education Centre, the Children's Broadcast Institute, Strategies for Media Literacy (San Francisco), TVOntario and the National Film Board of Canada. Keynote speakers were Eddie Dick, Media Education Officer for the Scottish Film Council in Glasgow, and Peter Greenaway, Professor of Media Education at Victoria College hi Melbourne. The results of this conference were published by the AML early in 1990.

The Association for Media Literacy organized the first North American Media Education conference, held May 10-12, 1990, at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. Chaired by AML executive, Rick Shepherd, this highly successful conference featured keynote speakers Len Masterman, lecturer in education at England's University of Nottingham and author of TEACHING THE MEDIA; Eddie Dick, Media Education Officer for the Scottish Film Council; and Barrie McMahon, senior curriculum officer for the Western Australia Ministry of Education and Robyn Quin, lecturer in Media Studies at the Western Australia College of Advanced Education.

When the Association began planning for the conference, they hoped to attract about 300 teachers. By the time of the conference the final count was 420 participants. Space limitations forced the organizers to turn away another 100
applicants. The participants came from eight provinces of Canada, nine American states and three overseas countries.

Participants had their choice of over 50 workshops and took part in a number of social events which gave them an opportunity to meet media teachers from other areas. During this conference, the American National Telemedia Council awarded Barry Duncan, AML's president, the Jessie McCanse Award for his contributions to Media Education. The National Telemedia Council also published the keynote speeches in their newsletter.

The success of the 1990 conference sparked a call for a second North American Media Education Conference. Once again, the AML organized this conference — *CONSTRUCTING CULTURE* — at the University of Guelph from May 13-15, 1992. John Pungente, SJ, of the AML executive, chaired the conference which attracted 500 participants from eight Canadian provinces, fifteen American states, and fourteen overseas countries. It was a most international mix of media educators from around the world.

Keynote speakers were Barry Duncan, President of the AML and author; Susan Cole, author and editor of Canada's NOW Magazine; and Barry McMahon and Robyn Quin from Western Australia. There were over 70 workshops and panels to choose from during this very successful conference as well as video screenings of media education resources, social events and a special closing panel.

After the conference, representatives from Canadian provinces met in Toronto to form the Canadian Association of Media Education Organizations (CAMEO). The purpose of the group is to promote media literacy across Canada. CAMEO's first president is Mick Ellis, head of Media Literacy Saskatchewan.

*The Canadian Professional Media and
The Development of Media Literacy:*

Having access to good media resources is very important for media teachers. This is especially true in Canada where the current copyright laws complicate the situation. There are a number of such resources available although there is a considerable distance to go before Canadians have access to the quantity of material available to British and Australian teachers.

For many years Canadian teachers have used films from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), subscribed to their educational newsletters, and taken part in their workshops. Since 1989, the NFB has issued three video resource packages which are proving very helpful for media teachers -

- IMAGES AND MEANING is an anthology of nine National Film Board productions to spark discussion and learning in media literacy courses. A small booklet gives a series of discussion guidelines for classes.

- MEDIA AND SOCIETY is especially useful dealing as it does with media in contemporary society under four main topics - Advertising and Consumerism, Images of Women, Cultural Sovereignty, and Shaping the Truth. Each topic is presented with a short, provocative introduction. The package offers a wide choice of topics in the form of short documentaries,
animatèd films, advertisements, and excerpts. This video package con-
sists of 3 VHS videos containing 19 NFB films or film excerpts and a 124
page Resource Guide. The Resource Guide includes activities, interviews
with filmmakers, backgrounds on the films, student handouts, articles
and quotes.

- ASPECTS OF THE DOCUMENTARY deals with truth, fact, objectivity and the nature of propaganda in the media. The six video cassettes or laserdiscs house an anthology of films, film excerpts, interviews, and original production material for use in senior media literacy classes. The accompanying 150 Resource Guide raises critical issues around documentary filmmaking and representations of fact and fiction in mainstream media. The package is organized in six sections: The Documentary Process, The Viewing Experience, Documentary Traditions, The Search For Truth, Many Voices, and New Directions.

Another resource is The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) IN-
SIDE THE BOX, a series of six packages each of which include a video and
teacher's guide. The subjects dealt with are Television Documentary, Television
News, Children's Television, Drama, Television and the Consumer, and Televi-
sion as an Artistic Medium.

