Tag: education

Defending PhD

I will defend my PhD at the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences on April 29, 2011. What will I defend then? I think there are some important thoughts that are already presented by other (media) educationalists, too. Here are my ideas about these issues.

First, the concept of media education should not be confined any longer to ‘learning about media’ only. A wider understanding is needed and other media contextual aspects must be taken into account, too. This relates to the problem of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in school. This area should not be left to technological examination only. The focus should be in better study processes and people’s non-institutional media use, too.

Second, media literacy is not just measurable knowledge and skills that can be acquired in institutional settings of education. With the current social media scene, media literacy is most of all about attitude, sometimes critical, towards learning and experiencing the world with and through media. Media literacy should be seen as a process of active involvement with a volition to produce, construct, share and categorize knowledge, opinions and experiences.

Third, media educational situations in school are manifold. A student is using his cell phone during the lesson and what is teacher saying to that? What if the student was using it for his learning task? It is important to gain a wider insight into the levels and aspects that are involved in suddenly emerging but typical situations that involve media educational aspects. It is crucial to understand the complexity of the circumstances as well as teachers’ thinking and reasoning involved media educational situations. This is, what I would call, Episodic Media Education. It can be seen in every situation where media content or tools are present.

The place for the public examination is Psykologia Sali 1, Siltavuorenpenger 1A. PhD summary will be published in ethesis.helsinki.fi. The PhD articles are:

Vesterinen, O., Vahtivuori-Hänninen, S., Oksanen, U., Uusitalo, A., & Kynäslahti, H. (2006). Mediakasvatus median ja kasvatuksen alueena: Deskriptiivisen mediakasvatuksen ja didaktiikan näkökulmia. Kasvatus, 37(2), 148–161.

Kynäslahti, H., Vesterinen, O., Lipponen, L., Vahtivuori-Hänninen, S., & Tella, S. (2008). Towards Volitional Media Literacy through Web 2.0. Educational Technology, 48(5), 3–9.

Vesterinen, O., Toom, A., & Patrikainen, S. (2010). The stimulated recall method and ICTs in research on the reasoning of teachers. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 33(2), 183–197.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2010.484605

Vesterinen, O, Kynäslahti, H., & Tella, S. (2010). Media educational situations and two primary school teachers’ practical reasoning. International Journal of Learning and Media, 2(2–3), 123–139.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/ijlm_a_00047

The dimension of subject didactics revisited

I presented the dimension of subject didactics in the beginning of my PhD project. After five years, it is time to revisit these ideas.

I presented the dimension of subject didactics (in Finnish here) in the beginning of my PhD project. The concept of subject didactics originates from German educational research tradition and it means the subject-specific pedagogy. In the Anglo-American research, the pedagogical content knowledge (some background in Wikipedia) is often used instead of subject didactics. After five years and some more empirical research on schools’ media education, I think it is time to revisit the ideas presented in 2006.

There are many ways to theorize media education. It may have various forms in primary school such as arts education, social studies, child protection or learning technologies. Schools may call their media educational activities among other things magazine time, film education or, for example, learning with social media in which case the used medium is the defining principle.

What I have found important is to have a view based on educational sciences, too. In school context and from the teacher’s point of view, subject didactics covers a large area of what is behind the concept of teaching. The dimension of subject didactics presented in 2006 had two types of approaches, namely ‘subject didactics I’ and ‘subject didactics II’. In addition, the moral form of media education appearing especially in situational ways is opened.

Subject didactics I (media-based approach)

The approach can be seen as traditional subject didactics where the goal is to learn some entity of content, in this case about media. The pedagogical question is: how this subject-like content can be taught “effectively” or “well”. Since in Finland, there is no school subject of media education, the content of learning is usually a small entity in one of the existing schools subjects: in arts education it can be visual communication, in Finnish language types and genres of text, for example.

Subject didactics II (cross-curricular media education)

The second area of subject didactics relates to the integrative role of media education. It is part of learning and teaching of other school subjects. The focus of the media education is in the pedagogical approach and mainly the content to learn is not anymore media educational: for example, playing mathematical online game to learn algebra or watching a movie about climate change in environmental studies. These activities should be seen as substantial elements of media education when there are rarely dedicated lessons for media education.

