Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Media Education

In my earlier entry, I described the ways of promoting media education (in Finnish). Now I would like to express a few thoughts around the pedagogical content knowledge (or subject didactics). If we are comfortable with the idea of different ways of promoting the media education as presented in my earlier article, I would now like to make a few notions about the theoretical background for this.

The school subjects are usually based on different disciplines, e.g. the math. Media education is rarely a subject of its own and hence it is more to do with the question, how teaching, studying and learning of different content (subjects) is carried out. However, if we were to name one discipline which the media education as a school subject would be based on, it would be the communication (or the media) sciences or the mass communication.

The subject teacher’s profession is usually theorized through knowledge on the respective subject (content) and the pedagogical aspects to it (methods). E.g. in math, a teacher has to know the math but also how to teach it.

In the primary teacher education the emphasis is in the pedagogy and, from that perspective, also in the pedagogical content knowledge on different subjects/domains. In this respect, more important than pupil’s knowledge e.g. in math, are the pupil’s mathematical thinking abilities. Same applies with the media and the media literacy for example. It is no use of knowing about media unless you are able to become literate in receiving information from the media.

If we now define the media education through the dimension between the content knowledge and the general pedagogical knowledge from the teacher’s perspective, we have sensibly four areas.

1. Content

• the media (mass media and any mediated communication)

2. Teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge I

• how and what to teach about the media

3. Teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge II

• how and why to teach with the media / through some medium

4. General pedagogical knowledge

• the general knowledge about teaching, studying and learning

The difference between second and third is that the second area is depending on the content knowledge whereas the third area deals more with the basic educational tasks. The different school subjects just offer a variation of that.

In this dimension (1–4), all four parts hold ways and reasons for promoting the media education. Here is also the theoretical background for the different ways of promoting the media education as presented in my earlier article.