Other materials available include the 1990 Global Television Enterprises of Toronto's three part series on television and the media literacy material purchased by Ontario's educational channel, TVOntario. In 1991-92, TVOntarioalso produced a weekly media oriented talk show—MEDIUM CLOSEUP. Beginning hi the autumn of 1991, YTV, the Toronto based national youth channel, worked with AML executive, Neil Andersen, to produce media literacy notes for their weekly TV program STREET NOISE. Toronto's CITY TV has a weekly program, Media Television, which analyses various aspects of the mass media.

Finally, there is a Canadian Resource Center for Media Literacy. The Jesuit
Communication Project (JCP) in Toronto was founded in 1984 and has a mandate
to encourage, promote and help develop Media Education across Canada. The
JCP has a research library of over 2,500 books and periodicals on the media, as
well as numerous files on media topics and a collection of Media Education
material from around the world. The library is used by teachers, students and
researchers. Twice a year, the JCP publishes CLIPBOARD, a newsletter which
gathers together information on Media Education happenings around the world.
CLIPBOARD is sent to subscribers in 36 countries.

CONCLUSION

A study of Media Education around the world, shows that there are nine
factors which appear to be crucial to the successful development of Media
Education in secondary schools. These are:
1) Media Education, like other innovative programs, must be a grassroots movement and teachers need to take a major initiative in lobbying for this.

2) Educational authorities must give clear support to such programs by mandating the teaching of Media Studies within the curriculum, establishing guidelines and resource books, and by making certain that curricula are developed and that materials are available.

3) Faculties of Education must hire staff capable of training future teachers in this area. There should also be academic support from tertiary institutions in the writing of curricula and in sustained consultation.

4) In-service training at the school district level must be an integral part of program implementation.

5) School districts need consultants who have expertise in Media Education and who will establish communication networks.

6) Suitable textbooks and audiovisual material which are relevant to the country/area must be available.

7) A support organization must be established for the purposes of workshops, conferences, dissemination of newsletters and the development of curriculum units. Such a professional organization must cut across school boards and districts to involve a cross section of people interested in Media Education.

8) There must be appropriate evaluation instruments which are suitable for the unique quality of Media Studies.

9) Because Media Education involves such a diversity of skills and expertise, there must be a collaboration between teachers, parents, researchers and media professionals.

Australia, Scotland, and England, where many of the above factors are in place, lead the world in Media Education. Although Ontario has not had the years of experience that Australia and Britain have, it is clear that Ontario does now possess most of the factors critical to the successful development of Media Education. The past few years have seen the province of Ontario become a leader in Media Education not only in Canada but also around the world.

## END NOTES

1. Duncan, Barry et al. *Media Literacy - Resource Guide*. Toronto: Ministry of Education, 1989, p.6-7.

2. Ibid. p.7.

3. "Media teachers should attempt to make a list of the principal concepts which they wish their students to understand, for it is these concepts which can provide the subject with its continuity and coherence across a wide range of media texts and issues." TEACHING THE MEDIA, p.23.

4. Op.cit, p.8.
5. Ibid.

6. Op.cit., p.9.

7. Op.cit., p.24.

*Special Thanks:* Dan Blake, British Columbia; Mick Ellis, Saskatchewan; Brian Murphy, Manitoba; Lee Rother, Quebec; Neil Andersen, Barry Duncan, Bill Smart - Ontario

## REFERENCES

Association for Media Literacy, 40 McArthur Street, Toronto, Ontario M9P 3M7.

Anderson, N. *Media works*. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989.

CAMEO, c/o Mick Ellis, Saskatoon Board of Education, 405 - 3rd Avenue South, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7K 1M7.

Carpenter, D. *Media: Images and issues*. Toronto: Addison Wesley, 1988.

CBC Enterprises. *Inside the box*. CBC Enterprises, Box 500, Station A, Toronto, Ontario M5W1E6.

Duncan, B. (1988). *Moss media and popular culture*. Toronto: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Duncan, B. et al. (1989) *Media literacy - resource guide*. Toronto: Ministry of Education, Toronto.

Hone, R. & Flynn, L. (1992). *Video in focus: A guide to viewing and producing video*. Toronto: Globe/Modern Curriculum, 1992.

Ingram, R. *Media focus*. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1989.

Jesuit Communication Project, 300-47 Ranleigh Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4N 1X2.

Livesley, J. et al. *Meet the media* (Canadian edition). Toronto: Globe/Modern Curriculum, 1990.

Masterman, L. *Teaching the media*. London: Comedia, 1985.

NationalFilmBoard of Canada, BoxG100, Station A, Montreal, QuebecH3C 3H5.

