Media Literacy in Schools: Practice, Production and Progression

We write this book from the context of a school in which we have both worked: Parkside Community College in Cambridge, which was the first school in the UK to be designated a Media Arts College under the UK government's specialist schools programme, in 1997. Parkside, which has a history of generously accommodating reform and change, and has been in its time an Edwardian Central School for Boys and Girls, a girls' grammar school and a comprehensive school (since 1974), has been an exhilarating context in which to work. In socioeconomic terms, the student intake has a substantial proportion of middle-class students, although the proportion of children with special educational needs is ‘broadly in line with the national average’ (OFSTED, 2000). In addition, about 7% of students are from minority ethnic backgrounds, and up to twenty languages are spoken.

Since designation as a Media Arts College, we have explored with students a wide rage of media forms: comics, music videos, films, hospital dramas, horror films, computer games, sports TV programmes, news television, to name some. A sample of these different forms, and the literacies associated with them, form the subject of most of this book. We have also worked with colleagues in other subject areas to see how media forms and genres could be used in Music, Maths, Geography, History, Science, Modern Foreign Languages, Dance and Art; and we will describe and discuss in Chapter 8 how media literacy might operate in these subjects. Finally, we have evolved some idea of how media literacy in schools might develop through the five years of compulsory secondary schooling, the subject of Chapter 9.

Media Arts Colleges in the UK need, perhaps, further comment. The government's use, in this designation, of the word Arts indicates an emphasis on a desired trajectory from education into the creative industries, seen by New Labour in particular as a key element in the UK economy (Buckingham and Jones, 2001). In this respect, the initiative belongs to a rhetoric running through the era of New Labour in which creativity is defined as a regenerative force, with the ability to promote values of community and inclusiveness, develop collaborative, problem-solving approaches in the workplace and to create a workforce equipped for the creative industries and the hi-tech sector (Seltzer and Bentley, 1999).

We do not dissent entirely from this vision, except when it becomes a constraint. As we will explain later, our conception of creativity allows for a [Page xiv]wider set of social and artistic purposes, including dissent, critique, subversion and self-representation, none of which obviously fit within the doggedly pro-social policy rhetorics of the New Labour policy formulation.

Similarly, the development of a group of Media Arts Colleges in the UK has had its own momentum, its own imperatives, its own interpretations of media education, media literacy and media arts, which, naturally, vary from school to school. It is fair to make one general point, however: the Arts emphasis has tended to shift the centre of gravity of media education in these schools away from its traditional home in English, towards the other Arts subjects. While it remains true that most media teachers in the UK are English teachers (QCA, 2005b), these schools have been active in promoting cross-curricular media work, especially in the Arts; and in synthesising media work, especially creative production, with the traditional pedagogies of Art, Music, Dance and Drama.

This emphasis may also explain some apparent gaps in our account. We do not, for instance, include any account of work on the news media, which we do not see as related to the media arts. Similarly, it is not yet clear to us that the Internet, whose primary importance for children and young people is communicative, is a distinct component of the media arts. While the authoring of web-pages does involve the aesthetic and compositional work we see as typical of media arts work, its primary significance in relation to the media arts is as a medium of exhibition (which we consider in relation to the distribution of student work). However, much of this may change in the future, and we consider possible developments, especially in relation to new media, in the concluding chapter.

Nevertheless, we are both English teachers by training. In this respect, we have always been close to the details of print literacy, and the cultural interests of the literature curriculum, though we would locate ourselves closer to the ‘cultural analysis’ model identified originally in the Cox report (DES, 1988) than any of the other models. However, the emphasis on a semiotic approach in this book can be traced back to our interest as English teachers in systems of signification: how they are used by children, and how they can be understood by them. No doubt this background will colour our account. However, we do not pretend to paint any kind of ideal, general picture of what media education should look like. On the contrary, we expect it to be richly diverse.

The account we give of our work represents an interrelation between research and practice. James still teaches at Parkside as an Advanced Skills teacher; Andrew lectures and researches at the Institute of Education in London, but worked as a teacher for 23 years before that, 17 of them at Parkside. While our current jobs produce inevitably different emphases, we have both always been involved in writing and research as well as teaching. Also, while our work has sometimes been focused inwards on the classroom, it has at other times been directed outwards, in dialogue with colleagues in the [Page xv]UK, Europe, Australia, the United States, Korea, China, New Zealand. While this is inevitably a very local account of the learning and teaching of media literacy, we hope it will bear some traces of this wider dialogue.

This book, then, emerges from researched accounts of our work. Every chapter has involved some kind of reflective analysis, whether as part of large, funded research projects, or small, informal action research efforts. While the accounts of media literacy work here may serve as examples other teachers might want to explore in their own classrooms, they are also intended to show how practice and research intermingle. We hope, then, that they will suggest ways for teachers to think beyond instrumental models of the curriculum. For these purposes, we are not offering detailed templates, but rather suggestive accounts of what can be achieved and, as importantly, how we might think about what students get out of it. All the projects described here are, in principle, replicable without any need for expensive equipment or special resources.

The book is also intended to indicate to researchers how the daily detail of work in the classroom over long periods of time can feed into the analytical and theoretical processes of research.

We hope that our account will complement other books about media education which currently address important needs in this field. David Buckingham's Media Education (2003) gives a valuable overview of both the history and the current debates in this field. Julian McDougall's The Media Teacher's Book (2006) gives practical advice about how to develop programmes of media education. Our book, by contrast, gives an account of research and practice in one school over ten years or so. While it is a book about media education, its focus is on media literacy. We are looking through the lens of what the student is doing, making and learning, rather than the lens of what the teacher is doing. In practical terms, this means that most chapters in this book provide a descriptive account of the processes students go through in various projects, followed by an analysis of selections of their work. The final three chapters consider how media literacy can be addressed across the curriculum, how it can develop as students move up through secondary education, and what it might look like in the future.

We imagine that the readers of this book may be quite diverse. Among them will be teachers of specialist media courses, teachers of media within English and perhaps teachers of other subjects who use, or would like to use, the media and its associated technologies in the kinds of ways we describe. We have worked with many teachers in many different subject areas over the years, and hope that we can offer something of interest across many different contexts. We have also worked with teachers at many different stages of their careers. Some readers of this book may be newly qualified, or still in training, with elements of textual, cultural and media theory fresh in their minds from university courses, but keen to know how such knowledge can be mediated [Page xvi]for the classroom. Others may be experienced teachers, with a wealth of classroom practice, interested in reflecting on the implications for schools of new media and the cultural practices associated with them.

Similarly, readers who work in academic research will, we know, have a range of different backgrounds and interests. Some may research the cultural lives of young people; some may be interested specifically in how young people engage with the media; others may be interested in the practice of media, literacy, ICT or arts education. We have tried to give some sense for this audience of the analytical and theoretical backgrounds which lie behind our accounts. We have also given ample references to more detailed or more technical accounts of the projects which have been the subject of specific research projects.

Finally, we know from experience that descriptions in words, even with illustrations, never do justice to the variety and inventiveness of media production work by young people. For this reason, the book is accompanied by a CD-ROM, which contains the pieces of work by students which Chapters 2 to 9 focus on. It also contains additional examples where appropriate, and other information, such as schemes of work.