Moral dilemmas

Many difficult moments of being a media educator relate to general thoughts of children growing up. The German concept of Bildung describes the aims which are in connection with this third form of media education. However, this should not be mixed with the moral defensiveness (Buckingham, 1998) since teachers are not necessarily blaming the media for inculcating “false beliefs or behaviors and for encouraging children to believe that all their problems can be solved through violence or through the acquisition of material goods.” Teachers can reason their actions in these situations multiply and without terror of world falling apart. This came out during the empirical period of my research.

Teacher just faces difficulties in media education with, for example, inappropriate media content. These situations form an area of media education which is surrounding the two earlier forms of media education. There are several issues in media, such as age-limited material, copyrights or child marketing, which can be taught during the dedicated lessons of media education or within other school subjects but mainly just come into play as a matter that needs to be handled outside of lesson plan. Schools also have many rules which create norms for media use and content in school.

>> a draft figure for these three forms of media education in school

In Finland, the boiling discussion around the distribution of lessons in basic education has created a huge competition between existing school subjects and large push from different interest groups to get (their) new school subjects into curriculum. There are rarely winners in this competition. The distribution of lessons haven’t changed too much during the last 100 years. I wouldn’t advice to fight for a subject status for media education. But the problem is that the subject teaching comes first and the rest is rather haphazard.

The relevance of media education is still built in the pedagogical moments that happen in ordinary activities. If the frontier must be set somewhere, the struggle with the strong subject-division-based school system should not be forgotten. There must be space for values, aims and (learning) methods that are set outside of school subjects. The actual life for children is inevitably outside of the Lehrplan and the media literacy is often practiced in the meaning-making and social interaction. All three forms of media education are needed. Only then it can fulfil its place in school education.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Meediahariduse seminar Tallinnas

Tallinn University had a media education seminar

Tallinn University had a media education seminar in September 3–4, 2009. Interesting that Estonia is following the way our National Core Curriculum in Basic Education (2004) is taking the cross-curricular themes in.

I participated the sessions on both days. The following presentations (actually first Mac OS X Keynote presentations I’ve done!) are available on SlideShare.

Media Education and Curriculum Design

View more presentations from retsev.
Learning about and Use of Media in Schools

View more presentations from retsev.

DREAM conference in Odense

Greetings from Odense, Denmark! (photo: Albani brewery’s artistic smokestack)

Olutpanimon piippu Odensessa

Several great keynote speakers – some with more to say, some with a bit less to say.

I had two presentations:

>> Stimulated Recall in Media Education Research

>> The Characteristics of Volition in Media Literacy

The latter had some extra kick from the latest issue of Educational Technology where our article was published.

Kynäslahti, H., Vesterinen, O., Lipponen, L., Vahtivuori-Hänninen, S. & Tella, S. (2008). Towards Volitional Media Literacy through Web 2.0. Educational Technology, 48(5), pp. 3–9.

Educational Technology 48(5)

Relationships of Teaching and ICT

This might be a question, which is already answered in several research results, but for myself, an interesting triangle develops in a school context, when three pedagogical areas interact.

  • Classroom Pedagogy
  • The Pedagogy for Teaching about ICT
  • The Pedagogy for Teaching with/through ICT

>> see the figure

I open some point of views regarding these relationships. First, the idea of general pedagogy for teaching any school subject needs to be adjusted for teaching about ICT (e.g. with a help of the pedagogical content knowledge). I feel that learning ICT needs more ‘trial and error’ type of activities and more valuing students own ways of using tools.

Second, the approach from classroom pedagogy towards teaching with/through ICT is discussed a lot. Diffusion of Innovation and Social Shaping of Technology are often mentioned. Generally I feel that ICT hasn’t changed the classroom pedagogy as much as it was hoped for. The teachers use ICT in their teaching depending on how well the tools fit the existing ideas of how the process should be carried out in the classroom.

Third, the pedagogy for teaching about ICT in relation to teaching with/through ICT is interesting. Besides the hopes for ICT enhancing teaching, many schools reason the use of ICT in different school subjects by saying that at the same time as students learn the content of teaching they learn important ICT skills. When these two goals meet in the process, it will affect both, the pedagogy for teaching about ICT and the pedagogy for teaching with/through ICT.

We’ll see if this leads me to gather data some day about the topic.