## AUTHOR

John Pungente is a Canadian Jesuit priest with Master's degrees in English, Theology, and Film. He is co-author of MEDIA LITERACY - the Ontario Ministry of Education Resource Guide for Teachers and is currently Executive Director of the Jesuit Communication Project, Toronto, Ontario.
# Systematic Development of Media Education in Chile

Miguel Reyes
Ana Maria Méndez

**Abstract:** Through this article we will describe how it has been possible for us to establish a formal scheme for the critical and creative analysis of mass media in education in Chile. This task was originally assumed by a university; then it was projected through the academic system to different geographic areas of our country.

**R6sumé:** Dans cet article nous vous decrirons comment nous avons pu établir une m6thode d'analyse critique et inventive de l'étude des mass-medias dans l'éducation au Chili. Ce travail fut d'abord fait à l'université et par la suite diffuse, par le blais du système scolaire, a trovers différents points stratégiques au pays. Malgré le peu de confiance qu'Inspire le système scolaire aux chercheurs en matière d'étude des medias, deux stages de formation alternative pour enseignants ont été integres au programme scolaire.

## BACKGROUND

### *Media Education: Not Really Believing the System*

Several aspects of Latin American reality have created an unreliable atmosphere around media education, and particularly toward education about television within the academic or scholarly system. In some cases it has, indeed, become antagonistic. Critical educational propositions such as Freire's in Brazil have resulted in media education being brought to the forefront of the education system. The school system has not been open to providing experiences in the analysis and criticism of mass media, nor for the analysis and criticism of the education system itself. Certainly the political system situation in the past decades and the military governments in our countries have not permitted the development of strategies for critical analysis; these have arisen with the support of the church and non-governmental organizations.
Changes have been happening and there are signs of more openness. In
October, 1991 Latin American media experts met in Santiago, called together by
UNESCO. Among the 48 participants were 18 academics from Communication
or Education faculties of Latin American universities, and six participants from
official educational organizations. One recommendation for educational minis-
tries and universities emphasized the need to introduce communications educa-
tion within the curricula of nursery schools, elementary schools, and high schools.
It was also recommended that courses on communications education be included
in the curricula of Communication and Education faculties in universities and
colleges (Seminario, 1991).

Context: CIME - Who We Are

CIME - The Centre de Investigation de Medios para la Educacion (Investiga-
tion Centre for Media Education) has been working in media education since
1982, when it offered training to students through an educational social-commu-
nication project. It is an academic unit that belongs to the Science of Education
Faculty of the Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion in
Valparaiso, Chile. CIME is oriented to improving education qualitatively through
research related to educational use of communication media, and particularly
mass media. The purpose is to develop and promote research about mass media
as cultural agents from outside the formal education system that are capable of
being used with educative criteria. Objectives of CIME include (a) to qualitatively
improve education through research in media education; (b) to develop strategies,
methods, and techniques for educational approaches to mass media; (c) to develop
plans and programs to teach media education at the university and abroad; (d)
to diffuse research and activities through publications and other media inside and
outside the university; and (e) to communicate with other such centers or
institutions within Chile and abroad.

CIME members are teachers within the university who carry out research
and conduct theses or seminars on media education coordinated by the Center,
and also teachers and researchers from abroad dealing with communication,
media, and/or education who are interested in working within the framework of
CIME objectives.

From the beginning there was an awareness that the real starting point for
future permanent action in media education was the training of teachers in the
development of methodologies and techniques to be used in schools. Several
inservice workshops and courses were given to teachers by the Center between
1982 and 1987. A systematic program "Media for Education: TV and Computing"
was created to satisfy the urgent need among teachers for such training. This
post-title program is aimed at creating an integrated educator; one who is able to
develop awareness and to manage the most recent information, image, and sound
technologies to improve education qualitatively.

However, the post-title program only permits the Center to satisfy the needs
of teacher-students who live quite near the university campus, and not the needs
that the school system has in places far from the urban centers. A workshop
entitled Education for Television was developed to solve problems found in relation to TV influence in the school system. The workshop makes use of distance education technology, training teachers through a short period of actual presence, self-instructional materials, and videotaped programs as complementary support.

## *Our Conceptual Bases*

The work by teacher training is based on the concept of media education. This is understood as a discipline which enables the media perceiver to develop the capacity of critical and creative analysis of mass media messages and apply this capacity with educational criteria to allow autonomous behavior of the person as a final goal.

