Проблеми на постмодерността (Dec 2011)
Media Education as Cross-curricular Theme in Estonian Schools: Reasons of a Failure
Abstract
Estonian schools have some experiences with teaching production of written megia genres, but very limited understanding of what actually is media literacy. Although since 2002 Media education has been a cross-curricular theme in Estonian national curricula, there has been no constructive development towards understanding media literacy. I suggest that the reasons of current situation are following: - Teachers have no cognitive model of media literacy, and therefore they tend to see media education as extra load; - Curricula are overloaded and assessment is oriented on factual knowledge, not on critical reading skills; - Teachers do not have skills of critical reading, nor the methodology to teach critical reading; - Media literacy is narrowly understood as producing news stories or as ability to use internet; - School culture does not support cooperation of teachers - Generation gaps (teachers of different age, teachers and pupils) in the field of media usage is huge; different generations live in different media environment. I suggest that one of the ways for the effective improvement is to overview the teacher's pre-service programs from the point of view of media literacy, and actively increase the elements of critical media usage and integrating different subjects.