Our activity is based on this concept, which is framed within the taxonomical model of Dynamic Reading of Signs developed in Latin America by Maria Josefa Dommguez. The model involves five consecutive steps: education for objectivity (denotation); education for subjectivity (connotation); education for critical analysis (reflection); education for transforming answers (action-compromise); and education for new experiences (creativity) (Dommguez, 1990).

Alternative strategies for action are also recognized for media education. These are in accordance with the scheme developed by Golay (1988), as follows: knowledge about producers and their language (the different agents involved in the production of communication and the knowledge of the language of the media); image-reading skills (development of and training in skills and aptitudes for perceiving and processing available symbols as quickly as possible); and self-analysis and awareness (consciousness about receiver motivations or the reasons they relate to the media in certain ways).

The specific activity aimed at training teachers is one thrust among many others in media education. We have carried out projects on the family and television and on television education through the use of television (Reyes, Dennis, & Mendez, 1990). We are committed to training teachers because we ourselves are educators and we work in an institution that prepares educators. We also believe that teachers are the educative agents who can best introduce changes in the education system.

## TRAINING INSERVICE TEACHERS: TWO ALTERNATIVES

### *Post-title Media for Education: TV and Computing*

In 1987 the post-title program "Medios para la Educacion: Television y Computation" was created at the Sciences of Education Faculty, Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion.

The program is structured in six courses during three academic semesters. It is offered as inservice for teachers, and for that reason classes are provided on an evening schedule once weekly, with complementary readings and activities.
The teacher-students begin with an analysis of media impact on the school system. They review theoretical models of different authors, different methodologies and study media languages, finally designing and implementing selected methodologies to solve problems in their own reality. The program allows the teacher-students to solve problems that the media create among their students, and also allows them to generate other solutions in either a wider context or within the classroom in the future.

The six courses are as follows:

Media Education, the Educator and New Technologies

The Language of Media

Media Impact on Children and Teenagers

Media Education Methodologies

Curricular Design Related to Media Education

Educating with Media (Workshop)

The workshop, which is the final course, involves a terminal activity where the teacher-students carry out their own projects on media education. They are academically supported by the teachers of the program in designing, applying, and evaluating their methodological propositions based on the knowledge gained in the program. To date three groups of teacher-students have completed the program, a fourth group started in the second semester, 1991, and two new groups began in March, 1992.

Since the program began teacher-students have completed final projects related to a number of key problems such as advertising influence on choice of snacks in nursery and elementary schools, acoustic pollution and youth, TV addiction, self-esteem and its relation to models proposed by the media, and clothing consumerism. They have verified these problems and designed and carried out their own methodological solutions. Teacher-student projects have resulted in actions, within the schools where they work, such as media education units within the school curriculum and extra-curricular workshops with students or parents. In this way the university is supporting the direct implementation and the use of abilities acquired by teachers in their specialization programs.

One particular example of the action taken by a teacher-student occurred at Juan XXIII High School in El Belloto - a small city approximately 25 kilometers from Valparaiso. Sixteen and seventeen year olds were creating their own broadcast television production within the high school, preparing live and videotaped programs with the help of the teacher. Audiences for the production work included other high school students and neighbours living within 500 meters of the high school.

## Distance Workshop on Educational Use of TV

During the past decade several activities have been implemented to train teachers in media education. These range from short meetings to systematic post-title programs. One of the earliest experiences was the development of a workshop
in the education of television viewers, undertaken with the support of the
Ministry of Education.

In 1990 we completed a research project, the aim of which was to describe the
influence of television on the academic system in the Valparaiso region and to
develop strategies for critical and creative analysis, and educative use of televi-
sion (Reyes-Mendez, 1989). Based upon the background and the thinking of
teachers who live far from the university, we created a workshop on education for
television. The aim of the workshop is to prepare teachers in critical and creative
analysis of television messages for application to education.

The workshop is planned to be delivered partly through live experience and
partly via distance. The live experience includes a first meeting of one half day,
a support meeting of one half day, an intensive workshop of four days, and an
evaluation or feedback meeting of one half day. These meetings take place at the
locations of teachers. Interspersed with these meetings is a series of work
experiences including four self-instructional workbooks and a series of
videotaped television programs.

Participants include two teacher guides, one coordinator for each school that
participates, and approximately twenty teacher-students. The structure involves
working in groups, and teacher-students are expected to generate teams in their
schools, so that they can support each other, plan, and carry out their methodo-
logical strategies.

During the first step, beginning with the initial meeting, teacher-students
work on the knowledge aspects of television and on identifying problems that
arise from the media in the scholarly system. The first and second workbooks -
*What is TV* and *Where is the Problem*—support this first step. The outcome is the
identification and simple description of problems that television generates in
their own scholarly reality. A short support meeting permits the exchanging of
criteria for describing problems in an educational way. Using the third workbook
— *How to Analyse Television* — during the following weeks teacher-students
analyse a taxonomical model to order and state priorities of television problems
inside school, and the educational objectives they want to aim at. The fourth
workbook — *Searching Solutions* — is used in the planning of educational
strategies as a reference for reaching their own solutions to the problems they
earlier described and prioritized.

The in-person workshop allows for interaction among groups of teacher-
students and guides teachers to consolidate theoretical models of media educa-
tion, to make use of group dynamics to reach and solve detected problems, and to
design solution strategies. The putting into practice and validation of designed
strategies usually lasts from two to four weeks.

The feedback and evaluation meeting allows for the recycling of the experi-
ences gained in the workshop, the visualizing of new problems and solution
strategies beyond those implemented during the workshop, and also the evalu-
ation of the workshop objectives. Evaluation is done through a report written by
the teacher-students regarding the construction, implementation, and evalua-
tion of their particular strategies in their own schools.
The most significant achievement of this alternative for training teachers is related to the space generated for media education within the school system. In addition media education is based on the development of a methodological approach to solving problems in any reality, beginning with a theoretical model implemented jointly by university teachers and school system teachers. The interaction of both groups has permitted a permanent revision of the conceptual framework, integrating experiences from different realities.

There have been some difficulties. The low economic resources of teacher-students to be admitted to the post-title program is one. Even though the program cost is low ($330.00 USA) it is expensive for the teachers' budget. Another difficulty is the physical distance from the teachers' work settings and the university. This year the systematic post-title program is to be offered in an additional site — San Felipe — a small city 140 km. from Valparaiso.

The systematic program has another difficulty - that of forming teams to work together inside scholarly units. Teacher-students of the systematic program generally study as a personal decision, and it is unusual to find more than one from each school. When they try to carry out media education activities in the school there is no support. We believe that preparing teams in each school may facilitate media education. Institutional commitment is needed for permanent results of research and implementation of awareness strategies to become part of the schools' educative process.

## MEDIA EDUCATION AS A SUBJECT
IN THE CURRICULA OF FUTURE TEACHERS

### *As an Optional Course*

CIME research during the early years did not result in an immediate change in teacher education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The rigid curriculum of Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion does not permit the introduction of modifications. The first courses on media education were thus introduced in a private university — the Catholic University of Valparaiso—as elective courses. Since 1983 several courses on media education have been offered, including Education of the TV Viewer, Education and Social Communication and Learning to See Television. These courses are attractive to pedagogy students, and assigned vacancies are filled each semester. To date more than 15 courses have been offered, with an average of thirty students in each course. To this time the courses remain as electives. We know that similar circumstances prevail in other universities in Latin America. Media education courses are scarce in colleges and faculties of education. Courses that do exist are mainly placed in communication faculties, and are offered to future journalists and social communicators.
*In the Formal Curriculum*

During the past year the Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion has been reviewing the desired profile of its future professionals. As a result the curriculum has been restructured. After ten years of systematic research on media education, a course on Education and Social Communication has been introduced as a requirement for pedagogy students at the nursery, elementary, and high school levels.

As of 1992 all future teachers who study at this university will complete Education and Social Communication. It is significant to point out that the Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion is assuming a pioneer position, being the first in Chile, and perhaps in Latin America, to include a required course in media education on pedagogy programs. Because of this we can visualize a future with several scholarly classrooms where children work with mass media and develop their abilities to express themselves in a critical, active, and creative way through mass media, guided by teachers with a vision beyond that of defending children against "those horrible mass media."

We are worried because in the Latin American and in our own national context there is still not an awareness of the need to prepare teachers in media education. But we feel stimulated by the growth of awareness in some Chilean and Latin American authorities with ties to the education area, who are becoming conscious of how important it is that educators develop abilities to creatively and critically analyze mass media.

We expect that more and more teachers will participate in systematic programs and workshops that enable them to use television and mass media with educative criteria. We believe that educational systems should introduce strategies that enable them to prepare students for the twenty-first century, to be able to use the cultural resources offered through the media according to their needs and within the conceptual framework of permanent education. We feel impelled to introduce new information, image, and sound technologies in a systematic educational process. Otherwise we run the risk of preparing children and youth for the year 2000 by looking back at Gutenberg.

## REFERENCES

- Dommguez, M. J. (1990), *Activos y creativos con los MCS*. Paulinas, Bogota.

- Gelcic, R (1983), *Programa Piloto en Providencia para Educar al Telespectador*. In *Providencia*, # 20. Santiago, Chile.

- La TV Debe Verse con Ojo Critico. (1983). In *La gaceta del bio*, 9/10/83. Concepcion.

- Golay, J-P (1988), *Media education: Encounter of research and education*. In *Meeting of Research and Media Education. Proceedings of the Symposium, CIC.Lausanne*.

- Reyes, M. & Mendez, A. M. (1989), *Influencia de la Televisidn en el Sistema Escolar de la 5a Regidn*. DIGI-UPLACED. Valparaiso, Chile.
Reyes, M. & Mendez, A. M. (1990), *Cuadernos de educación para la televisión*. CIME-UPLACED. Valparaiso, Chile.

Reyes, M., Dennis, E. & Mendez, A. M. (1990), Educación para la Televisión a través de la Televisión. In *Dialogos educacionales*, # 15-16, UPLACED, Valparaiso.

*Seminario Latino Americana La educación para los medios de comunicación de caraal2000 - resultados* (1991), CENECA/UNESCO. Santiago, Chile.

## AUTHORS

Miguel Reyes is Professor and Director of the Centre de Investigación de Medios para la Educación.

Ana María Mendez is Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator at the Centro de Investigación de Medios para la Educación. The Centre is located at the Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educación, Av. Playa Ancha No. 850, Casilla 34-V, Valparaiso, Chile. Fax 0056-32-285041.
Media Education in the Danish
Folkeskole

Birgitte Tufte

**Abstract:** From 1987 to 1991 thirty-five media education projects were carried out in the Danish primary and elementary schools. This article describes the alms and practices of these projects. Categories were determined by the way media educa-tion was organized In the various schools. The results of the evaluation point to the need for changes in the present division between subjects In the school, toward cross-curricular teaching, and toward Integration of media education within several school subjects.

**Resum6:** De 1987 d 1991, trente-clnq projets portant sur l'etudedes medlas ont ete menes dans les ecoles primalres et elementalres Danoises. Get article decrit les objectifs et les pratiques de ces projets. Les categories ont ete determlnees selon l'organlsation de l'etude des medlas dans les diverses ecoles. Les resultats de revaluation montrent : qu'il est necessaire de modifier la division qul existe actuellement entre les diverses matieres au programme scolaire; que nous devons dorenavant nous doter d'un enselgnement Inter-dlsclplnalre; que nous devons Integrer l'etude des medlas d plusieurs matieres au programme.

During the past 10 to 15 years media education has gradually gained status
in many countries, although only a few countries have integrated it into the
curriculum of the school. (Masterman, 1980, 1985, Alvarado et al., 1987, Media
Development 1, 1991).

Until recently, however, a major thrust of media education has been moral-
izing and playing the part of a guardian that sees the media as cultural
deterioration. This is partly because many of the teachers who have been in the
front line of media education originally belonged to the social movements of the
1960s and 1970s, and therefore emphasized critical awareness. Furthermore, the
framework of media education has often been the informative, book-oriented
culture that has been, and still is the culture of the schools. Media education has
often been carried out as literary analysis, which means that the analysis has had
the same goal as that of traditional analysis of literature, i.e. to teach the children
to appreciate the classics, to foster good taste, and to teach the children to see
through inferior products such as popular culture.

However, the new media education — as it was discussed at the media education conference in Toulouse (New Directions in Media Education, 1990) — has a different approach, which is not based on moral panic. The new trend emphasizes a more relaxed, pluralistic and cross-curricular approach to media teaching — often undertaken on the initiative of enthusiastic and committed teachers, but without policy statements calling for the provision of media education.

In Denmark the development of the media could be characterized as a revolution. Until 1988 there was one public service TV channel. Now, only four years later, half of the population is^able to watch between twelve and thirty-six TV channels. Accordingly, there has been debate about children and television, and there have been numerous committed teachers who have incorporated aspects of media teaching into their curricula in Danish, history, art, and social studies. In this article I shall describe and discuss thirty-five media education development projects which have taken place in the Danish Folkeskole (primary and secondary school) from 1987-1991. (Tufte et al. 1991).

*Which Kind of Media Projects?*

The thirty-five projects classified by the Council for Innovation and Development as media education development projects were categorized by the evaluation team in terms of the organisational form the various projects employed. It must be emphasized, however, that a certain amount of overlapping and borderline crossing occurred. The categories were as follows:

- media as a separate subject

- media integrated in existing subjects

- media workshops

- media in school and local community

- interactive media

*Who are The Teachers?*

Regarding their professional preparatory background for media teaching, questionnaires revealed that approximately one third of the teachers were self-taught, while a small proportion of them had had some media training in their specializations during their teacher training, such as, for example, media analysis in Danish. Somewhat more than one third of them had attended courses at Country Media Centres or at the Royal Danish School of Educational Studies.

Judging from the collected material, the typical Danish media teacher could be described as being 30 to 50 years old, with 10 to 15 years of teaching experience. Both sexes were equally represented. He or she had specialized in Danish and
possibly also taught social studies or mathematics. He or she was either self-
taught or had been to a media course and was either alone in media education
work or had allied him/herself with a colleague.

*Aims and Motivations?*

In the project descriptions, teachers have formulated their motivations
regarding the aims of the project and regarding development work in general. In
some cases it was difficult to separate the two. Motivations had three main
concerns:

children's use of the media

the media and the school

the media in relation to culture and society.

The majority of teacher motivations were concerned with children's use of
media - particularly television. Characteristic - and in line with the moral panic
trend - television was considered partly to be dangerous for children and partly
undesirable in its effect and passivity-inducing function.

Regarding the second concern - the media and the school - several teachers argued that media education is a neglected area in school, that instruction in the subject is necessary to enable children to process media images and to use media actively, to strengthen its practical and creative aspects, and to break down traditional borders between subjects.

The relatively few motivations comprising the media in a cultural and social
perspective were concerned with exploiting the opportunities that exist in the
Cultural Centre idea and in local TV and radio networks. Accordingly, most of the
teachers involved in the projects formulated goals that were concerned with:

acquiring an understanding of and an insight into the function of the
media and its role in the society today in order to
maintain a critical and selective approach to the media.

The aims and goals are thus characterized by an analytical approach whereas there are not many projects that specifically emphasize the importance of media production. Nevertheless, media production, especially of video, is included in a number of projects, mainly as a part of the analysis.

*What Were the Outcomes of the Projects?*

There appeared to be considerable overlapping in the first two organisation
forms, comprising media as a separate subject and media integrated in existing
subjects. In most of the projects in these categories, media studies were organised
within the already existing framework of the curriculum, either by being
integrated into existing subjects or by constituting a new subject. In some
projects, however, the existing framework was restructured by having media
education form a separate course, cutting across the school's traditional sharply
divided subjects. It was characteristic that many of the projects comprised both media analysis and media production.

Most of the teachers said that the media education project had been extremely significant for them, both from the perspective of the learning process and new conceptions of the teacher's role, and from the perspective of the subject specifically. Several teachers pointed out, for instance, that they had acquired an amount of theory and practice relating to the media which also benefitted their teaching of other subjects; for example the production skills typically being developed in collaboration with the pupils, who are not afraid of the equipment and who—more so than adults—are prepared to experiment through a trial and error method. In this sense the production process can pave the way to breaking down the traditional authoritarian role of the teacher.

Some teachers felt that they had experienced problems with colleagues because — as media teachers — they were working innovatively, using the school's video equipment more than the others, and needing a media classroom. Also, more significantly, the pupils enjoyed the lessons, which in some cases led to their pressing other teachers also to teach about media. It would seem that the teachers whose aim was to make themselves superfluous were those who felt this derision from colleagues least, probably because they saw their function mainly as helpers and advisers to pupils and to colleagues alike.

On the question of what the pupils gained from these projects, it is clear that media production gave pupils a new means of expression. When pupils work with media over a longer period, they develop a competence that enables them to select the medium appropriate to the content, and to produce a piece of work independently.

Regarding the ability to analyze, which was the basis of many teacher motivations, teachers say that pupils have begun to look at television in a new way. They have gained insight into the way television programmes are made, and this has led them to see TV as a construct of reality. With regard to the academically weak and/or shy pupils, it is not completely clear what effect media education had or might have in the long term, since the projects were conducted over a comparatively short period. In some cases it appears that media education, particularly media production, could strengthen them. These pupils have often felt hampered by language, especially in writing, but in media production they have found an alternative mode of expression.

The following patterns were observed regarding gender differences. At the youngest level there was no marked difference. Boys and girls approached media work and equipment in more or less the same way. At the 13 to 14 age levels there were some changes noted in sex roles; for instance boys were more interested in the technical side of the equipment while the girls mostly regarded the equipment as a means of expressing meaningful content. Girls were usually more painstaking when it came to working out a shooting script or storyboard and more willing to undertake it. Boys started shooting at once, and only later realised the need for planning a production sequence and constructing a storyboard.
Media production was included in a number of projects, indicating that the media workshop also functioned as part of the development work. However, it is the category specified as media workshops that contains a precise description of the way a media workshop both can and should function in school. In all the projects evaluated, the idea of establishing a media workshop arose as the result of in-service courses at the School of Educational Studies - either in a course on school libraries or a creative arts course.

There are two forms of media workshops, arranged either as part and parcel of the school library or situated close to it, so that the school library's resources of materials and technical know-how can be exploited. The media workshop teachers indicated that they learned a lot from their development work, but their requests regarding the media workshop were all for more time, more money and in some cases more and better space. Pupils also expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the media workshops.

The category specified as Media in School and Local Community has its roots in recent years' idea of opening the school to the local community. The typical teacher taking the initiative for a project in this category would be a local enthusiast who could ally him/herself with, for example, the head teacher, colleagues, parents and like minded co-workers outside the school. These projects usually had a double aim, namely, the external - concerning the school as part of the local community, and the internal - comprising a pedagogical aim regarding the school and the pupil group. The practical work in this category took various organisational forms, reflecting to a greater or lesser degree the external and the internal aspects.

These projects had a number of problems and barriers. For instance, the local authorities were not always willing to give their financial support. Although the development projects might have been successful, this did not guarantee the economic basis for continuing the work once the grant from the Council for Innovation and Development was depleted. One particular project was the subject of an intensive evaluation. The conclusions indicated that the project represented a thematisation of a democratic media and cultural pedagogy which could be significant for future practice of media education. Despite the findings it was not easy to draw the surrounding community into the project work. It would appear to be easier for school people to break through the school walls with their media messages than to establish a dialogue on and with the media beyond. Building cooperation around a democratic use of media would appear to be a long term affair. However, the process has been set in motion.

Development work in the category of Interactive Media was confined to interactive video. The videodiscs used were partly Danish productions (storage media for large amounts of photographs, texts, pictures of objects and shorter film sequences) and partly English language material. The latter were made for teaching in English, one for Physics including filmed experiments, and the other for History giving pupils, sequence by sequence, the opportunity to see various models for the solution of socio-historical problems played out.
Evaluation of the use of the videodiscs indicated that interactive video is still in its infancy in the Folkeskole, the present material being partly hi foreign language and therefore neither immediately linguistically available to pupils, nor of relevance for teaching in Denmark, and partly in Danish but with relatively primitive interactive possibilities.

In the project work, the videodiscs were used as one of a number of information sources in a group work situation where the normal timetable had been suspended. The relevant pictures were usually selected in advance by the teacher, and the pupils retrieved them with the aid of bar codes. The videodisc thus played a limited role in the teaching, and the possibility of a dialogue on any level above the most elementary was only exploited sporadically in a few learning sequences.

The most advanced use of interactive video - pupils' own individual and systematic quest for knowledge and discovery in computer-guided discs and data bases - is not suited to the normal organisation of lessons within the framework of a school timetable. This type of activity would best be exploited individually, outside normal school hours. The pedagogical strength of interactive video lies in the fascination of its images and advanced dialogue which challenges the pupil to search on his own for facts and experiences or to solve a problem in asimulation,

## What Was The Result?

Many of the goals that the teachers set themselves in their descriptions of aims have been unachieveable because of insufficient funding. Many of the most ardent teachers, out of sheer zeal for the cause, placed undue strain on their own resources, both personal and professional. In order to supplement the limited technical and economic means available, many teachers tried new techniques, by collaborating with local media and county centres for educational media. Budget cuts resulted in a number of projects having to be modified in relation to their original descriptions. This meant that in most cases the evaluation team had to evaluate reduced projects.

Within the five organisational forms there have been rudiments of media education practices that, if developed further, could be significant for media teaching in the future. Although the development projects cover a broad span, they have some similarities and certain general features in common, being all based on three criteria, including; a) media type (video, slides/sound, radio, TV; b) topic; and c) a mixture of media types, media genre, media specific discipline, topic and/or teaching form.

The teaching and working forms in the projects have been predominantly those involving media production, mainly of video, analysis of pupils' own productions and those of professionals. To a certain extent, teachers have also taught media theory on a general level. Production has taken up most of the allotted teaching time. Pupils have most often worked in smaller, independent groups in the production phase. Media analysis and theory have to a large extent been organized on a whole class basis with the teacher as central figure.